Windows are not just the  opening through our homes but are windows to our lifestyle.  And Blinds are one of the best ways  to express that lifestyle. The word blind may be a misnomer, as blinds not only cut on the light but adds elegance to the room Blinds are an excellent idea for window coverings that will just look great in any house. Blinds add luxurious look and softness to our homes.

Choosing the right type of blind can change the entire decor of the room. It is just important to mix and match the color of the blinds with the color of the room. Blinds come in different form and sizes and some of the most famous types of blinds are Hillarys blindsweb blinds, venetian blinds and made to measure blinds. They can be fully sized and customized to go alongside other furniture in our rooms.

Blinds are gaining huge popularity with the masses who are opting them over the traditional window treatment. The traditional window treatment is very difficult to maintain as compared to the modern blinds. The modern blinds come in different budget to suit every pocket making them popular with the buyers.

Summary: Blinds are one of the best ways to decorate any home. They serve the purpose of cutting down on the light at the same time providing elegance to the room.

Choosing bathroom colors is crucial. Your bathroom must be a cozy nook where you can be distracted from everyday problems. With the help of color secrets you can visually make your bathroom larger or smaller.

When choosing colors for your bathroom consider its space. Light colors will make your bathroom appear larger, while warm and dark colors smaller. The next thing to bear in mind is to match the colors of the bathroom flooring, walls and ceilings with bathroom furnishings.

In the recent years blue enjoyed rather a great popularity in bathroom colors. People prefer blue to the other colors as it is associated with sea and sky thus conveys a spa feeling. However, too much blue may result in depressive and melancholic moods. The use of green in bathroom colors is common as well. It’s the color of nature and harmony. As for the color purple it is rather a contradictory color as it may convey both tranquility and melancholy. It is considered the most individual and original color of all the colors due to which your bathroom is sure to get an extra elegant and exotic look. If you are a futuristic style lover then you will definitely appreciate the use of silver in your bathroom.

Red, orange and yellow are the colors of energy and enthusiasm. Pink is the color of gentle feelings. Apply pink in your bathroom if you want to relax to the fullest.

There was a time when the combination of contrasting colors was not allowed in the fashion world. But now it is very actual to mix the colors, like blue and green, pink and red, grey and brown. Modern bathrooms love this tendency of mixing colors.

If you want your bathroom to gain luxurious and elite-like look, give your preference to beige, gold and black colors. It’s not a secret that black is a very fashionable color–it is the color of stability, formality, elegance and power. For a glamorous and chic look choose flower-pattern bathroom wallpapers or tiles and art pieces which, by the way, will help your big bathroom appear smaller.

Of course, every year has its color. But if you are not used to changing the colors of your bathroom frequently, it’s preferable to choose more neutral and calm colors to serve you a long time. To break the monotony of your bathroom interior refresh it with colorful accessories from time to time.

Don’t make your eyes get bored!

For your bedroom you have two options: paint the room white and have the rest of the items in the room in other colors or have, for example, yellow walls and white furniture and accessories. As for me I prefer the combination of those two. But you may choose to have a completely white room– white walls, white curtains, a white rug on the floor and white furniture. This white bedroom style will fill your room with light and will make it look larger.

If a completely white room may be too plain for your tastes and lacking in personality, add art work . I hung a print of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in my bedroom and it added a piece of the sun to my room.

The fact is that not only white but black and white rooms are the latest trend of contemporary bedrooms. You may use black accessories and decorations for your white room. But do not overload it with black as it will darken the room, making it look dull.

Take these bedroom design ideas and create your aura in your room.

You may have heard that you should hang artwork so the center of the picture is at eye level.

Right away you may be confused, especially if you’re 5 feet tall and others in the house are over 6 feet tall. Also, does this eye level rule apply to all sizes of art or just large sizes? What about a grouping of several pieces of framed art? What if you are hanging a painting over a sofa – should it be hung at the same level as when the picture is used in a hallway?

Ok, so here’s the deal. Approximately 60 to 65 inches from the floor to the center of the art is a place to start. It may be the perfect place to hang your particular piece of artwork, or it could look terrible. How do you know?

Begin to think of the artwork you are hanging as it relates to everything around it. Whether you hang a framed picture over a sofa, on a stairway wall, or in the hall, each of these spaces will have elements to consider

he timing could not be better. We’re entering our annual season of entertaining and visiting one another’s homes. We’re preoccupied with our work life, home life, the season’s responsibilities, and perhaps at the same time, you’re contemplating a winter or spring kitchen renovation. I’m exhausted just writing this! But, let’s pause a moment and revisit your kitchen renovation. You’re considering a kitchen/great room as part of the master plan. While thinking about the kitchen design is sometimes tabled for a little while, I’d like to urge you to keep on top of a few design issues as you go through this festive season. You will surely be enlightened!

Are you hosting an event? You Will Want To Consider:

Traffic Flow – Observe the traffic flow of your kitchen when family members are present and when guests are visiting. Of course, few of our homes can adequately handle large crowds, but the question becomes: how many people do you wish to comfortably accommodate in your kitchen/great room? Think this through carefully. Many of my clients can often attach a number of guests to the typical “group” they entertain. This is useful information to remember and, perhaps, plan for your renovation. Look carefully at the traffic flow from one task/activity center to another and you will soon see where the bottle necks are and where the process flows more freely.

Activities – What types of activities do you envision that will take place in, near, or surrounding the kitchen? Will you need a seating area in the kitchen to double as a comfortable lounging area perhaps for children or young adults? Do you need space for homework or other projects? Visualize these lifestyle scenarios. Walk through sequences of events and note the impact these activities have on your current walkways and doorways. Take careful note of the space surrounding your dining table. Is it adequate or is it confining? The dining space is often an after thought…adequate space encourages conversation and lingering. A confining space does the opposite!

Kitchen Workflow – We must pay critical attention to the kitchen workflow. Are you a family of foodies, perhaps with visiting grown children? Does a spouse wish for a grilling spot, a featured wine environment, a coffee preparation nook? Are you social cooks – will you cook with visiting family members and friends? Or, would you love to have a baking center to bake with your younger children? Visualize, in your dream kitchen, what is the best distribution of countertop space that will meet your needs. Consider your guests – would it be best to “direct” your guests away from the main work center, by design?

These types of questions will help determine the size, the boundaries of the kitchen work area which are important pieces to your great room design.

Of course, many of these questions will be asked by your Professional Kitchen Designer, and they are but a start to the process, but it is important, and interesting, during this season of entertaining to observe your current habits and, most importantly, to make notes of those observations. Awareness is a fantastic first step in the process!

How “Open” Is “Open”?

Often a difficult answer to determine, it can be somewhat confusing to predict how you will feel once you are on the “other side” of the renovation…if you are truly satisfied with an open design, especially if you have not experienced it before. This fear can also prevent one from moving toward opening up the space even more, for example, to consider a “loft” type of feeling, where, perhaps, several rooms are combined. A great advantage to this design concept, especially in a smaller home, is the ability of the eye to travel longer distances, often allowing more light into the room as well. A more open concept is fantastic for entertaining, for casual living, for being together with family and friends, and to allow for multiple activities to happen at once for some, while others congregate nearby in an adjacent space. Visualize various lifestyle scenarios and the answers will reveal themselves to you in time.

One disadvantage to an open space floorplan is the ever classic dilemma – the guests see the unkempt kitchen. Frankly, I’m not so sure there remain other disadvantages to an open kitchen floorplan. Mid height cabinetry can serve as a room divider, a very wide, deep, sink can hide dishes, two dishwashers accommodate ample dish and serveware, portable room dividers can be highly decorative and functional, pocket doors are an elegant solution to privacy…these are just a few ways to conceal the newly emptied pots, pans, and more, as food moves from kitchen to serving areas. Again, visualize these barriers. Take care that snap assumptions are not made that an open kitchen cannot be flexible to your needs.

Practice visualizing, have an open mind, think about lifestyle. Enjoy (and work by observing) this festive season!

Image Courtesy of Skona Hjem.

By Susan Serra CKD, Decorati Contributing Guest Blogger and author of The Kitchen Designer blog.

To talk about trends this year is especially interesting to me, as it is the end of a decade. I think back over the start of the “new millennium” and it almost seems like the covered wagon days in kitchen design! Looking back gives us perspective as we contemplate the future. So, where are we headed as we look at the kitchen design landscape today and in the foreseeable future? Give me a moment, while I search for my crystal ball!

I’d like to discuss five of the most important trends that I feel are, or will be soon, in our consciousness as we consider how we want to live in our kitchens. These are lifestyle trends, not the color of the month trend! Kitchens are once or twice in a lifetime projects, typically. We want to pay attention to new ideas, absolutely, but seek longevity in design and materials as well. Here’s what I see:

Open Floorplan (Rooted In Love) – An open floorplan design concept comes to mind first, and quickly! We’re busy. We want to connect with our family and friends while we perform the sometimes mundane tasks we need to do in the kitchen. We’re also feeling more relaxed, less formal, yet desire more control of our spaces. Rooted in love, this lifestyle trend has influenced a further awakening toward an open floorplan. Taking charge of our family connections in our own home means designing our kitchens for easy, efficient, communication across disparate spaces. A loft-like design concept is gaining momentum as a coordinated “designed” response to the need for communication in our homes. Products of quality to better relate (as well as to better serve their purpose) to surrounding living areas are seriously considered for their longevity and classic design, be they modern, traditional, or artisan.

Image courtesy of Hotel Lupaia.

