May 2018 – designed-visions

5 Simple Ways to Summer-ize Your Home

Posted on May 31, 2018

School’s out, the sun is shining, and you will find berries in the farmer’s market. You might have your sunscreen-slathered and bikini-clad self prepared for the sun, but is your home ready for warmer weather? Believe it or not, it requires over pulling the blinds up to welcome summer to your home. However, it doesn’t need to be a large hassle. Whether you’ve got a huge home with a large outdoor space, or a small apartment with a fire escape, you can still help your home get the most out of the sunshine. Here are five easy places to start:

Lisa Borgnes Giramonti

1. Embrace your outdoor living area. If you are fortunate enough to have an amazing outdoor area — garden, patio, balcony, what have you — it is time to get started using it. This balcony is a great example of the way you truly don’t require much outdoor space to make the most of summer’s fresh air and sun. A patio chair accented with a colorful outdoor rug and weatherproof pillow transforms a straightforward space into an inviting escape. A window on the railing brings a little more green to the distance, while sheer curtains offer the option of solitude.

KuDa Photography

Dining alfresco is almost always a fantastic chance to savor the stunning summer weather. Invest in a couple of pieces of very good patio furniture to your dining room, and then accessorize with less expensive and more stylish pieces. Make sure you follow your own style: You need your home and your outdoor area to meld.

My Romantic Home

In case you’ve got a smaller dining room in your mind, a small table paired with a loveseat is a great casual dining option. I really like this set up is nestled among the garden and accessorized with bird cages, bird houses, and other outdoor knickknacks. These accessories add a personal signature and may be changed out from year to year.

Westover Landscape Design, Inc..

It is nice to include a water feature. In case you’ve got a huge patio, a stately cement multi-tiered fountain could be a fantastic fit. In case you’ve got a bigger area, a simple, small, and easy-to-install bubble fountain is a fantastic option.

Exteriorscapes llc

2. Bring in some vegetation. Even if you don’t have the distance, time, or energy to really have a summer garden, there are still lots of easy and beautiful techniques to incorporate plants to your home. A container garden is the ideal means to benefit from the gorgeous flowers and herbs that flourish in the summertime. Choose a huge pot similar to this to get a landscaped impact using multiple plants, or create a grouping of baskets.

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For the greatest indoor and outdoor flexibility, try out this DIY portable planter. It is easy, chic, and may be wheeled to a living room to get a dab of green, or outside onto a balcony for watering!

Huettl Landscape Architecture

Summer is also the period of hot, ripe fruits and vegetables. In case you’ve got the space, add a potted lemon tree or 2 to a balcony. You can also conduct container gardens or window boxes with either blossoms or a couple of berry crops, or elevated beds of vegetables. (We all know how great homegrown tomatoes are in summer.)

If you are short on floor area, a couple of hanging plants may add a brilliant pop of green to a space. Just be certain they’re at a location where they can drain without creating a mess and may still get plenty of sunshine. (By the way, how perfect is this summery breakfast area? It looks like the ideal place to start your day.)

If you are not prepared to commit to indoor or outdoor vegetation quite yet, putting a couple of leafy greens or bright flowers in a vase may have the same temporary impact.

Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture

3. Insert color. Summer decor may be bright, cheerful and daring, so use cheeky colours and patterns you can not always eliminate through other seasons. This deck is simple in style, but by painting it a brilliant blue and accenting with lime-green chairs, it quickly develops a vivid and unforgettable style.

Tara Seawright Interior Design

Pillows, cushions, and colorful accessories are fun and easy ways to brighten up an otherwise straightforward setup. Don’t be afraid to mix and match patterns, contrasting colours and designs when it comes to textiles. Fabric could be a relatively inexpensive endeavor, so have fun with it and play !

CapeRace Cultural Adventures

Try to integrate color in unexpected areas in your home for that extra pop of summer cheer. Kitchens can often become pristine, all-white spaces. Mix it up a bit with a few colorful dishes, dish cloths or aprons.

