color combinations

Modern Nursery Color Combos

October 24, 2019

Tired of the same girlie pinks and little boy blues that dominate the nursery scene? It’s not easy to escape those tried-and-true gender traditions but with a little work and an eye on the future, you can introduce modern nursery color combinations that will still yield a soothing and nurturing ambiance for your little darling’s bedroom space.

Check Out These Modern Baby Room Color Combos & Design Ideas

Perhaps the single most poignant piece of design advice I can give to soon-to-be parents is: take the “long view” approach when decorating the baby’s room. What do I mean by “long view?” I mean that the time you have to put into decorating now will be virtually non-existent once you become parents, and that sweet little baby transitions into a busy toddler faster than you can blink your sleep-deprived eyes. The more you can do to create a room your child can grow into without the need for another re-design, the better.

For this reason, using a modern color palette makes very good sense. Modern colors can be easily added to via big kid furniture and accessories to serve as more mature rooms down the road, and they can also be transitioned into guest bedrooms as needed.

Here are some of my favorite modern color combos for baby rooms:

Turquoise and Tangerine. Together, turquoise and tangerine form a vibrant and energetic combination without being too busy. My recommendation: leave the walls a warm neutral color and then bring in the turquoise and tangerine via area rugs, rocking chair cushions, a painted dresser-slash-changing table (again, thinking ahead to the future), window coverings, and bedding. This is also a gender-neutral combination, which can be nice for parents who opt to let their baby’s gender remain a surprise. If it’s a boy, throw in some brown accents; if it’s a girl, you can add splashes of pink or purple.

Yellow and Gray. The pairing of yellow and gray forms a balance; yellow is vibrant and gray is calming. The brighter the shade of yellow you select, the more energetic the effect will be. Again, this makes for a fabulous gender-neutral color scheme or a fair selection for fraternal boy/girl twins. Greens and blues can be added to this combination to good effect as well for a little more diversity.

Primary Colors. Did you know babies are the ablest to perceive black and white to start, and then vibrant primary colors after that? They also like geometric shapes and patterns. For those reasons, I’m a fan of this bedroom with a big map of the world on the wall – full of happy colors and plenty of shapes to keep curious eyes occupied. Pick your favorite colors – or theirs as they get older – to build the rest of the bedroom’s design.

No Color At All. This modern nursery in Los Angeles shows how beautiful and cozy a nursery can be without any particular or intentional color combination at all. The warm hardwood floors, rustic rocker frame, and dresser add a sense of traditional homeyness. You can use area rugs of all shapes and sizes, accent pillows, art, and other accessories to add splashes of color as they pertain to your child’s gender, interests, and personality. This is definitely a room a child can grow into, a guest will feel comfortable sleeping in and prospective buyers will see as just another bedroom without any need for repainting or redecorating.

Making Your Finished Basement A Welcoming Space

April 11, 2019

What is the ambiance down in your home’s basement? Is it a place your kids and their friends use as the dark, dank dungeon in their imaginary play? Do you use it for laundry and random storage but not much else? In other words, is your basement a big waste of space? If so, it may be time to remodel your basement into a warm and welcoming space.

Re-Vamp Your Basement in Style

Taking your basement from “extra storage” to “new living area” will have a dramatic impact on your house as a whole. Depending on its size, your basement remodel can significantly improve your home’s livable square footage, notably improving your home’s market appeal and resale value.

With the right extra touches, the basement can also become a comfortable guest space, a potential source of rental revenue down the road and a wonderful way to get your kids and their friends out of your favorite living areas and into one they consider their own. On that note, here are some ideas for renovating and designing your basement space.

Take a family survey. Meet with your family and begin exploring the possibilities. If your basement must be used for storage (I still vote for renting a storage unit and getting more use out of that empty space) you may simply want to make your basement a laundry room, making your current laundry area available for an expanded kitchen, bathroom or other living space. Or, you might decide you want a full entertainment area, complete with a small kitchen or bar. Think about your household’s needs and lifestyle and brainstorm your basement remodel from there.
Clear the clutter. Not surprisingly, your basement overhaul is a fantastic opportunity to get rid of clutter, sort through old boxes and condense all that “stuff”.
Light and ventilation. The two most common associations with basements are “dark” and “musty.” Both are indications of poor lighting and ventilation. See if there’s a way to add windows to gain as much natural lights as possible. If not, freshening up the walls, using a light and neutral color scheme with pops of color, will help it to feel lighter and brighter. A new lighting design can work wonders to brighten your space with illumination that looks more natural. Odds are a professional HVAC contractor will be needed to expand your home’s current system to encompass the basement, and that will go a long way towards improving its ventilation and interior comfort.
Pay attention to the walls. Because the basement can be dark and gloomy, you want to pay very careful attention to the walls. There are pre-fabricated wall systems that can be put in place right over existing, unfinished walls. This is a great way to improve the energy-efficiency and insulation value in the basement while giving it a brand new appearance. Nice new paint or attractive wallpaper can finish the look.
Add a bathroom and kitchen. If the basement is going to be used as an entertainment area and/or guest space, try to incorporate a bathroom and some type of kitchen. Tying a sink and toilet into existing plumbing is rarely a major feat since plumbing is usually readily available in a basement location. A small kitchen makes it easy to store snacks, drinks and also facilitates cleanup. Plus, both those features will make it easy to convert your basement space into a source of rental revenue down the road if you choose to.

