It may have been an overexposure to early Frank Lloyd Wright, or perhaps too much time spent in boats, but when I was young, and until very recently, I was horrified by furniture. I always thought that a perfect domestic architecture would be heavy on the built-ins. Shelves, benches, various seats and berths—these were the things necessary to finish a space, to tune it for living, to show at least that the designer was not entirely ignorant of how and by whom a house would be used. Also to anchor it. An uncle of mine lived for many years in a very cool Anglo-built adobe in Taos, New Mexico. At the center of the main space was a large circular pit, dug out of the ground and contoured for sitting: a brutal sunken living room, it seemed so much more profound than the loose, impermanent wooden furniture orbiting all around it, sliding this way and that, imported things ready to take up any position, or be replaced. (more…)
Allison Brown had lost steam decorating four months after moving into her family’s new home. Paintings and a wrought iron wall hanging sat on a floor.
“I tried doing it but needed help,” she said.
Brown didn’t want to hire interior decorators, who make commissions by recommending purchases, since she had just bought new furniture. So she called Diane Simpson and Dee Robertson of My Home At Last, an interior redesign consulting firm. (more…)
The latest design trend has nothing to do with which colors are out or which styles are in. What’s new in the design world is a growing social conscience.
That phenomenon was nowhere more apparent than at this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, where any number of high-end firms displayed their efforts to connect first-world consumers with needy third-world artisans.
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home design trend Fabric trees and florals — long known in the interior design world as “silks,” although they are usually made of other material, are now a decorator’s trusty friends, used to fill in empty spaces and warm up rooms.
“Today’s lifestyle has gotten so busy that people don’t have time to take care of live plants,” says Howard Yeakel, silk department manager at Phoebe Floral in Allentown, Pa. “Silks are a nice alternative or supplement.”
Faux greens and flowers have gained acceptance and respect because they’ve greatly improved in quality, designers and florists say.
A common practice is to place silks in the corners of living and family rooms to fill dead space. Less obvious, but along the same lines, is to position them in the area between walls and couches, says Kristi Lisiecki, a designer.
“We don’t always like to line walls with furniture, because you end up with furniture all along the outside of the room and a big bowling alley in the center,” Lisiecki says. “If we float a sofa in a room, we’ll use a palm tree back behind it to give some height to the area.” (more…)
