Archive for March, 2011
Bold Colors You Should Dare to Use at Home
Colors can make or mar the décor of a house. The most expensive of decors may look uninspiring due to bad color choices and on the other hand the simplest of them can look breathtaking with the right colors.
Bold and contrasting colors have been the flavor of the season this year and they can be easily taken into our homes.
Like everything else, the use of colors comes with its own code and rules.
These rules do make choices easier but it is quite easy to flout these rules and yet achieve spectacular results. The above bedroom color is an excellent example of such flouting.
The color code says bright colors should not be used together as they jar the senses.
The bedroom here has been done in sunset colors. These bold and bright colors go together in nature so they should go well in our homes too.
The bold solids have been offset with grey carpet and white accents.
Colors can be used to draw boundaries between two spaces in the same room.
A simple project would be to use wallpaper with bold prints in a bold color, along with a sedate color to define a lounge and respectively an office space in the same room.
Carpet Trends 2011
The new trendy carpets are style statements in design. They are no longer a piece of furnishing to be trampled under the feet. They are to be looked at, admired and felt in awe of.
Ramp fashion walks right on to your floors with these modern designer carpets. Domotex, the leading floor covering exhibition brings these modern carpets for all to witness, enjoy and own.
The high point of the exhibition is the Souk Deluxe presentation. It is inspired by the Souk des Tapis, Marrakech where carpets are laid side by side for sale. It creates a patchwork of myriad designs and styles that arrest the casual onlooker and buyer alike.
The carpets presented here are the perfect combination of traditional workmanship and modern style. The carpets are either hand tufted or hand knotted but the designs are modern making them true design elements in a home.
The carpets use different materials and styles to give you progressive designs and patterns. Top designers in the industry are involved in the designing of a unique eye ball catching carpets to impart a designer look to homes.
Breakfast Bar Stools – A Stylish Addition to Any Home
Breakfast bar stools are a stylish addition to any home, and have become ever more popular in recent years. This is thanks to the rising number of people who choose to have a bar in their kitchens simply for having breakfast in the morning, a trend that has gained momentum thanks to many kitchen designers who now see these as a must for any modern home.
Breakfast bar stools are very similar to kitchen bar stools and are often used at the same kitchen worktop height of around 90cm, but they can also be used a little higher, at poseur heights. This is because many of these kitchen designers are now making use of contrasting elevated sections, separate from the surrounding worktops. These increase the height of the surface you need to access and so require a taller bar stool for comfortable seating.
These bar stools predominantly come with metal frames that employ a gas lift mechanism for variable height and offer 360 degree swivel, giving you easy access to the seat, but they can also be found with fixed frames, made both from metal and from wood. Metal frames come in a range of different finishes that cater to all tastes; the most commonly found finish on breakfast stools is chrome.
House Lighting – Creating an Amazing Night Picture
In case you are going to decorate your house and you are wondering where to start, take a look at your lighting. The light decoration is one of the most important things, when it comes to home design.
Don’t underestimate the light décor, it can create an amazing atmosphere. It may sound strange, but many people do not think enough about the wonders that an adequate lighting can offer.
The position of lamps and lighting needs careful planning since any room in the house has different needs and purposes.
The domestic lighting has two main functions – practical and decorative. The most common mistake people do is that they expect one or two lamps to provide all the necessary light in the room. The truth is that each lighting element in your home should perform certain function. You can use the effects of domestic lighting to suggest certain mood, which will draw the attention to a particular decorative element.
The main lighting is the most important in the arrangement of domestic lighting because it has a practical function and it first gets ignited when it is dark outside. Since most often the source of light is the ceiling, it is important to choose the lamp of suitable size, shape and color. Mount it properly and safely.
Hardwood Floor Maintenance in Home Decoration
Wooden floors bring in warmth and elegance to any room. They add a lot of character and charm to the entire house. Wood flooring may be either solid hard wood flooring or parquet flooring.
Either way it requires special care and maintenance to keep its beauty untouched over time. There is plenty that you can do to keep the floors looking good.
Before you decide to start any kind of repair or maintenance finish, it is essential to know the type of finish used on the floor.
Older wooden floors will generally have shellac, lacquer or varnish finish whereas the newer floors will be finished with polyurethane.
In order to be sure about it, choose a hidden area of the floor and dip some cotton in acetone or acetone based nail paint remover. Rub it gently on the area chosen.
If the cotton ball is stained and the floor looks tacky, then it has been finished with shellac, lacquer or varnish. If the cotton remains clean and the floor smooth, then polyurethane has been used to finish the floor.
Refacing Your Kitchen for Perfect Home Decoration
If you have been contemplating remodeling your kitchen, give an extra thought to refacing it. Refacing a kitchen not only proves to be much more economical but is also a much faster and less harassing job.
