Consider the entire room when hanging pictures. The Roller Coaster Effect should be avoided at all costs. The eye should not have to travel up and down and up and down as it scans a space.
Place items at the same level by aligning the tops of frames even when they are housed on separate walls. When critiquing your space, imagine a line like the arrow in the photos. Better yet, get out your tape measure and verify the distances from the ceiling to the tops of all the frames are all the same.
In some cases, large vertical pieces of furniture must be considered as well. In my own home, I have a large wine rack, book cases, a huge standing mirror, and art along the walls of the Living Room. In order to align them along the same plane, I had to measure everything and adjust some only a matter of inches. It was worth the effort. We save our thrill rides for King’s Dominion.
High contrast in a design plan can be exciting, especially when the color story for the space is predominately neutral. As these pictures illustrate, deep, dark colors on a pale-on-color-base is dramatic and sophisticated.
New clients often complain that their space feels like something is missing. Like they “can’t seem to pull it all together.” Often, it is the exclamatory punctuation mark that is missing. Just as a speech drags on and on when the speaker never changes the inflection of his voice, so to can a design plan seem dull without bursts of grounding deep tones.
Catalogue companies want to have your business. In most cases, the image of the product in a catalogue looks remarkably close to the product received. However, the costs of mailing and printing catalogues are very high. And with the greening of society, customers are turned off by companies that are too conspicuous in their contributions to stuffed landfills. Thus, mailboxes are not overloaded like they used to be. Shoppers are going straight to the web, rather than using the web to order after viewing the item in a glossy, color specific magazine.
The problem with this is the image represented on a computer monitor varies from machine to machine. The study quoted below sited 87% of Bloomingdales’ shoppers saw a difference from monitor to received product equivalent to moving the color over 16 shades! And, of course, this is affecting sales.
Here’s a sample: in a study by InfoTrends last December, 81% of those surveyed said concerns about inaccurate color depiction affect their decisions to purchase color-dependent products via the web. A BizRate study in March found that 50% of consumers would not make future purchases from an online merchant that delivered an item in a color that didn’t match their expectations. And 60% of online consumers in a recent study from Cyber Dialogue don’t trust the colors viewed on their monitors while 30% bailed out of online purchases due to uncertainty about the color. Source
So what to do? I always order a fabric swatch whenever possible even though it adds time to the process. Thankfully, most swatches are free. And it helps to be aware of the return policy. These, too, vary widely. Here are some from the online retailers I use often:
- Ballard Designs – 90 days, no restocking fee
- Lighting Universe – 30 days, 15% restocking
- Home Decorators – 45 days, no restocking, no hassle
- Crate and Barrel – 90 days, must have receipt
- Pottery Barn – 30 days, info in lieu of receipt
- West Elm – 30 days, same company as Pottery Barn, but a paragraph policy as opposed to PB’s full page document
- Restoration Hardware – 90 days, must have proof of purchase to receive method of payment
- Bellacor – no returns after 30 days and must be shipped to a separate specific address
Online color correction technology is a new industry, springing to life from the needs of retailers. I imagine in the near future, this will be a nonissue.
Today’s World Market ad featured colorful Adirondack Chairs. Flipping through the paper, I wondered if that is a proper name turned descriptive, like Kleenex for tissue or Xerox for copy.
With just a little net research, it turns out that the original name was Westport Chair, after the town in New York where they were created. A regular guy, Thomas Lee, designed them for his family vacation home. The slated seat made sitting on hilly land more comfortable. He showed his final chair to a local carpenter, Harry Bunnell, who promptly got a patent on it and made it famous. With friends like that…
Classic Westport Chairs were only brown or green. Their backs had only one slat. In fact, the entire thing was made with only 11 pieces of wood. I would love to see one of the originals. I imagine there are not many left.
I am going to be featured in the regular House Calls article that appears in the Thursday Home section of the Washington Post.
Every week a reader submits a room they are having problems decorating and/or using. The Post asks a local decorator to solve whatever the issue is. I spent a good portion of the day on my project, a long skinny solarium completely outside.
In a few weeks, when I am featured, I will add the link here.
Yellow paint MULTIPIES. What seems pale and calm on the swatch can become School Bus when the application is finished. More so than any other color, yellow tends to intensify. Exponentially.
I have rarely seen a true, pure yellow tone on a wall that I thought I could live with. Yellows need to be browned out and lightened to be successful. And mustards need the opposite treatment. They need to be deep enough, and strong enough to hold up well when covered on walls.
Sherwin Williams has some nice golds, but Ben Moore’s Classic Collection is good for soft butters. I have used their Cornsilk #198 successfully on more than one occasion.
Earth Day is special for me. Not only because it is a day to give national attention to environmental concerns, but because long before this day was celebrated for such, I was born.
In recognition of this holiday, why not make a commitment to buy something Bamboo? Bamboo floors would be the best choice, but there are more and more products on the market made with this miracle plant.
Bamboo grows FAST. When we lived in New Hampshire years ago, we had a community beach on the Piscataquog River. Someone once had the bright idea to plant a patch. The neighborhood had to split the job of chopping it down weekly in order to actually maintain a strip of open land.
Bamboo textiles have entered the market, but the jury is still out on how environmentally friendly these products actually are. The chemically heavy manufacturing process required to make bamboo wearable at this point negates its advantage. Hopefully, technological advances will make these fibers live up to their hype.
We spent a busy weekend anchored each day by a performance of my daughter’s high school musical. (No, not High School Musical.) While my family’s devotion to performance is dominate in our household, these activities still hold interest for me. I spend time considering how I would create the sets.
Set design is interior design at the very core, pared down to only exaggerated essentials. The design has to hit the mark. Emotionally as well as accurately. In just a few mouse clicks today I learned that one of my favorite mid century designers, Isamu Noguchi, was captivated by this idea as well. It is not surprising, his design for King Lear was built on pure emotion.
Noguchi’s Coffee Table defines mid century style. If you ever see one in at an auction or in a flea market, I had better get a frantic ring!
I have an appointment in a bit with the daughter of my clients. She has recently moved to a 750 square foot apartment.
I just bought an excellent new book on the subject. Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Design Solutions by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan is a collection of 40 case studies about how different types of people deal with their stuff in their own rather cramped, original ways. The homes range from a seriously small 250 sq ft to still modest by DC standards 1500 sq ft.
It gets zany at times, like #40 whose entire apartment was acquired for free. Yes, you got it. He’s a dumpster diver. His coffee table is also his ladder. And he collects refrigerator crispers.
Or # 11, “Dixie’s Vintage Carnival”. She collects mannequin heads and other people’s bowling trophies.
Most of the other examples are testaments to clutter free living, which I LOVE. This book is way worth the $27.50.
