design

Making Spirits Bright With A Beautiful Tree

September 14, 2018

Even if I wasn’t a huge fan of the holiday season, I still think I’d put a Christmas tree in my home and decorate it. In this season where we spend more hours in the dark than the light, there is something so peaceful and inspiring about spending the end of each evening, snuggled up on the couch or in a favorite chair, in front of a beautifully decorated and illuminated tree.

Christmas Tree Decorating 101

Whether this is your first holiday season on your own or you’re simply interested in new tips for designing a Christmas tree that will do your photos justice, the following is a little Christmas (or holiday…) Tree 101 Tutorial that will keep you on track.

Provide a firm foundation

The last thing you want is to put the shining star on top, only to have the entire tree come crashing down…believe me, it happens pretty often. If the tree will be placed on carpet, I recommend getting a large, firm plastic mat or a piece of plywood that is as wide as the widest branches of the tree. This will provide firmer footing for the tree stand.

If you have an artificial tree, do spend time walking all around the edges and adjust branches so they are evenly spaced and positioned. This will help to balance the weight. If you go the live tree route (don’t you love that fresh, pine scent in your home?), then invest in a high-quality stand. The cheap ones are flimsy and they don’t often do a very good job of supporting a medium-large to larger tree.

Make sure you get the tree snug, all the way down to the bottom of the stand. Tighten the clamps enough to securely hold the tree in position. Once the tree is rotated to show off its best branches forward, fill the base with water. After that, I recommend putting in a couple handfuls of ice cubes every other day – or as needed – so you don’t have to crouch uncomfortably and mind the decorations when it’s time to re-water.

Light’s first, then action

If you have a pre-lit, artificial tree, you can skip this step. Otherwise, always put your lights on the tree first, before you add any other decorations. It will drive the kids nuts having to wait patiently as you finish, but the final results will be worth the wait.

The best way to do it is to start at the bottom and work your way out, moving from the inside of the tree to the outside. Make sure each of the major branches is sufficiently lighted. I like to have the lights on while I perform this task so I can keep stepping back and readjusting the lights’ position as necessary. When they’re off, it’s more difficult to tell what the overall effect is. After the lights are in their final position, I turn them off so our household can enjoy our official “Christmas Tree Lighting” arter the last of the decorations is added.

If you haven’t done so already, make this the year that you trade in your old holiday lights for LED versions. Yes, they are pricier but the energy you save and the extra years of shining lights you’ll gain are well worth it.

Unroll the garland

Is your family a garland family? I’ve noticed that some people are and some aren’t. If you are, now’s the time to apply it. If you aren’t, and you have young children, I highly recommend going the old fashioned, plain popcorn and cranberry stringing route. It’s fun, it gets the whole family involved and it looks lovely when added to the tree. The key to keeping your cranberry-popcorn garland from looking too cheesy is to add more cran than pop. You can also add cinnamon sticks, pinecones and other natural fodder to round out the look.

Hang the ornaments

Once it’s time to hang the ornaments, I recommend the following system.

First, hand your very favorite ornaments so they are all guaranteed to have a prime, visible spot on the tree. Balance them out accordingly.
Next, hand the larger ornaments. These ornaments need more space. By hanging them next, you can find all the right “big space” locations so the ornaments fit well. Otherwise, there is quite a bit of ornament re-juggling to be done later in order to make it all look proportional.
Finally, fill in the remaining spaces with your medium and smaller size ornaments.

I can’t tell you how many years I (a professional designer, no less) used to hang ornaments willy-nilly by eye – – and then spent small portions of each day thereafter amending or adjusting. Now that I use the above system, I am typically finished when the last ornament is hung – give or take a few trades here and there.

Make Your Ceiling Pop!

September 11, 2018

Ready to wow your guests (and yourself!) with a bold interior design move? Throw some wallpaper on the ceiling and you’ll be mighty impressed by the results. There are all kinds of ways you can use wallpaper to jazz up your ceiling and provide an unexpected visual treat in a space that is traditionally left alone.