Alicia Friedmann Interior Design

4. Bring the outdoors in. No, I’m not talking about vegetation again. Permit your decor to reflect the beauty of summer, and operate natural materials to your home. These rattan chairs not only display the natural beauty of the woven palm, but they’re also extremely clean pieces that will feel just at home outside.

Bringing outdoor furniture indoors is a great way to blur the line between the two spaces. If you don’t believe your outdoor furniture will work indoors, try using slipcovers or fresh cushions to allow it to blend with your interior.

Philpotts Interiors

The use of timber grain accented by tropical-like accessories along with a bamboo plant create this vignette a perfect fit in its own Hawaiian home.

Lauren Liess Interiors

Bring terracotta baskets inside. These work well to maintain indoor plants to get a headboard that is casual, but you could also use terracotta baskets to hold utensils, fruit, writing implements, or whatever else that must be kept.

Liz Williams Interiors

Employing a seagrass or sisal rug gives a space a small beachy vibe, and can also be practical for the whole year. These natural woven floorcoverings are really durable, help create healthy indoor humidity levels, and block the build-up of static. If you don’t need to recover your floors anytime soon, try out the material out with a small rug.

Rough Linen

This bed just screams beach home. The clean and fresh linen bedding, driftwood headboard, seashell accents all include some of summer’s finest materials to a chic coastal look.

Cristi Holcombe Interiors, LLC

5. Use mild and breezy textiles. Integrate airy and light fabrics into your home’s design to provide every room a bright feel, and to cool down it on particularly hot days.

Tablecloths, rugs, placemats, pillow cushions, and couch covers can be temporarily replaced in centuries. If your home is filled with plush velvets and a great deal of dark colours, it could be a good idea to give it a more summery feel with a few quick changes. The linen couch cover in this room is a great neutral choice that’s refreshing and cool in warm weather. I really like the blue and yellow accents too — the cool and warm tones work wonderfully with the beige couch and rug.

CapeRace Cultural Adventures

Gingham is a perky routine that instantly brings afternoon picnics in the park and paper tablecloths at weekend barbecues to mind. Chosen within an unexpected shade (rather than the more traditional white and red ), it turns into a perfect way to bring summer to your home. This light yellow would likewise be cute used for cushion covers.

Product Bureau LLC

Replace heavy winter curtains with sheer or thin curtains to let more light in. Use the very same ideas when coming summer bed linens (particularly for guests), throws, cushions and floor cushions. When it is 100 degrees out, lounging to a fleece cushion probably will not seem like a good idea.

More:
8 Parts of a Perfect Outdoor Dining Room
Summer Nights Need Summer Beds
Cool Away This Summer On a Screened-In Porch

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Pint-Sized Design: Olivia’s Pinkalicious Kids’ Room

Posted on May 21, 2018

Two words sum up every square inch of 5-year-old Olivia’s 9′ x11′ bedroom: thrifty and pink. Both interior layout and resourcefulness are a part of the joyful little sprite’s DNA; daddy Jon is a professional and also mommy Stacey is a researcher. When Olivia began her I-want-everything-pink-and-tea-parties stage, Stacey resorted to her voted-off-the-island school furniture, spray painting skills and retail upgrading tricks to bring it all to life.

While decorating a little girl’s room pink and white ai not as radical as the creation of Facebook or cloning Dolly the sheep, to us layout fans, executing a tasteful kid’s area for under $250 is definitely newsworthy. From putting a new spin on old pieces to turning washcloths into prized little birdies, here is a walk through the pinkalicious world that is Olivia Davis’s bedroom. CAUTION: The home made Hi Kitty cookies may result in cute overload. Do not say I didn’t warn you.

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This is Olivia. Very detail-oriented, busy and coordinated, she found the time to snap her butterfly wings and do this Houzz shoot even though she had pre-existing plans eating real cookies and sipping pretend tea along with her purple teddy bear.

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You know all that crafty-crafty busy work children do all day at kindergarten that ends up on the fridge? Well, in Olivia’s case, these labors of love turned into a pertinent portion of her room’s decor. In fact, they totally dress up the mass-produced must-have kiddie fridge Olivia just can not live without (and I am sure Stacey prefers stay hidden somewhere in the basement).

