Elevate Your Designs at High Point Market April 13-17

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High Point Market Spring, which features more than 2,000 exhibitors showcasing over 22 categories of the latest furniture, textiles, decor, and design and 75,000 attendees in each market, will be held in High Point, NC on Apr. 13-17, 2024. Network with industry icons and source cutting-edge products at this pinnacle design event. Connect with influential editors, top designers and leading brands. Discover upcoming trends, source unique pieces and gain insights to elevate your design practice. It’s the perfect platform to network and stay ahead of the curve and go beyond the showrooms with a week of inspiration that offers more than just exhibits. Enjoy a packed schedule of events, speaker sessions, and entertainment. The official app and concierge services ensure a seamless experience. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, connect and be inspired! Register at the website here.

A Practical Guide to Mixing Textures & Patterns

By

Melissa Diehl

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Mastering the Mix of Textures and Patterns

By

Melissa Diehl

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Textures and patterns are the unsung heroes of interior design. They add depth, personality and both visual and tactile interest to a space, transforming a sterile or bland environment into a vibrant and inviting one. But for interior designers, navigating the world of textures and patterns and achieving a cohesive look can be a challenge. Here are some practical tips to confidently mix and match these design elements to create a space that sings.

Understanding Textures and Patterns

First, let’s establish the difference between texture and pattern. Texture refers to the tactility or surface quality of a material – think the smoothness of velvet or the roughness of brick. Pattern, on the other hand, is a visual design created by the repetition of elements, like stripes, florals, toile or geometric shapes.

The Power of the Mix

While both textures and patterns can stand alone, their true magic lies in their ability to be combined. Here’s how this collaboration elevates your design:

Adds Depth and Dimension: Flat spaces come alive when layered with textures and patterns. Juxtaposing a smooth leather sofa with a fluffy rug creates a dynamic interplay of surfaces, making the room feel more interesting.
Creates Focal Points: Patterns can be powerful tools for drawing the eye to specific areas. A patterned accent wall or a boldly textured throw pillow can become the focal point of a room, guiding the visual journey.
Expresses Style and Personality: Textures and patterns are a fantastic way to infuse a space with a particular style. Think woven baskets and natural fibers for a bohemian vibe, or sleek marble and geometric patterns for a modern look.

A Practical Guide to Mixing and Matching

Here are some key principles to remember when mixing and matching:

Start with a Neutral Base: A neutral backdrop provides a foundation for layering bolder textures and patterns. This prevents the space from feeling visually overwhelming.
Balance is Key: Aim for a harmonious interplay between contrasting textures and patterns. Rough textures can be balanced with smoother ones, while large-scale patterns can be paired with smaller, more intricate ones.
Consider Scale and Proportion: The size and scale of patterns matter. Large patterns can make a small room feel even smaller, while small patterns might get lost in a spacious area. Play with scale to create a sense of equilibrium. The key to mixing patterns in a maximalist space, for instance, is varying the scale of the patterns you are mixing.
Unity Through Color: Even when mixing diverse textures and patterns, strive for a sense of cohesion through color. Choose a color palette and ensure both textures and patterns incorporate elements from that palette.
Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different combinations. Trust your eye and create a mood board or mock-up to visualize the final outcome before committing.

Beyond the Basics

Here are some additional tips to take your mastery to the next level:

Think in Threes: When incorporating multiple patterns, aim for a rule of threes. This creates a sense of order and prevents visual clutter.
Play with Materials: Don’t limit yourself to traditional textiles. Experiment with textured wallpapers, metallic accents and natural materials like wood and stone to add variety.
Lighting is Key: The way light interacts with textures and patterns can dramatically alter their impact. Experiment with different lighting sources to create dramatic effects or a softer ambiance.

Textures and patterns are powerful design tools that can elevate your interiors and add layers of visual interest. By understanding their potential and following the principles outlined above, you can confidently mix and match these elements, creating spaces that are not only beautiful but also reflect your unique design vision. Remember, there are no hard and fast rules – the key is to experiment, trust your eye, and have fun with the process! So, unleash your creativity, embrace the power of textures and patterns, and watch your design dreams come to life.