Wallpapering the ceiling can be used in multiple ways. For example:

To add a bold color or pattern that would have overwhelmed the space on the walls.
Highlight an architectural feature or lighting fixture.
Provide visual interest on an expanse of highly visible ceiling (like the lower ceilings in a sloped upper-story bedroom or along the stairwell).
To add texture and pattern that replicates traditional wood moulding motifs.
Make a tall ceiling feel a little closer in order to create a more intimate ambiance.

If you’re feeling adventurous and love DIY projects, then more power to you. Check out these instructions on How to Wallpaper a Ceiling and have at it. Otherwise, we recommend using a professional so the job is done cleanly and efficiently – without the risk of mismatched lines, wrinkles, loose edges and other calamities that can occur during (and after) the wallpapering process.

Here are examples of the many ways wallpapering your ceiling can enhance an interior design. You’ll wonder why you’ve never used it in the past.

Move Over Michelangelo: 5 Great Reasons to Use Wallpaper on Your Ceilings

Be bold – in moderation. There are some super fun and colorful wallpaper prints but they can easily overwhelm a living space. Instead, put them on the ceiling, where they are off the eyes’ beaten path. Then use accents and accessories to tie in the bright colors inherent in the pattern. It would be a special room that could accommodate the large, bright print that became the ceiling of this South Hamptom dining room, but it looks fantastic in its current application.
Highlight existing features. Here’s another dining room that optimized the idea of ceiling paper. The use of white trim detail with a recessed border around the light fixture, combined with a matching shade of wallpaper, sets the stage for any guests who enter to take a seat at the table.
Create a textured look. Texture is an important element of design. Without it, a living space appears flat. While high-quality textured wallpaper is pricey, it’s still more affordable than serious wood work. Therefore, seek out wallpapers with textured patterns that replicate ornate ceiling or panel work, and you’ll get the benefit of a luxurious look and texture for a fraction of the price of the real thing.
Make visible ceiling space more interesting. Every once in a while, there’s an expanse of ceiling space that angles into our visual plane. A little visual detail is always a nice touch and wallpaper can provide just that. I think of upper-story rooms that have sloped ceilings or a low ceiling space that is angled to accommodate a staircase.
Shrink a tall ceiling. More often than not, we talk about light and bright colors on ceilings to open up a space. However, every once in a while, you want to do the opposite. Higher-than average ceilings, typical of older homes, can make a room feel more cavernous than you like. Using darker colors is beneficial in these cases because they shrink the room a bit. Darker and/or patterned wallpaper on the ceiling will make it seem a little closer.

Got The Winter Blues? Try Rearranging The Furniture!

September 4, 2018

Days of endless wind and rain make us all a little crazy this time of year. When I start to feel that restless itch, I know exactly what to do –use cooped up weekend days to rearrange things.

When I was a girl, my friends and I loved rearranging our rooms. Together, we saw possibilities we couldn’t envision on our own. This yielded creative, fresh arrangements of furniture, stuffed animals, and posters. It was my first time to experience a bed that was placed kitty-corner in a corner, for example, rather than along a wall.

Rearranging a bedroom was fine for that era of my life, but these days, I love rearranging a home. By looking all of your furnishings from a different perspective, your session will be more thorough and will result in more creative layouts and arrangements.

Tips For Rearranging the Furnishings in Your Home

Here are some of my tips for rearranging the furnishings in your home. In many cases, you’ll feel you’ve benefitted from a mini-remodel since things will look and feel so different. And, the best part about it – you don’t have to spend a single dime.

Tackle the de-cluttering projects first

First, it’s wise to get serious about de-cluttering. If you have accumulated “stuff” throughout your home, it will stymie your rearranging process. Piles here and piles there need to be dealt with before certain furniture pieces can be moved.

Believe me, when I say, this will take the wind right out of your sails. Come Monday, you’ll be sitting around with a bunch of furniture slid this way and that, piles of junk laying around – and no time to do anything about it. Instead, take the weekend before your rearranging project to eliminate the clutter. Read, A Guide to What Stays and What Goes, to help you sort through things.

