Tag Archives: decorating

The New Moderns: Just Add Color – Decorating Tips from Downunder

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There’s a new sensibility at work in homes that demonstrates a modernist, almost minimalist, aesthetic.

 

The message of simplicity in concrete floors, natural timber joinery, exposed beams or blackened steel-framed windows and doors may still be characteristic, but it has been brushed with colour. Softly muted tones, deep muddy shades or occasional pops of a bright hue feature in the latest residential interiors. The result is a more casual, cosy and more compassionate version of minimalism.

Does decor add value to your home?  Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com for your Real Estate Appraisal questions.

 

Park House is a perfect example. It’s at the vanguard of Australian home design and stole the show at the recent Australian Interior Design Awards (AIDA), receiving both the coveted Premier Award (Victoria) and top honors for Residential Design.

 

This house is in Melbourne’s suburb of Hawthorn and was a design collaboration between Leeton Pointon Architects and Allison Pye Interiors. It is fresh and inviting, even homely, despite its sophistication, largely because of the muted colour in every room. There are also curvaceous walls, which work as subtle sculptural nuances delineating each space. And a generous use of timber offsets the austerity associated with the many concrete surfaces.

 

 

“Robust natural concrete, polished concrete floors, natural grey rendered walls are set against natural timber ceilings, hand-made bush basil tiles, soft-waxed walls and linen curtains,” says architect Michael Leeton. “Furnishings in natural linens and artwork made from natural materials complete the overall picture.”

 

For the furniture and furnishings, in the bedroom and living rooms of Park House, subdued colours, such as dusty pink, sandy tan, speckled grey and soft teal, add warmth to the more brutish materials used for hard surfaces.

 

“We like to juxtapose raw materials against softer elements as a way of heightening and celebrating their innate qualities,” says Leeton. “It’s a wholistic approach to design that creates environments which imbue this quality and allow a sense of silence to the space.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/homestyle/the-new-moderns-just-add-colour-20130711-2pryu.html#ixzz2YpwXdBrX

Get Kids Involved When Decorating Their Rooms

kids

When Elizabeth Foy Larsen was growing up in the 1970s, she spent an enormous amount of time watching television. But now that she has three children of her own and a four-bedroom Mediterranean-style house filled with computers, TVs and iPads, Ms. Larsen finds herself waging an ongoing battle against screens.

“The decorating-your-room chapter came directly out of having my kids create environments they liked,” she said.

Does good decor add value to your home?  Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com for your value questions.

Her middle child, Henrik, 10, chose for his bedroom walls an orange she compared to “standing in the middle of an orange-juice-concentrate can.” It was a choice that tested her conviction that family governance ought to be a democracy in which the parents wield soft power, rather than a dictatorship.

But Henrik vetoed her suggestions for a subtler shade, and Ms. Larsen conceded: “It’s his room. I wanted him to have it the way that made sense to him.”

Peter, 13, her oldest, is a modern-design fan who picked out his Ikea furniture and, with help from an artist friend of his mother’s, stenciled the Los Angeles skyline above his bed. “He thinks he lives in way too small a town,” Ms. Larsen said.

read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/greathomesanddestinations/go-to-your-room-and-decorate.html?ref=realestate&_r=0

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DIY Low Cost Decorating Tips

living

HOME TOUR, ROOM BY ROOM
LIVING ROOM

The living room is the first place guests see when they walk in the house, coming into our small entryway and looking throughout the whole first floor. Being a townhouse, the place is pretty skinny, so the living room is narrow, and I didn’t want the eye to miss it by looking past to the dining room and kitchen. We started the room with our dream sofa that we got at a good price (the Henry sofa from West Elm) and a statement rug from Overstock.com that ties in the dark gray couch and the pale gray walls (Sherwin-Williams “Snowfall”). Finding curtains was one of the biggest challenges, since I wanted to put the curtain rods up as high and as wide as possible — this really makes the windows look huge. I wound up making the 108-inch-high, 78-inch-wide curtains for the living room myself from pale pink crepe I found on clearance at Jo-Ann, combining it with curtain lining fabric. That’s 7 yards of fabric for each panel, by the way. Phew!

Will nice decor add value to your home?  Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com for your value questions.

HOMEGOODS
Sisal rug, $20
Round gold mirror, $40
Glass cake stand and bowl stand, $9 and $13
Pineapple cookie jar, $7
Hot pink picture frame, $6
ROSS
White planter, $15
Banana leaf storage basket, $8
Gold vase, $4
Mercury glass candleholders (10 or so of them), $1-$4
Square gold metal frame mirror, $5
White circle mirror, $7, DIY project
White/gold zigzag lamp, $25
Pink velveteen ruched throw pillows, $4 each
Pink and aqua square painting, $10

TARGET
Rectangle shade, $13
Gold candelabras, $5 each
Standing tripod lamp, $30 online
Turquoise cake stand, $5
White comforter cover/shams, $35
Matching white lamps, $20 each
Sunburst mirrors above beds, $9 and $6

Read entire article at: http://www.oregonlive.com/hg/index.ssf/2013/02/diy_low-cost_decorating_puts_a.html