hr: InteriorDesign

Wooden Bathtubs: Rustic Chic

Erica — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:55:21 +0000

There are two real schools of thought when it comes to bathroom design. Some people like modernism, and tend to brilliant white lines of plastic and brilliantly lit glass and metal. Others tend to like something more rustic and traditional, opting for more ornate brass in place of hard edged chrome and steel, of porcelain in the place of plastics and even wood in the room. Wood is something that many designers would be wary of in a bathroom. Because of the large amount of moisture in the room, inadequate ventilation or a lack of maintenance or insufficient pre treatment can all lead to mildew, to rot and unsightly discoloration. This is a natural and fibrous substance that requires more care, more attention and better design.

Some companies even go as far as to offer wooden bath tubs. Comprising many individual blocks of wood compressed together and sanded down to a smooth finish, these are not simply baths from other materials. I think it’s a genius bathroom design idea. They offer many design nods to boats and other objects, existing both as bath and supporting structure in one, hewn organic edifices that seek to dominate a room and set a tone rather than just act as an appliance.

Obviously, there are other factors. Wood tends to be warmer than plastic or porcelain, and less slippy. This allows for different bathroom designs than possible with more traditional materials as well as changing the experience of bath time itself. These are intended to be comfortable furniture that changes bathing, rather than just a fashion statement.

//Photos from E-Legno. Title image is from WS Bath Collections.Similar Posts:

Looking Good with Yellow

Erica — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:15:57 +0000

The old maxims of home interior design are vanishing. Dark colors, used judiciously, help create an illusion of depth by adding depth as well as highlighting features and creating elegant and fun lines. Previously unfavored colors can be used to accent or contrast against other shades, creating a fun and personal ambiance or just bringing life to otherwise sterile areas. Color, used judiciously, can transform rooms and buildings.

Yellow has long been used with trepidation, if at all. A large splash of yellow is arguably overpowering, childish and suitable only for fast food outlets. But some yellow, of specific shades, can work wonders. Today, yellow as a key element in home interior design is becoming more and more popular. Yellow is a color associated with sunlight, with warmth and (in the case of fast food establishments) with fun, hunger and food. Subtle cornflower hues can add rustic appeal in kitchens or even an alternative to beige in corridors and connecting rooms. Vibrant, funky yellow can add a sense of vibrancy. It can be contrasted against a darker blue in a boy’s bedroom to add fun and interest, against red in living rooms to merge with flowers (especially sunflowers) and even furniture and brightly in kitchens to give a modern look and key into the sense of fun and hunger many may bring over from fast food establishments.

Yellows work well with pine, honeypine, oak and cherry woods and as contrast against darker woods such as mahogany. As a more primary color it can be used as counter points for largely blue and red areas, but care must be taken with cooler blues as well as greens. Yellow is another tool to be used in creating a fun and personalized living space, or creating a specific mood and look in a room as part of the overall home interior design.

Here are more yellow scene-stealers:

Lemon yellow chairs in the kitchen add positive vibes, as seen above in Seonna Hong’s house. Photo by Gregory Han.

Yellow pebble tiles are a great background for your bathroom. Photo by Annie Schlechter.

Go for the couch if you want something bold. Photo from G3 Interiors.

Or the bookshelves with the right amount of white to establish framing. Photo by Paul Costello.

You can also paint your walls with it. Photo by Takato Marui.

Pair yellow with another color (like grey) and come up with a great-looking two-toned room. Photo from keeping it real.

//All photos are by their respective owners as cited above. This article was inspired by Palette & Paints: Modern Yellow (from Remodelista.com).Similar Posts:

SieMatic’s Modern and Futuristic Kitchen Design

Erica — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:08:49 +0000

Apt for our times, SieMatic proves to be a prolific kitchen designer with the modern and futuristic SieMatic S1 Kitchen. The SieMatic range of fitted kitchens is an essay in understated modernism, with clean and elegant lines that draw the eye to the surrounding architectural features they are placed in as well as framing windows and views. Comprising glass, metals and modern wood finishes, the fittings can be tailored to any home, giving a modern and distinctive finish that manages to blend with the existing aesthetic and overall design.

SieMatic as a kitchen designer creates ostensibly rectangular shapes, with narrow faces further elongating the visible lines, tricking the eye into thinking an area is longer than it is, but also further away. Into these seemingly simple and compact units Siematic packs a dizzying amount of storage. The drawers are sectioned and customised to the utensils and items placed in them. There is a breathtaking attention to detail, right down to specific storage for different sizes of knives.

Troughs and grooves are built into counters, so they don’t interrupt the eyeline but offer even more storage, especially temporary storage during cooking. Cabinets slide out on runners to offer easy access while closing to maintain the minimalist ethos and afford the maximum storage in the minimum space. Lighting is recessed and unobtrusive, allowing illumination without being garish or overpowering.
This is a thoroughly modern suite of kitchens comprising great perspective. I hope more kitchen designers are like SieMatic, whose projects have thoughtful practicality and a combination of materials with a high quality finish that mean that the kitchen is a joy to use, as well as uncompromisingly useful.