Stripes

March 13, 2019

Stripes add pattern, depth and interest to an interior design but when used incorrectly, they can be overkill, crooked or just plain unattractive. In truth, using stripes in interior design isn’t all that different from using stripes in the fashion world. Color, direction and width have a significant impact on how those stripes express themselves on their host.

Tips for Using Stripes to Energize Your Interior Design

With that in mind let’s talk about a few things to consider when using stripes in your interior spaces as well as a few tips on how to use them to their best advantage.

Know the effect your stripes will have. There is no doubt about it, your stripes are bound to cause a shake up of your interior space’s energy. Unless you go for a monochromatic palette with a very slight shade variation between stripes (common in a bedroom or formal living room space) your striped pattern will be energetic. This isn’t a bad thing, but it need to be considered. If you like the idea of stripes but aren’t sure how bold a statement you want to make, consider stripes using very subtle colors or use colors that are analogous on the color wheel, as the more subtle the shade variance, the more calm the overall effect will be.

Which direction should the stripes go? In some cases, you’ll be able to intuit whether or not a space will look better with vertical or horizontal stripes. In others, you may be stuck on the decision. Keep in mind that vertical stripes – especially in narrow widths – make a room seem taller and draw the eye upwards. Horizontal stripes, on the other hand, make a room appear wider and more spacious. Knowing which effect will enhance your room’s decor should determine which stripe direction is best.

Walls versus furnishings. Here’s a good one. If you’ve never worked with stripes in your interior before, I highly recommend you start with furnishings and see what you think before moving on to the walls. Not surprisingly, stripes on the walls – whether painted or papered – are a much bigger time and energy investment. A couch, chair, window treatments, art and other furnishings are much easier to re-sell, reupholster or simply give away or donate if you determine stripes aren’t for you after all.

Stripes on the walls. If you do opt for stripes on the walls, you will have two choices: paint or paper. In either case, I highly recommend you enlist the assistance of a professional unless you are practically a professional painter or wallpaper installer in your own right. I say this because there is one thing that ruins the effect of stylish stripes – when they’re crooked!

It’s not easy to get striped wallpaper to lay straight on your wall – and often, you will learn that it’s your walls that aren’t exactly plumb, making wallpaper application an even greater challenge. Similarly, tracing and taping perfectly straight lines and then painting meticulously enough to keep them smudge free is no easy feat. If stripes are going to be a more permanent feature in your life, I say go professional and make sure they’re done right the first time around.

Don’t be afraid to layer stripes and patterns. I think stripes make a great foundation for pattern layering. You have two colors to work with and now you can start looking for other patterns and textiles that share similar color families or contrast completely, adding further depth and interest to your interior landscape.

The Perfect Color for Your Homes Exterior

May 17, 2018

In an effort to save costs, modern subdivision contractors often use a two-color exterior color palette: a base color for the main field and a complementary color for accent and trim pieces. Period. In fact, your home’s exterior can have up to four or more different colors, depending on its architecture and era, to highlight and complement the home’s features and surrounding landscape.

Tips For Choosing Your Home’s Exterior Color Palette

While nobody can say, “Here – use this palette” for your home without an on-site consultation, there are general rules and guidelines designers use when assisting clients in choosing an exterior paint palette.

Opt for three or more colors. Usually, the most attractive and notable homes use at least three colors: one for the field (the main body of the house), one for accents (the main features on the home like window frames, railings, shutters) and one for the trim (this is almost like eyeliner and is often the most bold color used). And, of course, don’t forget to highlight the front door – which may be a stand-alone fourth color.