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By choosing a pale pink background, it enables a lot of Olivia’s one-of-a-kind possessions to stand out. I’ll tell you one thing that doesn’t want to stand out: The plastic jar that makes up the human body and construction of Olivia’s green paper octopus. Our pint-sized enthusiast of decorating seems to find the rule that some things are best hidden by textiles.

Paint color: Sherwin-Williams SW 6589 Alyssum

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To keep the budget in check, Stacey handed her school bedroom set down to Olivia, then splurged on bedding. To keep the bedding out of completely stealing the thunder from the rest of the room’s elements, she opted to get a strong white duvet with polka dot and scalloped embroidery. If Olivia grows out of the current accent shade, purple, the bedding can just as well be accented by blues, greens or yellows.

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In its first state, Stacey’s wicker school furniture sported an overall beige look. What’s wrong with beige furniture at a kid’s room? Nothing … if you want them to get a complete lack of creativity, then put off embarking on a career in interior design until age 30. Bitter? Perhaps. Bitter since I might or might not have had a beige bedroom ? Maybe.

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Only a couple coats of spray paint afterwards, Stacey gave her previously campus-based furniture a brighter, more up-to-date look.

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As this fancy supply of lighting shows, a 2.5-inch band of brownish cotton duck, coordinating welt cord and a glue gun can quickly dress up an all-white table lamp.

Do not have a glue gun or accessibility to a fabric shop? For a similar look, consider taping off an area of your colour with painters’ tape, then adding a contrasting shade with cloth or acrylic paint.

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To incorporate a few uber-girly pattern, Stacey snuck it in thickly with bed sheets. The fashion theme has Olivia embracing her dress-up side as she snuggles with her beloved teddy.

Guess what books I was reading at age 5? Ones about shark attacks. Not the cutest subject matter but what can I say? I am from Florida and grew up on boats.

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For a little more of a high-fashion signature, Stacey suspended a triptych of prints like a debonaire poodle right slap over Olivia’s bed. Their brown frames are neutral enough for any other prints to be switched out once Olivia’s flavor turns from fashion to unicorns within the next few months.

And when I say unicorns, I mean Taylor Swift. She knows the lyrics to every hit song already. When I say, I mean me, obviously. C’mon, how can someone not like Taylor Swift?

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For a few ambience, Stacey swapped the room’s existing ceiling fan for a metallic and crystal chandelier. So far as putting up one yourself is concerned, it’s a fairly easy task if you’re not shifting the intersection box. When moving a mailbox, I strongly suggest paying a professional to do it for you. The $150 or so it will put you back is worth not getting shocked and being able to play your kid outside rather than standing on a ladder for seven hours on a Saturday. Unless standing on a ladder all day on a weekend and failing your children is something you like and in that case, SNAP OUT OF IT.

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Instead of ditching an old Target lamp Stacey bought years ago, she gave it a mini facelift by ditching the original adult-ish lampshade to get a polka-dot cent saver from Pottery Barn Kids.

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No more wire hangers! Well, okay, maybe just two. By embellishing two cable hangers with yarn and paper, otherwise dull and basic everyday objects become something lively and fun. Perhaps if Christina and Christopher would have shown this to mother Joan Crawford, she’d have let them keep a pair of those otherwise prohibited objects in their chambers. But that entire scene would have been cut out of the movie Mommy Dearest. Nevermind.

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To dress up some basic IKEA kid chairs, Stacey additional felt cushions in the form of a rosebud. To recreate this look in your kidspace, just invest in a tone on tone combination of craft felt, fabric adhesive, ribbon and scissors.

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Considering that the covers of children’ books are graphic, colorful and entertaining, Stacey chosen to keep Olivia’s favorites display by means of a dowel and beadboard book rack mounted onto the wall. My rule of thumb for keeping books looking like decor rather than clutter is to try and change the shapes and sizes, then stick with thick typefonts easy to read from throughout the room. In case Olivia were my child, some of those books would be replaced with Domino: The Book of Decorating and Elle DECOR, Style and Substance. Just sayin’.

