More Eye Candy in the Gray Color Palette

I just wanted to show some other beautiful rooms that feature the color gray - which I am learning to love a lot.  One of my "must do's" for 2012 is to do a beautiful room with gray as the star. I am such a color lover, but the color gray will help pop other colors in the room.

How lovely is this?  It makes me want to get rid of my windows where my bed is - so I could do a padded gray wall like this!  If you have never seen the work of Caldwell and Flake, as above, take a look at their portfolio on their website.  Their designs are so simple...but simply beautiful.  I love how an unlikely combination of gray and yellow work so beautifully!

Cynthia Smiley, Via At Home Arkansas

Another restful gray bedroom.  The wall color is Coastal Fog from Benjamin Moore (BM 976)  It's a warm gray that I would definitely specify for a client who may be afraid of using gray. I love how the gold starburst mirror really pops on this wall. 

Two years ago, I used Muskoka Trail (BM 974), which is lighter than Coastal Fog (it's the first color on the strip in their Classic Colors collection). But we did the color in a Metallic Plaster, which has a beautiful luminescence to it.  The client had several Steven Meyer prints which she loved.  If you have never seen his work, he is a radiography artist and his floral X-ray prints are really beautiful. Using BM 947 in the metallic plaster plus these prints on her walls created a soothing monochromatic entry in her home.

Steven Meyer

Brett Design

I just really may be talking myself into doing a gray infused bedroom - with all of these images! But how soothing is the above bedroom?  The paisley wallpaper pattern is from Cole and Sons and it's called Rajapur.  

Via

Another Caldwell and Flake designed room, this kitchen is so sophisticated and unique.  It may be too cold for some people but I feel it would be something that some of my NYC clients would love to have in their apartments. The quilted stainless steel backsplash creates some pattern and texture and breaks the monotony of the cabinetry. 

How would like this for a hallway or pass through in your home.  The colors chosen reflect the tones of the adjacent rooms in the Stately Homes by-the-Sea Showhouse rooms designed by Merilyn Marshall Cullen of MMC Designs.  Merilyn created the wallpaper to reflect the flora and fauna of the area during 1905 time period when the home was built. I love the gray-silver ceiling and how that blue chair just pops against the gray.

That's it for today.  More to come on the color gray...so stay with me.  Let me know how you have used the color gray.  I would love to know.

If you would love to have a room like one of the images shown today, give me a call at 631 793-1315.  I would love to help you create some beauty in your home.

Using Books in Interior Design

The great decorator, Billy Baldwin, called books the greatest accessories. Books are one of my favorite ways to bring color, texture, height and interest into a room. Not just for lining library walls anymore, you can use books to add height and color to a tabletop display, place books in tea carts, on a server in a dining room - and much more.

If you are anything like me, you have more books than you have storage space. So, by default, I had to devise ways to 1) organize my books, so that I could find them and 2) use my books in other ways rather than just on bookshelves.

One of the first things that I had to do was to whittle down the number of books that I had. When I got married, I also married into my husband's books. And when my father-in-law passed away - we inherited his vast book collection! That was more than my little house could take! Several garage sales later - and then I had a somewhat manageable number.

A Christmas vignette on my piano.  Books add height, texture & interest

I didn't style the above picture yet in my great room, but I wanted to show how some of your larger books can be used decoratively on a table top.  They add height and color.  Plus people looking at this may think I am smarter than I am with that huge tome of Shakespeare!

Even in small spots around the house, a grouping of books adds a lively note.  On top of a chair next to your bed, stacked next to a reading chair or in piles on a large coffee table, books provide warmth and informality to a space. 

Think of books as accessories and even art!  I advise that you should take off the book jacket because most of the time it's a lot nicer underneath!  Group the colors of books together - and make sure they coordinate with your other accessories and room colors.  Also, combine books by category - gardening, design, travel etc to bolster a theme in a room. Use books to heighten other accessories and objects - you want to stagger the heights in a display for greater interest.

Margot Austin, the senior design editor of Style at Home - the Canadian magazine, uses the following books as her "go to" accessories.

1. I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson

2. David Hicks On Living - with Taste
3. Slim Aarons, Once Upon a Time
4. Century
5. The Way We Live
6. The Garden Book
7. Axel Vervoordt Timeless Interiors
8. Tom Ford
9. The Hamptons
10. Chanel

I would add some of the larger books (like my Shakespeare in the first photo) plus...Domus, Wall Painting in the Roman House, anything by designer Tricia Guild (her books you can keep the jackets on - they are gorgeous) and two great books for the kitchen - Bouchon and the French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. I'd also add any fun and colorful Cupcake Cookbook - it will brighten up any countertop!

Books can also fill huge, otherwise empty and bland spaces. The hallway, above, would have

looked far too intimidating and vertical without the lively addition of the books.

Instead of filling an entire library, install bookshelves on one focal point wall.

In a family room, books share space with the TV, accessories and family photos

Or...use books to create furniture

Books can also be the subject of an artwork, as in British artist Su Blackwell's work...