5 Space-Savvy Storage Tips: Designing for Clutter-Free Living

By

Melissa Diehl

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Designing for Clutter: Space-Savvy Storage Secrets for Clutter-Free Living

By

Melissa Diehl

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In modern living spaces, clutter is a pervasive challenge, necessitating interior designers to engineer innovative solutions that can meld functionality and aesthetics. Get crafty with storage solutions and designs that not only alleviate clutter but also enhance the living environment, making every square inch of space count.

Understanding the Client’s Needs

A deep understanding of client needs is paramount to designing spaces that are both decluttered and designed to maximize space. It is essential to assess the client’s lifestyle, how they utilize their space and their specific storage needs to tailor personalized and functional solutions. This process may require thoughtful questioning and keen observation to uncover the client’s daily routines, habits and preferences. Recognizing their most significant storage challenges and priorities is crucial to providing value to clients. Whether it’s accommodating a growing “bookshelf wealthy” collection of books, optimizing a small living area or designing a multi-functional space for a home office, each solution should be customized and reflect the unique way the client inhabits their space. By prioritizing this understanding, designers can craft spaces that improve client satisfaction and outcomes for daily life.

Innovative Storage Trends

The latest trends in storage are gravitating towards modular units, multifunctional furniture, and ingeniously hidden compartments. These options are not just space savers but also style enhancers, seamlessly blending with the overall design while providing utility. Modular units offer the flexibility to adapt to changing needs and spaces, allowing for customization and reconfiguration. Multifunctional furniture pieces, such as beds with built-in storage, charging stations or even a desk or extendable dining tables, maximize utility in minimal spaces and embody the essence of modern living. Hidden compartments, like secret drawers, pop-up cabinets or even hidden wall storage utilize otherwise overlooked spaces, offering clever storage solutions without compromising the aesthetic appeal of the space.

Space Maximization Techniques

Successfully maximizing available space is a cornerstone in interior design. These same principles should guide achieving clutter-free living environments. Effective strategies include ensuring the utilization of the full potential of the vertical real estate, drawing the eye upward and making use of the full height of a room. Lean into trendy maximalist style with pieces that stretch the vertical real estate and give depth to the space such as tall bookshelves filled with colorful books, tchotchkes and personal treasures. These lofty design decisions transform storage into personalized décor and a captivating visual anchor that can amplify the perceived space, drawing the eye upward and accentuating the room’s verticality. The vertical space can be used in more discreet ways as well, such as an under-the-floor toybox solution where the designer essentially used an elevated floor space to tuck away unsightly toy clutter.

Utilizing under-utilized areas, such as under stairs, over doors, in awkward corners, with bespoke solutions can turn these overlooked spaces into functional storage havens that nest discreetly into everyday living. Custom-built units are tailored to fit the exact dimensions and style of the space. Consider a custom modular storage system that can shift the room on a carefully-designed rail system that utilizes the custom dimensions of the space in a transformative way. By cleverly incorporating these techniques and considerations, designers can craft spaces that are not only efficient and organized but also visually expansive.

Integrating Technology in Storage Solutions

The integration of smart technology in storage solutions marks a significant advancement in optimizing space and promoting decluttered living with interior design. Automated drawers, app-controlled organizational systems and cutting-edge security features are redefining convenience and efficiency in modern homes. These smart innovations not only streamline storage management but also enhance the user experience by ensuring easy access, optimal organization and secure storage.

Embrace the future by integrating innovative storage solutions that marry style with functionality, creating clutter-free and serene living spaces that promote wellness. Challenge yourself to reimagine every inch of space with creativity and smart technology, transforming ordinary areas into extraordinary, highly efficient havens.

SOURCES: Houzz, DécorMatters

The Art of Illumination: 4 Pro Tips to Enhance Your Lighting Game

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Melissa Diehl

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Function First

Consider how the space will be used, and always choose function over aesthetics to ensure your lighting provides sufficient visibility for the tasks at hand. Make an approved plan before buildout begins.