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If ceramic teapots are too delicate for your small ones, you create them out of foam. That’s all I must say about this image.

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As Stacey’s resourcefulness proves, pretty much anything can develop into a adorable accessory even if the subject at hand is really a washcloth. By twisting, then bunching white washcloths into the form of birds and sticking eyeball stickers on these, humdrum bathroom essentials become one-of-a-kind.

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Whether it’s a paper octopus or baked products, handmade things are plentiful in the Davis household. As a reward for being such a leading child, Stacey frequently serves up milk and biscuits to Olivia and her pals during play time. What’s that you say? You want to find the cuteness that is a personalized buttermilk and sugar shaped as Hello Kitty herself? Well then, continue.

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Alas, check out the insanely adorable Hello Kitty creations that are Stacey’s very own. I may or may not have had one (or seven) and be able to state they’re so yummy as they are adorable. And if I did eat a few of these delicious cuties, it could explain why, much as I finish typing this article, I’m still on a significant sugar high.

More: Browse more manuals to good kids’ spaces

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Fab Fixtures: The Faucet

Posted on May 18, 2018

A wall-mounted faucet might not be the first feature you consider when redesigning your bathroom or kitchen sink region. But in some situations there isn’t any other choice, and others it is a stunning design choice.

Have a peek at how slick and dramatic these taps can be. You might end up using one for added wow factor in your next home project.

Wall mounted faucets operate well in minimalist kitchens where the less decoration to divert from the simplified materials and shapes, the better. Shallow counter depths that don’t leave clearance for the holes of a centermount faucet dictate the use of a wall mounted fixture. When those situations arise, make it seem intentional and contemporary.

Hann Builders

Wall mounted faucets also work well in more traditional kitchens. It may be the perfect solution for an antique sink that you do not want to mar with fresh hole drillings for a centerset faucet.

Amoroso Design

Potfiller faucets, common in restaurants, are getting more common fixtures near stoves in gourmet kitchens. The articulated arms reduce back strain by being able to fill big pots with water.

An out-of-the-box layout idea: Consider utilizing a potfiller fixture as the principal faucet for a massive bath or kitchen sink.

Bunker Workshop

Shallower counter depths where there is not enough clearance behind the sink for the centerset faucet holes expect a wall mounted faucet. It may be installed at any height you like.

A good idea is to highlight the faucet wall with chalkboard paint for family notes, recipes and grocery lists.

John Maniscalco Architecture

Vessel sinks (versus drop-in or undermount sinks) provide another fantastic program for wall-mounted faucets.

CLAUDIA LUJAN

I just had to talk about this case. I stopped in my tracks when I saw the combination of cool shimmery metallic wall finishes combined with the natural pebble-like form of the vessel sink, all on top of a wood floating vanity. Trés chic and modern. Nothing apart from a wall-mounted faucet could do for this original modern combination.

4R Builders, LLC.

I like the dramatic impact of installing the faucet in the mirror, making an arc in the reflection when the water is running.

When installing the wall-mounted faucet, make sure that the spout will get to the center of the sink basin. Certainly, there’ll be no misses or spillage in this carefully planned installation.

Richard Bubnowski Design LLC

Bringing the tap off the counter top surface and onto the wall permits you to create a fresh and clutter-free area. This faucet choice helped to create spa-like calmness of the bright and sharp bathroom.

Garret Cord Werner Architects & Interior Designers

Clutter is even more of a challenge in dual-sink vanities. Once again, that the wall-mount faucet saves the day by clearing counter property.

Webber + Studio, Architects

No counter? No issue. You can make the tiny powder room feel larger with a base vessel sink and a wall mounted faucet in a mirror wall. Talk about dramatic effect. Mix in vivid crimson walls and polished brass finishes and we have moved into show-stopper land. And I adore that nautical flavored porthole window opening.

More: Read more bathroom design photos

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