Thursday, February 25, 2010

It's all about the Turquoise

When Pantone announced that Turquoise was the color of the year in 2010, I was excited. I guess you can tell it is my favorite color just by looking at my logo and blog header.



The color has been showing up in fabrics now more than ever. One of the new collections just in at Designer's Workshop from Clarke and Clarke is Astoria Velvets and how yummy are these new velvets. I love the combination of the chocolate, turquoise and the acid green.


What do you think?

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Make a Room Feel Larger

Everyone wants their home to feel warm and inviting but we also want the room to appear larger. As a rule, we recommend mounting window treatments several inches above the window. For example, say you have an 8' ceiling height and you mount your window treatment under your crown molding or just below the ceiling, not only will the room appear larger but the ceiling height will appear taller as well.Another mistake a homeowner might make would be to add a cornice with a straight bottom and then mount that cornice at the top of the window. Below I have created a rendering with our "Minutes Matter Studio" graphic design software to illustrate the different look achieved when the cornice is mounted near the crown molding or ceiling opposed to mounting at the top of the window. See how much taller the ceiling height appears and how much larger the room looks.




Here is another design tip when trying to make a ceiling look higher. Add a shape to the bottom of the cornice. By adding movement to the bottom of the cornice it can trick the eye into moving up and down so the eye does not stop at the longest point of the cornice.



You could also accomplish extra height with drapery panels and a decorative rod. Notice the difference when you mount the drapery rod at the top of the window or when you mount the rod under the crown molding or near the ceiling.





We recommend giving every room that extra lift! Would you like to see how new window treatments could change your room? As part of our service we create renderings to help our clients visualize how new window treatments will look on their windows.