Layer the Look

Take a layered approach with multiple sources of light across different levels to create the perfect ambiance with depth and personality. Use unobtrusive and discreet lighting designs like can lighting as a foundation to layering and consider every square foot as opportunity for illumination from sconces to stair lighting.

Curate Cohesion with Light

Ensuring consistency within all aspects of design is important to creating a cohesion within the space. Different color temperatures, styles or plans can vary but can make the design feel uneasy if overdone.

Know the Vertical Real Estate

Consider things like ceiling height and furniture when hanging fixtures. As a rule of thumb, the bottom of a light should hang about 12-20 in. below a standard ceiling. For each additional foot of ceiling, add 3 inches.

SOURCES: Houzz, Hampshire Light

4 Tips & Tricks for Impactful Lighting

By

Melissa Diehl

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Maximalism with Minimal Space

By

Melissa Diehl

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Maximalism is a trending design aesthetic emphasizing abundance and uniqueness, an answer to the sleek, beige minimalism of pre-Pandemic times before the home became the school and the office and everything in between.

Characterized by bold patterns, eclectic collections, vibrant hues and layered textures, the ideal maximalist space is visually dense and expressive, adding personality and depth that weaves a rich tapestry of cozy, lived-in design.

Traditionally, smaller spaces demand a minimalist approach, but maximalist style does not have to be sacrificed with minimal space. For designers facing the challenge of delivering trendy maximalist aesthetics into a smaller space, getting artfully cluttered in cozy quarters is possible with strategic planning and intentional design.

Strategic Space Planning

More visual interest within a space can make smaller interiors feel larger by giving the eye more to explore. A bright base invites light to brighten the room and adds negative space for the eye to rest. A light color for a base will also provide a clean backdrop for design pieces and curated collections that sing. Use bold colors and wallpaper patterns sparingly in strategic places to weave depth and balance into the design.

Add versatility to design with multifunctional furniture pieces that also save on space. The streamlined and simplistic design of mid-century modern furniture works well to ground a maximalist aesthetic. This masculine style often pairs well with the freedom and playfulness of maximalism while also providing a consistent base note to the harmony of the space. Work clever storage solutions into the design and layer pieces of interest on top to create a beautiful and functional interior.

Think outside the box and consider beautiful sliding interior doors, mirrored walls or open shelving to invite more air and light into the design. Make the most of the space by utilizing all vertical real estate. Imagine a Zen corner on the floor with carefully chosen meditation cushions, books and curios that inspire inner peace or a double sliding bookshelf door that displays a curated collection of “bookshelf wealth”.

Designers should not shy away from mixing bold into the mundane. Consider a pink oven or a stylish pattern on a bathroom door. Inject personality into unexpected and utilitarian places. When design-focused essentials double as décor, space is optimized in a very maximalist way. The freedom of maximalism allows for creative solutions to saving space and maximizing aesthetics.

Intentional Design

In smaller spaces, having a clear focal point and an original inspiration to call back on helps keep cohesion amidst the clutter. Lighting can help lead the eye to the intended focal point and larger furniture items work well as the star of the show even in smaller spaces. From there, every piece should play off the other. Making maximalism work in a small space demands mastery in the art of layering and taking the time to thoughtfully edit and curate the perfect blend of function, intentional design and personality.

There is an art to the mix-and-match of maximalism and mastering it starts with scale. A variety in the scales of prints can help balance the visual clutter of combining eclectic patterns. Play with scale in unexpected ways. Using large-scale patterns or artwork in a bold way can make the space appear bigger, visually drawing the eye upward and outward.

Luster also plays an important role in the visual variety of your curated clutter. Consider adding sheen to pieces that demand attention sooner than those with more matte finishes, to be discovered through deeper exploration into the space. The different textures and finishes available in a maximalist approach are all different paints in a pot to create depth in the design.