//All images are from SieMatic.Similar Posts:

Adventurous Plates for More Wonderful Meals

Erica — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:24:46 +0000

Here’s a kitchen decorating idea: use plates with various designs, colors, and shapes for more wonderful meals! Fun plates are good conversational pieces by themselves, but aside from that, they also leap out from the table and grab the attention of your guests.

Who says food should be the only superstar of the table? Surprise your guests with something bold and fresh and this kitchen decorating idea will be a sure hit among you and your friends! Have a great time eating in rather than dining out - rock your dishes with great designs.

Here are some great samples from Spiceship Studio:

Another from designer Thomas Paul, who called this collection The Sea Life Dinner Plates:

//All images are taken from the sources cited above.Similar Posts:

Creating (and Using) Attic Storage Furniture

Erica — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:24:45 +0000

Have you ever had a serious problem with regards to storing things up in your attic? In the quest to maximize space in a modern home, every available room must be utilized - including the attics. However, they can be such a pain, with regards to how we keep our stuff. Often rooms are simply physical areas created by the exterior of the building intersecting with the interior. Attics exist largely because roofs are angled and there is a void created to the ostensible ceiling. These rooms are often irregularly shaped, with some parts of the floor being very close to the ceiling and others having a large expanse above them.

In many homes, particularly with the advent of children, attics find themselves pressed into service as additional bedrooms. In these circumstances clothes must be stored, often in an area that would appear ill suited or outright incompatible with the task. Off the peg furniture is particularly unsuitable, but all it requires is a problem solving approach and acceptance of bespoke solutions. Bespoke solutions can work out cheaper than a shop bought item and can both maximize the amount of storage available as well as regulate the room.

I found the above via le Blog Deco, and it’s pretty much a neat way of creating attic storage furniture that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. But without this idea, using drawers and small chests can lend themselves to smaller walls and lower overheads, but accessing them is still problematic. Storage boxes that can be slid in and out of position are another solution, but can look ugly and utilitarian. A neater solution is the creation of built in units to mask the storage, with either drawers or boxes masked by what are effectively walls built in front of them. Sloping ceilings are less of a hindrance to the poles for hanging clothes in a built in wardrobe and judicious placement of the doors can create the simple and elegant lines that modern living demands while hiding a veritable plethora of storage solutions, as well as paradoxically creating the illusion of space by making the roof appear far closer to a uniform height and losing a sense of claustrophobia, largely at the expense of otherwise unusable floor space.

Also, I found this DIY project if you want to check it out. It looks a bit complicated, but with hard work and perseverance, anything is possible!

//Images are from Lucy B and le Blog Deco, respectively.Similar Posts:

How to Maximize Small Bathrooms

Erica — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:03:48 +0000

As more and more houses have multiple bathrooms and people come to expect en suites on master bedrooms, bathrooms get paradoxically smaller. With space at a premium the floor space available to the bathrooms gets smaller and smaller. This leads to some stringent design constraints and innovative design.

The most obvious solution is to have shower rooms. Rather than have a full bath suite designers turn instead to shower cubicles in an effort to conserve space and facilitate the pace of modern living. Baths also come in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. Corner tubs, half baths, baths that are designed to be recessed into the floor, built into walls or have cabinets built around them all allow space to be used more efficiently while serving function.

The raising and lowering of floors also provides extra room, and gives the illusion of space. Clever color use opens up spaces, creating an illusion of depth, as does use of contrast. Compact and unconventional storage further increases available space as well as creating and maintaining unusual lines which can be used to trick the eye into thinking there is greater depth and space. The final trick in the designer’s armory is the humble mirror. Put simplistically, mirrors create a virtual doubling of space. More mirrors means more doubling, which can create even more room, but overused the effect can be disorientating and even induce nausea.

Put simply, small bathrooms only feel small through a failure of design and a failure to understand that style can become function.

//Images are from Ray Nunzi and Mike Fernwood, respectively.
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Interior Candles: Create Softness & Intimacy

Erica — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:46:22 +0000

Candles, once the preserve of fictional gothic mansions and trashy romantic novels, have undergone a stylistic renaissance. Far from being twee and dated, they provide fragrance and an intimate, fragile and soft light. As ways of creating a mood or ambience in a room or area they are hard to beat. From utilitarian tea lights used to provide a small aura of light in an enclosed space, to the pillars of scent used to freshen an entire house, there are specific candles for most interior effects. Candles are brilliant at casting shadows that subtly shift and move. On flat and stark surfaces these shadows create interest and dynamicism, as well as the subtle glow from the candle softening even the harshest edges. Multiple lights create unexpected shadows and effects, as well as providing focal points in rooms.

(photo from My Traveling Home)

Candles are also great for creating indirect lighting effects. They can help illuminate a room without overpowering it. In many ways they are closer to diffuse, natural light than harsher, incandescent light. Scattered around a room’s perimeter they create softness and intimacy, rather than a stark illumination overpowering mood with sterility. They cast interesting shadows, are arguably more flattering and kinder, and allow for illumination free from external power. Candles are versatile and useful, but a statement of individuality and intimate privacy.
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Visualize Your Kitchen and Make It Happen

Erica — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:06:42 +0000

Kitchen design software allows for people to easily design and visualize their kitchens. They can rotate the kitchen in 3D space, see the interaction of surfaces and finishes as well as trying different colors and working out how the natural and artificial light available to them will look.