Get out the extra paint cans

Once you start moving furniture and art, you’ll notice the walls are a bit dingier, dinged up, scuffed or faded than you realized. By having your extra paint cans and brushes at the ready, you’ll be able to do touch-up work in the moment, rather than having to scramble to find what you need.

If you’re thinking about re-painting, this is an optimal time to do it. Once the sun returns, you’ll want to head outside and latent paint projects will languish for another year. Hit the paint stores and start dreaming –using the time you have with furniture pulled away from the walls to slap on the paint or wallpaper you’ve been dreaming about.

Enlist the help of a savvy design friend

We all have them. Those friends with a great eye, always able to make something out of nothing. While your attempts at thrift-store shabby-chic wound up looking just-plain-shabby, theirs could grace the cover of Country Living.

This is the friend you want to have over for tea or lunch while you discuss your plans. His or her eyes will light up and the energy will begin to crackle with excitement. Ah, yes! The possibilities will now be revealed to you.

Don’t get locked into individual rooms

Obviously, beds and significant dressers are going to remain in the bedrooms, but don’t get stuck on a particular room’s furniture or items as having to remain in that room. Instead, try to see your home as a blank canvas and act as if all of your furnishings were sitting out on the front lawn in a big heap. These furnishings are your oyster and your mission is to re-think them – and your living space – in a new light.

So, that desk in the guest room may be the perfect new TV stand for the living room – or perhaps it would work in a corner as a display space for your indoor terrarium. The wood TV tray you keep tucked in a closet might become the perfect corner bar in your formal living room. Perhaps it’s time to find a new way to orient couches and chairs, swapping the wingback in the master bedroom for a chaise lounge you used in the living room.

Don’t be afraid to unload things

Sometimes, we cart things around with us for the simple reason that they’re ours. But they might not really work in our lives. We once had a very attractive and even comfortable loveseat in our family room. The problem was, nobody ever really sat on it. Finally, we realized, “this room would have a whole lot more space if we simply got rid of that!”

So we did, and we moved a lower-profile chair from the guest room in its place. We wound up with two rooms – the family room and the living room – that felt more spacious and we ended up cash positive to boot from the money we got for the loveseat.

Create your own gallery or collection wall

Once you begin rearranging, you may find you have enough miscellaneous art tucked away – or formerly on display around the house – that you can create a beautiful gallery wall. This will come in handy if you wind up with more blank wall space than you used to have when Furniture A moves from here to there. Similarly, your new arrangement might allow you the chance to display your collections in a way that does them justice – pulling them out of hidden corners and into the forefront.

Are you inspired or what? Rearranging your home is a wonderful way to embrace a new year and whole new outlook.

Taking Advantage Of Your Open Floor Plan

August 28, 2018

Open floor plans are all the rage these days and it’s hard to imagine them going out of style. They are wonderful for unifying family spaces – allowing sight lines between the kitchen, dining and living areas – and they are also ideal for those who like to entertain because they facilitate the flow of people during social functions.

Even so, there are open floor plans that flop, so you want to take advantage of the open floor plan concept and work with all it has to offer your home design.

Tips For Enhancing Your Open Floor Plan

The following tips will help you to see your open floor plan as a “big picture,” so that each space retains its own unique personality, while still remaining part of a cohesive and well-decorated whole.

Think in terms of zones. With an open floor plan, the boundaries between rooms can be blurred to nonexistent so start thinking in terms of zones. You may even include a zone within a zone – like in the case of a children’s play area on one side of your family room space. Zones are often created using a combination of area rugs, which anchor particular zone and furnishings. Furniture is also used, for example your couch may create the horizontal boundary between living and dining areas. A row of potted plants on a pony wall might have a similar effect. Zones prevent your open plan from seeming cavernous and empty.