What’s Your Style? – I see a continuing movement toward tapping into one’s inner creativity, finding one’s personal expression. The gift from the internet gods to those redesigning a room or a home is the ability to find the nuance of our personal style online. Finding those nuanced products, ideas, methods, that speak to us, is a direct result of a fresh and new confidence, built up over recent years (with the help of the internet gods) and a trend that has recently accelerated in light of our very difficult last 1 1/2 years. It tells us that our unique aesthetic sensibility is interesting as opposed to odd, that “mainstream” is not the be all end all to aspire to, to feel “safe.” Personal expression IS mainstream. Your personal style rules…and rocks. Personal expression aside, what many of us also seem to be moving toward is a warm, modern, feel with clean lines and simple design elements with an appreciation for design that is inspired by nature, and offers easy care as one advantage. We used to have one or two clear trends in kitchen design. Now we have quite a few trends, sub trends, mixed trends. The trend landscape has changed dramatically, a good change.

The Chef’s Kitchen – We’re loving fabulously fun cooking equipment, appliances designed in countless configurations offering any feature you can dream of, including cool high tech features and lots of color and finishes. We’re going to local farmer’s markets, and a desire for healthy foods of quality is also responsible for the renewed enjoyment of cooking. The grill pans, specialty knives, panini presses combined with an appreciation for the classics such as Le Creuset ovens as one example, bring us to a more sophisticated level in our culinary lives. We’re cooking at home again for family and friends with gusto! The “Healthy Kitchen”, connected in philosophy to the “Chef’s Kitchen” will include aging in place design/universal design principles (it’s own enormous trend/topic), non toxic surfaces, and appliances for healthy foods and homes such as steam oven, air scrubbing refrigerators, ventilation that automatically turns on/off, adjusting its speed, electronic on/off faucetry and many more innovations designed to create and enhance a healthy lifestyle in the kitchen.

Image courtesy of GE Monogram.

The Social Kitchen – More than ever before, we want our kitchens to be social. So social, that I see islands becoming larger as walls continue to come down, even taking center stage to include a sink and a cooking appliance, and seating. I see soft furnishings (the kitchen sofa for example, a concept that I strongly believe in, which is raised to meet the breakfast room table) in the kitchen and is all about comfort. I see finishes and colors which do not match, but blend. Fireplaces and larger windows in width and height create an open feel and add architectural interest as they do in surrounding rooms. Alternative finishes, textures and products add sophistication. Good artwork, sconces (and other non-typical kitchen lighting) and mediamediamedia of any size/shape/type contribute to the feeling that one is truly in a living/social area. Multiple work stations providing optimal function for various social lifestyle situations will be designed into the space. A desire for real comfort is strongly connected to the social kitchen trend.

Environmental Awareness – No list, even a short one, would be complete without mentioning the importance of sustainable living in our everyday life and thinking sustainability in the products we select. Appliances have made enormous strides in energy conservation in recent years, and faucets and cabinetry, flooring, tile, and countertops are made with recycled or certified environmentally safe materials. Conserving water and energy is our collective goal. Energy saving lighting fixtures has made great strides as seen in CFL and LED fixtures. Yes, you can still have your glam touch with (energy saving) lights in your sink or countertop! Green design, in my opinion, does not work without longevity built into products. Longevity built-in, equals quality. More than a trend, real quality, as it always has, simply makes sense. Environmental awareness brings with it a desire to experience the natural character of wood species, natural textures in metals, stone, and fabrics. A parallel to this trend is enjoyment of hand crafted, artisan, items, an easing up from perfection, toward organic shapes and joinery.

The word for 2010 and for the foreseeable future just may be “Authenticity”. I’d love to hear your thoughts…what you see in your upcoming kitchen renovation, or in your dream kitchen.

atricle by Sussan Serra

Why am I so wishy-washy with my own home!? It’s exhausting!!

But I’m slowly learning, and becoming increasingly convinced, that while I LOVE neutral color palettes and warm, earthy, natural elements in a room, those things just aren’t me. At least they’re not me right now, at this particular stage in my life. I’m energized by bright, colorful rooms. I get giddy when I see a room filled with aqua, pink, orange, and apple green. Yes, this is who I am, and I need to stop questioning it, and just press onward.

A vignette in Anna Spiro’s gorgeous, color-filled store Black + Spiro, located in Australia. Those lamps bring a smile to my face!

Another view of Black + Spiro. It may be a store, but I’m pretty sure I could just move right in and be perfectly comfortable.

One of my all-time favorites from designer Amanda Nisbet.

It has probably been Erin of House of Turquoise who has single-handedly influenced my love for bright, colorful rooms the most. And, of course, her blog was the single influence in my decision to paint my cabinets turquoise. She finds some of the most vibrant, exhilerating, and gorgeous color-filled rooms from the most talented designers around. I remember one night several months ago, I spent hours pouring over every one of her posts, looking at and studying every detail of every room. Here are some of my favorites from her blog:

From BHG

One of my favorite living rooms EVER, by designer Judith Balis of Nest Instinctual Interiors.

Dining room by Jonathan Ader.

Yep, I’m definitely a bright color kind of girl. Maybe in my next home, when I grow up, I’ll pefer more neutrals and a softer palette.

Article from addictedtodecorating. com

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