Biophilic elements and greenery can fill the corners with life to add lush, organic and lived-in color to the space. Even the flora chosen can reflect personality and aesthetic. The beauty of nature can both inspire and ground the design, making it feel cozy but never cramped.

The Art of More

By embracing the principles of maximalism—layering, texture, color and personal expression—designers can transform small spaces into rich, vibrant sanctuaries that mirror the complexity and fullness of life. This approach not only challenges the conventional wisdom that small equals sparse but also opens a creative realm of possibility where every inch of space is an opportunity for beauty and storytelling.

Smart Spaces: Revolutionizing Interiors with AI

By

Melissa Diehl

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As smart home devices become increasingly prevalent in U.S. households, a trend projected to grow, integrating smart home technologies into the interior design process will be fundamental to maintaining competitiveness and relevancy in an era where once futuristic sci-fi fantasies have now become reality.

Smart tech reaches into every corner of the residential space, providing adaptive lighting, immersive audio, predictive HVAC, vigilant home security, tailored personal assistance and even sustainable waste management. The word “smart,” according to Netlingo, refers to “self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology,” encapsulating the innovative technology that provides cognitive awareness to objects using artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning.

Beyond Beauty: How AI is Transforming Design

Smart devices provide greater personalization through machine learning, predictive AI, voice commands and more, optimizing the interior for a client’s comfort in a very real and useful way. The modern unobtrusive designs of many smart devices allow customized tech to integrate seamlessly into different aesthetics. As demand and the industry grows, so too will the market of options available, but there are so many inspiring and integrative products to explore already.

Technology is transforming the way we think about our living spaces and thus transforms interior design. The endless possibilities of this immersive technology allow designers to create other-worldly spaces that move, inspire and captivate. The smooth, sleek surfaces and discreet design of many smart home devices make the perfect canvas to blend aesthetics, utility and even wellness. Examples include stylish light therapy during cold winter months, adaptive sound and bias lighting effects during a cozy movie night, a planetary experience in a biophilic living space, mood lighting adapted to an AI-curated playlist and so much more. It’s an exciting new world offering endless creativity.

The use of this technology exists to minimize human discomfort, which is the very essence of good design. But it could also usher in new ways to live more sustainably through energy usage monitoring and pattern recognition that tailors energy use to the user through the use of AI and machine learning.

Considerations and Concerns

Despite this application of sustainability for AI, the technology itself does come with a large carbon footprint and its own environmental impact concerns, generating a large energy expenditure aggravating climate change and adding to the growing accumulation of “e-waste” leaching toxic chemicals into our environment. These issues can be mitigated by adopting more energy-efficient AI technologies and implementing rigorous recycling programs for electronic waste. Designers should prioritize smart devices that are designed with sustainability in mind to mitigate this impact.

AI also poses significant data security risk. Implementing robust data protection measures, educating clients on the importance of secure network practices and choosing products with strong encryption and privacy safeguards can help address these security concerns.

Smart Strategies for Designing the Future

To ensure success in the smart sandbox, look to client needs and priorities to guide smart tech decisions. Designers should consider carefully where this tech will make the biggest impact and start from there.

It is worth tapping into the design potential of smart technology. CNET’s list of the best Smart Home devices for 2024 is filled with sleek, beautiful products designed for comfort, ease of use and personalized experiences, making it easy to integrate tech that feels organic. The trend of smart multifunctional furniture also lets design pieces serve multiple functions at once. For example, LG’s ultra-stylish PuriCare Aerofurniture tables, offered in candy colors like lemon and cherry, host a HEPA filter, wireless charger and even ambient lighting options.

Designers can also use the technology as tools for their business, helping them keep current with trends and education, for virtual staging, inspiration and more.

The Future is Now

With considerations for responsible energy use of this technology and vigilant cyber security, there are exciting possibilities at the merger of AI and interior design. Consider how you might incorporate this budding technology into your practice, your designs and your client relations. Technology remains an incredible tool, getting smarter every day, that enables humans to excel in the inherently human aspects of work, life and design.

SOURCES: Statista, CNET, Earth.org, IoT Evolution, NetLingo