Capitalize on light. A lack of walls and physical dividers isn’t the only thing that makes an open floor plan feel more spacious. The free flow of light does this as well – as long as it’s allowed. Take advantage of natural light sources, via windows, skylights and solar tubes. With the right placement, natural light sources can also enhance certain areas of the home at certain times of day – like a brightly lit family room or a dining area that glows softly in response to well-placed windows or skylights that optimize the sunset.

Optimize your kitchen island. Kitchen islands are one of the most universal dividers in an open floor plan, used to separate the kitchen from the living, dining and/or family room space. Don’t waste an opportunity here. There are so many roles your kitchen island can play and your interior designer can help you along with this.

For example, think about how you spend the most time in your kitchen. If it’s prepping or washing up, you may want to put your sink in the island so you spend more time keep an eye on – or communing with – your family than you do looking at a wall or small window. If it’s cooking, you may want to put the stovetop and oven there. If you have small children, the backside of the island can be great for using chalkboard paint and adding a few shelves for books and toys so they can entertain themselves. These are all easily covered up and re-purposed when they get older.

Don’t forget color continuity. Have your ever worked with a color wheel before? Your open floor plan will give you plenty of practice. While you don’t want everything to be matchy-matchy from zone to zone, you do want there to be some amount of color continuity throughout the spaces since one room leads visually to another.

Get familiar with complementary, contrasting and analogous colors so you can begin to play with what accents look best where. Also, don’t forget about the importance of texture. Repeating textures throughout the home is another way to create a sense of continuity.

Interior Designer vs Interior Decorator

August 21, 2018

The terms interior designer and interior decorator are sometimes used interchangeably, and yet they are not the same thing at all. The advent of HGTV and the rise of interior design programs in popular culture has helped to mend this gap but I still see them bandied about as if they’re one and the same.

While there are definite similarities between the two occupations – both are focused on creating stylish and attractive living spaces – how they go about it this task slightly different.

Interior Designer or Interior Decorator: Answer These Questions to See if You Know the Difference

Who analyzes your family’s lifestyle when designing a space?

An interior designer. According to the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), an interior designer is someone who, “…is professionally trained to create a functional and quality interior environment. Qualified through education, experience and examination, a professional designer can identify, research and creatively resolve issues and provide a healthy, safe and comfortable physical environment.”

Who comes into your home’s existing structure to coordinate interior furnishings?

This is a trick question because both interior designers and interior decorators can do this. However, this type of work is right up an interior decorator’s alley. Interior decorators work solely in the realm of paint, fabric, furnishings and textiles. They come into finished spaces and can either dress them up or completely alter their surface finishes.

Some interior decorators also work with their clients to help out with seasonal changes, dressing your home for fall or the holiday season. They might even help you with temporary decor changes before your household hosts a large party or special gathering. Changing out certain textiles, adding seasonal decorations or even rearranging your furnishings to make things more comfortable for a large social event are all in their repertoire.

Do interior decorators work with architects and construction professionals?

No, they don’t. This is actually one of the main differences between an interior designer and an interior decorator. Interior decorators are only qualified to work with a finished space and do not have the training and expertise to advise you on structural changes. Interior designers, on the other hand, can be a wealth of information and expertise throughout a new home construction build-out or from the very beginning of a remodel or renovation.

In fact, most clients find that hiring an interior designer is the best “first step” when beginning a home design or renovation – even preempting the hiring of your architect or contractor. The interior designer will assist you in analyzing your lifestyle and the unique personalities in your home and then suggest design features that will best reflect those so your home is functional, promotes a high quality of life and is attractive.

Which profession requires official licensing and certifications?

Interior designers. Those who work as licensed interior designers typically have a four-year degree and have passed, or are working on passing, the National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) exam. They are well versed on art history, architecture, furniture design and can prepare CAD drawings for the bidding process. Interior designers also complete a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEU’s) each year per state licensing and/or organizational membership requirements.

In contrast, many interior decorators have no formal training and no certification or licensure. Their expertise comes from a naturally artistic eye and a passion for what they do, but they lack a certain level of technical expertise.