Generally a kitchen remodeling job can cost anywhere between $25,000 and $30000, whereas a refacing job can be done for $3000-$9000 depending on the amount of work required.
In some cases refacing can turn out to be a wiser decision than remodeling, as a kitchen built a couple of decades ago was thought to be a lot sturdier than the modern modular kitchens of today.
Refacing would include fitting new cabinet doors, drawer fronts, toe kicks and covering any exposed frames with matching finish. It usually takes about 2-4 days to complete the job with 2-4 workmen working on it.
The work includes replacing any hardware or fittings that may be required. One can choose from plastic laminates, wood veneers or rigid thermofoils.
Plastic laminates are available in a wide range of designs and colors whereas RTF, though more flexible, are available in limited options. Wood veneers have been a popular choice over ages and bring in a rich touch that is not easy to match.
Go Green and Bring Life to Home Decoration
Green is a beautiful color full of life and vitality. It is a cool color and brings with it calm and peace. It is also the color of the season, with spring and St Patrick’s Day around the corner.
Green is the color of nature all around us and it only makes sense to bring this life giving color into our homes. Green in its various shades and tints can be used in every room of the house either as the primary color or as highlights to bring in more color to the room.
One could choose green as the theme of one’s home décor and play around with it in its various avatars to bring Mother Nature closer to home.
Its calming effects can be used in various forms across the home.
Beautiful pastel shades of green can be used as the primary color in your color scheme or can be splashed across every feature of the room.
Solids in the form of furniture, cushions or other fittings can easily be used along with green as the major color for wall papers or curtains. Be careful to choose the right shade of green.
Trends Call for Specific Purpose in Kitchen Decoration
The fast paced modern life has increased the demands on very person, thus the need to handle day to day activities faster and more efficiently is increasing with time.
The modern kitchen is keeping the pace in this life race with super efficient appliances and latest décor trends that let one work efficiently with required speed.
One of the best ways to have a well organized kitchen is to have sufficient space to be able to store away everything in its place. The latest trends in kitchen décor work towards the goal of creating enough storage space in the form of cabinets in order to keep everything away from sight.
Storage cabinets with special countertops for kitchen appliances are now available and these help to store away appliances when not in use.
Many homes are now opting for natural stone to use on counter tops, islands, peninsulas and bar tops. Natural stones like granite and quartz are easier to maintain and look great too. The only requirement they have is that of a sealant to protect from stains and spills as stones are porous by nature.
Darlings of Chelsea
If you like comfortable and contemporary leather sofas and sofa beds, then you will love the products from Darlings of Chelsea. High quality and great customer service is their watchword and all their leather sofas, other than the Italian designer range, are handmade by skilled craftsmen in the UK.
With solid beech or birchwood frames, the Chesterfield, Sloane, Westminster and Belgravia ranges are stylish and durable. The company uses only high quality Anline leather for their contemporary leather sofas, and the Chesterfield range has an antique finish and studding that give it a character all its own.
Darlings of Chelsea has showrooms at Fulham, Greenwich, Manchester and Birmingham where you can see the quality and style of their leather sofas or view their full range of products for sale online. All the company’s products undergo a quality control procedure and passes fire and safety standards that are among the moist rigorous in the UK.
Leather Sofa Beds
Leather sofa beds are available in the Sloane, Austin Chesterfield, Eton and St. James’ ranges among others; all sofa beds are made in the UK and are available as a 2.5 or 3 seater sofa. Darlings of Chelsea’s leather sofa beds are made for easy, everyday use, which is why they have a simple 2 fold mechanism with a five inch fully sprung mattress.
Honeysuckle – More Than Pink, Much More Than Lovely
If you are going to renovate your home décor and you haven’t chosen the colors yet, take a look at the honeysuckle color.
This is one of the most fashionable colors of the year. Actually it is announced as the color of 2011. Perhaps you think that decorating in honeysuckle is very unusual. It is unusual, but yet, very beautiful and very modern.
If you want to decorate your house in a contemporary style, this festive shade of pink is the right color for you. The honeysuckle is a color that gives the feeling of luxury and warmth in your home. Therefore it is a perfect color for your dining room.
The advantages of decorating in honeysuckle are many, but the main one is – this is totally a color that can be combined with any other color.
In case you want to create a luxury dining room, paint the walls in honeysuckle. Combine with white window frames and bright luster, in order to create contrast, which will not allow the room to become too dark.
The push chairs enhance the feeling of luxury, especially with light beige trim that adds more light in the room. Woven carpets in honeysuckle, white and beige colors are the perfect finish for a luxury dining room.