Consider the architecture. Everyone’s familiar with San Francisco’s Painted Ladies, and those color palettes are amazing. But, put those same colors on a Craftsman Style home, or a modern architectural design and they’ll probably look completely out of place. If your home’s architecture is more or less period-specific, you are best off working with period-friendly palettes.

This doesn’t mean you are restricted by that period’s colors, but you can work within the same number of field/accent/trim color options and choose modern versions of antiquated hues. This will allow your home’s colors to exist in context.

Work with architectural elements that can’t be changed. Odds are, your home has a feature or two that can’t be changed. Perhaps you have a partial brick or stone facade. Your roof shingles or tiles are a specific color that can’t be altered without re-roofing the house (impractical, to say the very least). Thus, the sub-set of the above “consider the architecture” is to find color palettes that complement the shades inherent in unchangeable structural features.

Are those features’ undertones on the warmer or cooler side? Brown or grey? Blue or green? If colors aren’t your thing, a professional consultation is imperative because choosing the wrong colors will look terrible, and you will be stuck having to re-paint all over again – an expensive and frustrating endeavor.

Take a look around the neighborhood. While matching neighborhood houses are certainly boring, there is something to be said for a cohesively colored neighborhood. If the rest of the homes on your block lean towards brighter, bolder or more creative color palettes and you go earthy and subdued, your home may look a bit out of place. Conversely, if your neighborhood largely consists of neutrally painted stucco homes and you go the Painted Lady route, the effect will be comical rather than stylish. And, of course, there are always the Home Owner’s Association’s CC&Rs to contend with.

Imagine your year-round landscape. One fun option is to add an accent color tailored to your home’s landscape design details in a particular season or two. Think about the color palette that exists as your landscape comes to life in different seasons. If there is a tree that changes to a particular shade of crimson in late-summer and fall or a spray of gorgeous blooms that erupts across your landscape in spring or early-summer – these notes may be able to exist in your home’s exterior palette for a dramatic echo.

Having a hard time choosing your home’s paint colors?

Arranging Living Room Furniture

February 25, 2018

Arranging furniture is often a process of trial-and-error and, odds are, if you’ve moved into a new home or planning to remodel the one you’re in, it will take a few different arrangements before you land on the living room furniture placement that suits your family or household best.

Helpful Tips for Arranging Your Living Room Furniture to Enhance Style, Function & Flow

It’s impossible to give you a set of rules because every living room is different – and every family’s use of that space is different as well. However, there are a several tips that can get you started.

Get out the ol‘ fashioned graph paper. If lugging furniture back and forth doesn’t appeal to you, and/or you are good at envisioning two-dimensions in your head, I recommend getting out a sheet of good ol‘ fashioned graph paper and start drawing, cutting and shuffling. Your first item of business will be to outline your living room’s exact perimeter measurements to scale. Mark windows, doors, the fireplace and other architectural features that will affect furniture placement. Then, use another sheet to draw to-scale shapes that mimic your furniture and furnishings, and begin placing your “furniture” in different spots to see which arrangements seem to work best.
Consider traffic flow. Think about how people enter and exit your living room space. You want your furniture to facilitate, rather than hinder, traffic flow. Also, try to prevent traffic from bisecting those who are seated and their view of the television.
Think about your focal point(s). What is your our living room’s focal point? Is it the television or a large picture window? Perhaps it’s your fireplace mantel or a gorgeous work of art. In any case, your main seating area should be placed such that the eye is easily led to an attractive landing point.
Get furniture away from the walls. It’s so common for people to place couches and/or chairs right up against the wall, thinking it will make the room seem larger. In fact, this tactic can make for a boring interior design and can also yield a great deal of dead space if you aren’t careful.
Create a balance of high and low energy. If your living room is big enough, try to create separate areas for entertaining and higher-energy activities – like movie nights – and quieter, low-energy areas – like a corner or fireplace-oriented furniture arrangement that facilitates private conversation or a reading nook.
Think about surface placement. Make sure that every couch or chair has a hard surface nearby, whether it be a coffee table, end table or a nearby credenza or book case so you have a place to set drinks, snacks, magazines or books, the remote controls, etc. If you are in the process of remodeling, this is a good time to think about lamp placement too, as well-placed floor outlets prevent trip hazards created by exposed electrical cords stretched across the floor. Figuring out your future furniture arrangement now will allow you to be more precise with your new electrical plan.
Don’t forget the benefits of area rugs. Area rugs are used often to help anchor living room furniture and/or to create a visual sense of different areas in a single space. One rug, or two layered rugs, can be used to anchor your main seating area while another smaller rug can create the boundary for a small play area or reading corner.