The shape and style of dining chairs alone can create an imposing or opulent impression for guests or a cozy and inviting one. Dining chairs can be made out of a variety of solid woods, wood composites and veneers, rattan, metal and even acrylic. Traditional Japanese dining rooms have low tables with chairs that have a back and cushion, but no legs. Japanese dining furniture sets featuring Zaisu chairs are popular as families adopt traditional Japanese ways of living in an effort to improve the connection a family feels while spending time together. (more…)
This ultra modern Los Angeles, California loft is everything you’d expect from La-La Land – innovative, check; cool, check; contemporary, check; totally beautiful, double-check. Designed by forward-thinking Tighe Architecture, this chic loft was designed as a creative live-work environment occupying one of downtown L.A.’s existing warehouse buildings. Modern loft interior design should create a functional and comfortable floor plan with spaces for relaxation, entertaining, storage, and working. These different loft living areas can then be defined with room dividers, rugs, or furniture. Room division can take the form of sliding or folding screens, frosted glass panels, Japanese shojis, or fabric panels on ceiling tracks. Raised platforms are another way to establish a subtle transition for the loft bedroom or dining area. (more…)
Three floors of the Bard Graduate Center, at 18 West 86th Street in Manhattan, are filled with curvy, modern, bent and laminated beech easy chairs and chaise longues with woven, webbed seating — perfect for any beach house. There are daybeds with adjustable reading stands and companion floor-level book “cribs,” armchairs with rotating bases and elliptical blond dining tables with spindly legs that seem to float above the floor. A film on one wall depicts a glass house in a forest by the sea.
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The High Point market creates buzz with children’s collections, new colors and environmental focus
Twice a year, furniture manufacturers, retailers and magazine editors gather in High Point, N.C., to see what’s in the pipeline for the coming season. From across the 12 million square feet of showrooms comes a wealth of new trends, color directions and insider chatter. What will the best-dressed rooms be wearing next spring? Some clues follow. In most cases, the pieces featured will be available in retail stores in about six months. (more…)
The star power may have been lacking at the fall High Point Market (formerly the International Home Furnishings Market) last week, with Martha Stewart conspicuously absent for the launch of her new furniture collection with Bernhardt. But there definitely wasn’t a shortage of buzz-worthy introductions. Here are a few new furniture lines and pieces that caught our eye for their design, practicality and affordability. In most cases, the pieces featured will be available in retail stores in about six months.
Metropolitan Home
What’s new: Metropolitan Home magazine teamed up with contemporary designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz and manufacturer Shermag to debut its first furniture collection. The goal of the collection is to provide an “accessible modern” aesthetic that consumers can mix and match and incorporate into any type of decor – not necessarily a space devoted to modern furnishings. The look among the more than 65 items is varied and sometimes whimsical, with Noriega-Ortiz paying painstaking attention to shapes and silhouettes and combining unexpected materials such as acrylic and zebra wood in coffee tables. (more…)