So get your books out of storage or off the shelves and use them in interesting ways in your home.  Let me know how you have used books in your designs. 

Sources:  1 and 2) Linda Leyble; 3) Margo Austin 4) bhg.com 5) Absolutely Beautiful Things 6)  Contemporist  7 and 8) LM Interior Design  9) Stylist, Grace Light of Poetic Home and 10) Su Blackwell

What's Your Angle? Giving a Room Some Interest by Placing Furniture Diagonally

Hi everyone - sorry about my lack of posts lately, but I am in the midst of creating 2 or 3 longer, more arduous ones and so my page has been blank for a bit. I had a thought this morning when I woke up that perhaps a quick but very useful post might be in order.

One of the quickest, but perhaps most daunting, tricks to making your room more interesting - is to set a piece of furniture on an angle.  Some people argue that it takes up space and while that's true - what it creates is a more interesting room.  I don't know about you, but I would trade that any day. 

In my living room, I was just so unhappy with most of the furniture arrangements that I did.  I have an L shaped living room/dining room configuration - and it's one of the most problematic ones to make interesting.  I finally angled my sofa - which then necessitated that I make the corner interesting...so up went the mural.  But, if you don't want to or can't do that, place a table behind the sofa and plop two beautiful lamps and a floral centerpiece and voila...a beautiful corner arrangement.

I also had a problem in that I have a baby grand piano in the living room also.  So, directly across from my sofa went my piano - on an angle.  I was never happy with any other place that I positioned it - until the angle.  I can now play my piano...plus look out the window.  Before, I had the piano where the sofa is now and I had to squeeze into the seat, which was in the corner.  It was non-functional this way and guess what - I played less!

Now, it's my little music corner...plus there's more light being by the window and I can see what I'm doing better!  So, the angling make my living room more functional as well as more beautiful.

I may have a tendency (and as my husband Richard says - an obsession) with putting things on an angle...but there's usually a method to my madness.  When we did our renovation and added a great room, I was never ever happy with how the furniture looked in this beautiful room.  The furniture was beautiful, the wall and window treatments were just as I wanted them - but I thought something was "off" in the room.  Because we made the room fairly high - with a cathedral ceiling, the sofa looked too small where it was.  This was because it was in front of one of the tallest walls that also had the Palladian window.  When I finally angled the sofa in the corner - the sofa was in scale because it now was in front of the lower part of the room.

A little hard to tell in this photo - but the wall behind the sofa is 8 feet tall. Before, the sofa was in front of the tallest wall and it just made this rather large sofa - look like a doll house couch.  So, in this case, the angling helped to balance the room because the scale of the sofa to the wall was off.

Try and experiment with putting some of your pieces on an angle.  I think that you will find it definitely makes a difference in the room. Let me know how your room looked afterwards.

If you need some help with your furniture arrangements, just give me a call at 631 793-1315 and I'd be glad to help.

Using Birch Bark for an Eco Friendly Way to Add Texture to Your Home

    

 "...So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood."

I love birch trees.  The texture, the vulnerability, the purity...maybe how they remind me of my childhood, as in the except from the poem "Birches" by Robert Frost, above. Once, while living in Kirkland WA, I told a friend that the one thing I missed since moving from NY to Washington State was Birch trees. She told me that WA had birch trees - "just open your eyes!" And - they did have birch trees.  It took my taking up jogging to finally see them.

So, in honor of birches - a blog post!  You can bring the textural beauty of birches into your home easily and affordably.  And, of course - expensively, if you are so inclined!  I put together some great choices and sources for you to use throughout your home...throughout the year.

Via Cost Plus

These birch candles from Cost Plus are very affordable (way less than the ones I've seen in Pottery Barn).  They would look great adorning a fireplace mantle or on the hearth or grouped together in varying sizes on a coffee table.  Add some twine or raffia around them for an extra decorative touch.

You can also make your own birch bark candles by purchasing birch bark sheets.  I've found them on EBay and other sites.  Just cut them and hot glue them to inexpensive pillars that you can find at discount shops like HomeGoods, Michael's and Target. 

You can add a stack of these birch logs by your fireplace to add texture to your room.

You can find these birch logs, plus birch twigs and sheets at The Birch Bark Store.

Why not make some birch bark ornaments, like these from designer Nan Sloan via HGTV?

On the other end of the birch bark spectrum, expense-wise, is furniture featuring this humble material.  Above, a company called Maryland Court is making some beautiful pieces that rustic and elegant at the same time.

This more contemporary piece comes from Woodland Furniture.  This company is very well-known for their attention to detail and quality.  It's a "to-the-trade" company, so you do have to go through a designer to access their line. 


Artwork can bring in the textural quality of birches while adding color as well.  The Russian artist, Maya Eventov, uses birches as inspiration  for her paintings time and again.

Via

So, bring nature in with the beauty of birches.  Maybe you will become a "swinger of birches" too.