In its infancy, kitchen design software was an extension of CAD. Lots of fragile, skeletal lines on a screen represented surfaces, with no sense of solid surfaces and color. As a tool it was limited to placing objects in a finite space rather than helping anyone visualize the space.

As software and computers have become more advanced the software has changed. Solid surfaces with actual color are now possible, allowing people to see how an actual color scheme would work. It is possible to drag and drop appliances, furniture and fittings which mean that a customer can see how a design can look in real time. Surfaces can easily be filled with a texture or color at the click of a button. Appliances can be swapped or moved infinitesimally and the real effects of light on a surface predicted without assembling it only to find out that it is dingy, or too reflective, or makes what looked a nice color for a worktop into something else entirely.

The other upshot is that the kitchen design software is easier to use, with people able to design at their leisure, trying thousands of permutations, rather than be limited to the choices at a retailer and being forced to spend a finite amount of time because they are reliant on someone who is trained in the software.

In years to come the software will get easier to use, faster and possibly even integrate with websites to allow people to order as they design. It will also serve as a boon to the industry, allowing them to plan the fittings for each appliance and serve as a blueprint for the work they do.

If you want to try your hand at visualizing your kitchen then you might want to try using kitchen design softwares to help you out. The two most recommended are:
1) Google SketchUp
2) SmartDraw Kitchen Design Software

//Image from Google SketchUp.Similar Posts:

Do-It-Yourself Shelves

Erica — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:14:04 +0000

Sometimes we often catch ourselves throwing out random driftwood or wood of any kind for that matter, if we think we don’t have a use for it. Well here’s a great idea for interior decorating without having to shell out too much money: use the wood as shelves!

(photo by Sherrie Graham)

With just wood, some nails and bracket mounts, you can do this on your own without any added cost. What makes most interior decorating special is because most of the furniture and materials used weren’t bought - the owner actually made something from found things and have transformed it to something useful.

(photo by Vincent Richel)

Here are some great DIY instructions from Design*Sponge:

I bought 3/8-inch steel rod at the hardware store and cut it into three 8-inch lengths with a hacksaw. Then I drilled 3/8-inch diameter holes about 3 1/2 inches deep into three wall studs, keeping the holes as level and straight as possible. Next I hammered the rods into the studs. I marked the location of the rods on the edge of the board, and drilled holes about 5 inches deep into the board. Then I slid the board onto the rods by whacking it heartily into place, using a wood scrap to protect the edge from the hammer. After looking online, I see you could simplify the project by using “blind shelf supports” from rockler.com. These screw into the studs, meaning you would only have to drill into the shelf itself.

(photo by Susan Herr)

My favorite use of driftwood was the simple hook for dishtowels I made for the kitchen, which I still think about, and will have to replicate when I build my get-away cabin in the woods. I gathered a few different possible driftwood branches, looking for good angles and for branches that were fairly close together. I cut the branches at an angle with a fine-toothed saw to make the hooks. I made an additional hook by drilling a hole and gluing in a piece from another branch. Then I drilled two holes for mounting, countersunk the holes, and screwed it to the wall. I covered the holes by gluing in “plugs” cut from twigs. A simple and beautiful thing.

The next time you’re thinking of buying something new for interior decorating, take a look around first and see if you’ve got any spare materials lying the house, waiting to be recycled into wonderful art. Or you might want to visit garage sales or thrift shops - who knows, you might be able to salvage something really beautiful from there.

//Images are by their rightful owners as stated above. Sources are from Remodelista and Design*Sponge.Similar Posts:

Bold Colors & Geo Patterns: Always Hip and Trendy

Erica — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:09:22 +0000

Sometimes, all it takes it that one piece of furniture that will stand out among the rest. The centerpiece, the hot topic of conversation. And Anna James’ interior design furniture is a superstar, with its bold colors and geometric patterns that push design towards new heights.

Anna James transforms ordinary furniture into great pieces of contemporary art . She works from a studio in south east London, transforming twentieth century furniture into unique pieces of contemporary art. Above is the Harland Miller desk that is too lovely for words. It just comes alive, and it’s an architectural piece on its own, aside from being an interior design furniture.

Says James of her hand-painted designs:

“Verona (the cabinet over) and Romeo and Juliet (under), have been inspired by [my] visit[s] to Juliet’s house in Verona, Italy. [I am] totally captivated by the graffiti covering the walls at the archway entrance, all of it being declarations of love by visiting lovers, of all ages, from all over the world. The colours, and the messages create completely unique images…”

All of her work are really a sight to behold. We’ve featured very bold colors here in the past few weeks, but each time I discover something so ingenious like this, I am really amazed at how unique our perspectives are. A great interior design furniture is always bringing something new to the table, when everything else has been done and redone over the past decade. It’s wonderful to have a designer like Anna James who is not afraid of taking it one step further.

//All images from Love Anna James.Similar Posts: