Elizabeth just completed a home office project and came back with some cool pics. The client is really excited how it came out and so are we. I don’t have all the photos and they are a little dark, but you’ll get the idea. My guess is the client is going to have a hard time getting his guests to leave once they settle into these chairs! The table is a Chinese drum that makes a great sound when you thump on it!
“People spend more money on upgrades on a car than they do on home office furnishings,” Alan, the owner of DOTI at John’s Creek said when I mentioned home offices. “It seems kind of strange when you compare the time that the average person spends driving a car every day versus the amount of time he or she spends working in their home office.” I laughed out loud when he said that – ain’t that the truth! Those who have dedicated home office spaces often wish the spaces were more comfortable, functional, or stylish. Those without a separate room for their home office often carve a workspace out of another room and then make excuses for the messiness.
“One of the most common mistakes that people make,” Alan said, “is that they buy office furniture based on price without seriously considering utility, comfort, and style. People make do with something less than ideal even when they don’t have to. A good designer can work with a client to find pieces that really work for them.”
According to Alan, a second mistake that people make is purchasing furniture that doesn’t fit the scale of the room. People will buy a desk or a chair and once it’s installed they discover that the piece is either too big or too small for the space, or that it doesn’t marry well with the other pieces in the room. “Mix and match is great, but if the pieces don’t work well together and make it easy for you to do your job, you’re going to feel uncomfortable spending time in the space. That’s when you have people roaming the house with a laptop looking for a better place to perch.”
Not surprisingly, Alan said, a designer would prefer to be consulted before you design your home office, but a good designer would also be happy to design around your existing furnishings.
According to Alan, Hekman http://www.hekman.com/ is a good company to check out for home office furniture with selections in a variety of price ranges. Nathan mentioned Stanley http://www.stanleyfurniture.com/ as another option, especially for youth furnishings.
On Tuesday I’ll share some great ideas about how you can add a little whimsey and fun to your home decor. Until then!
Deborah
A.k.a. Design Sleuth
When a client approaches designer Nathan with a budget of $1000 or less and desires to update his or her kitchen, Nathan usually starts with paint. “I’d probably go with a shade of green,” he says. “It’s a popular color and always looks fresh and matches everything so you wouldn’t have to change your basic furnishings.” For a clean contemporary look he suggested using a green with some yellow, almost a lime green. While moss green would be a better color for a kitchen with more traditional decor. For the ceiling, he’d use antique white, or white with a little color added, and then would paint the trim a shade or so darker. Check out the 2009 yellow-greens here: http://www.sherwin-williams.com/pro/paint_colors/paint_color_trends/2009/yellow-green-family/index.jsp.
Next, Nathan would look at accessories. Those of you that have display space above your kitchen cabinets might want to consider purchasing some new display items. Nathan likes blown glass ornaments in various shapes and sizes and silk florals such as orchids to add pizzazz to a modern interior. For a more traditional look, he’d go with Italian vases, silk magnolias, and lots of ceramics and pottery. Sometimes, he said, just buying a new light fixture or replacing the shade of an existing fixture can make a big difference.
Another simple but more expensive change, would be to replace your under-counter bar stools. Should you decide to go that route, DOTI at John’s Creek has a nice selection. If that is more money than you want to spend, consider re-covering your current stools with a durable, stain-resistant fabric as an easy do-it-yourself project. Adding rugs and floor mats in today’s new colors is another low-cost way to make a room more exciting.
On Thursday, I’ll talk with you about some common mistakes people make with their home offices. After talking with Nathan and Alan, I know I’m guilty. In today’s world, even those who don’t work at home need a place to set up at least one computer! Talk with you then.
Deborah
A.k.a. Design Sleuth
With spring right around the corner—in Georgia the spring daffodils are blooming!—it seemed like a wonderful time to talk with the designers at DOTI John’s Creek about easy ways to update or freshen your home interior for $1000 or less.
Alan, the owner, said that de-cluttering is a simple way to freshen a space. “In many homes we find that most of the rooms contain way too much stuff.” Once a room has been de-cluttered, re-arranging the existing furniture often results in a whole new look. He also suggested adding greenery. “High quality greenery used effectively makes a big difference. Many people put greenery and florals in the wrong places, or consider price before design. When you look at professionally decorated rooms in homes or magazines, more often than not they contain more greenery than what is used by the average homeowner.” Because of their collective purchasing power, DOTI at John’s Creek is able to offer a variety of high quality greenery and florals at competitive prices. When I was there, they had some beautiful silk orchids as well as some big dramatic floral arrangements that would make a grand statement in large rooms.
“Replacing pillows is another easy way to update or change the look of a room,” Alan said. He suggested using “fun” pillows with polka dots, stripes, or with a bold color or pattern to punch up the “wow” factor in living spaces. Pillows with textured fabrics, such as furred animal prints or smooth satins and silks, can also be used to update a room.
DOTI at Johns Creek has “fun” pillows displayed throughout their store. Be careful though, because the pillows look great with their sofas, you might be tempted to take the sofa too and exceed your $1000-or-less budget!
Next week, designer Nathan shares his ideas for updating your kitchen for $1000 or less. I’ll talk with you then.
Deborah
A.k.a. Design Sleuth
They say that to be a good teacher you have to be one step ahead of the student. A few weeks ago Suzanne came into my office with a recent copy of House Beautiful opened to the ‘what’s hot’ page. It featured a gold canopy bed by Annie Selke, presented by Vanguard Furniture. I knew Vanguard was working with Annie, but had no idea that any products had been released as we had not been sent any updates. I went to the dealer portal on their website and looked it up to get some details, noticing that the beds wouldn’t be available until mid February. I also placed a call to my rep to tease her for not keeping me in the loop! Not ten minutes later we get a phone call from someone who saw the magazine and found out we worked with Vanguard. Of course, we knew all about it (for at least five minutes) and were able to design a terrific room around the bed and get her name on the first shipment! The same bed was also featured in Traditional Home. This photo is the silver version.
Annie Selkie is a name designer out of New England. Her Vanguard product line features bright and bold fabrics, gilded metal work, and the repeating use of circles. Note the elegant side chairs with a back support carved to represent a fabric swag.
Forget dinner out, diamond jewelry, and boxes of chocolate for your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day; instead do something special with your master bedroom that will spice up your love life all year round—this was the design challenge I posed to the DOTI at Johns Creek designers this week.
Designer Nathan said the key to making the master bedroom more romantic was to think in terms of stimulating all of your senses. Something as simple as keeping a vase of fresh flowers in the bedroom, lighting scented candles, and purchasing new lamps or adding a dimmer option to your current fixtures would all help to create a more romantic mood. Costing a little more money, he suggested buying exotic fur throws for the foot of the bed or for strategic placement on the floor. He’ll be checking out a wonderful line of exotic furs at a design show later this week to see whether it is something DOTI at Johns Creek may want to start carrying. For those who prefer faux, there are some beautiful high-quality faux furs that are also fabulous for romantic cuddling.
For romantics who really want to step up the sensory excitement of their boudoir, designer Elizabeth suggests custom bedding made of silks, satins, and velvet. This luxurious bedding would be a true sensory treat and appropriate for year-round use. Prices start at $1,500 and go up from there.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Talk with you Thursday,
Deborah
A.k.a. Design Sleuth
Often it’s fun to ask the design pros to name one of their favorite pieces 
currently available on the store floor. As my luck would have it on this particular day, most of the DOTI at John’s Creek designers were either out on job assignments or helping customers when I posed this question, but both Nathan, DOTI’s new designer, and Alan, the owner, were ready to participate.
One of Nathan’s favorite pieces in the store right now is a Hekman plasma lift console. “I really love this piece of furniture,” he laughed. “It’s great for those design situations with married couples where the husband wants a television in the living room or dining room or the wife wants a television in the eat-in-area and the other one doesn’t. No one even needs to know there is a television there.”
I liked the fact that the Hekman plasma lift comes in several different styles and finishes (DOTI at John’s Creek has traditional model 6-8671 in distressed ebony in the store). And the dimensions (55-56 inches wide by 44 inches high and 22 inches deep) allow the console to hide a good-sized television with sufficient space on the top to permanently keep some decorative items: vases, candles, photographs, etc., so it doesn’t look naked when the television isn’t out. The console is part of a modular system, so it can be used alone, or you can purchase storage piers and other components to match. To see the Hekman line of plasma lift consoles go to http://www.hekman.com/.
With Valentine’s Day coming up the weekend after next, I decided to check with the DOTI at John’s Creek designers to find out whether they had simple suggestions on making the master bedroom more romantic during this very romantic time of the year. I’ll share Nathan’s and Elizabeth’s ideas with you next Tuesday.
Talk with you then,
Deborah
A.k.a. Design Sleuth
Design Sleuth
Deborah Pelham
guest blogger
How it all began …
Over the past couple of months, Alan Wyatt the owner of Designs of the Interior (DOTI) in Johns Creek, Georgia, and I had talked about adding a guest blogger to his interior design blog. We both thought it would be a great idea and a lot of fun – and so the idea of the Design Sleuth blog was born. I’m not an interior designer – in fact e-commerce, marketing, writing, and public relations are really my areas of familiarity – but perhaps like many of you, I have spent countless hours and days sleuthing around on the web gathering information on beautiful furniture and home furnishings, dreaming of room makeovers that “wow”, checking out remodeling and home forum tips for do-it-yourselfers, and uncovering all of the other good stuff that would make my home – and your home – that special place you really enjoy coming “home” to.
02-03-09
Right now is a great time to start the Design Sleuth blog because Alan has just added a new interior designer to his staff. His name is Nathan Williams and he’s been an interior designer for over 20 years. Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with Nathan about some of the design issues me, my friends, and the other average ‘non-designer man and woman on-the street’ are grappling with right now, and I look forward to sharing his answers and design solutions with you over the next many weeks.
We talked about things like furniture for “downsizers” and those living in smaller homes who love to entertain, how to update your “look” using some of this year’s new interior colors, home office spaces that really work, and great ways to add excitement to your rooms for $1000 or less, along with an assortment of other great topics. Later, I also plan to write an e-zine article about rugs, since Nathan is a rug expert and so many people are using rugs now for beauty as well as function. Nathan mentioned that one of the things he enjoys most about working as an interior designer is really getting to know the people he works with and helping them make their design dreams come true. That sounds good to me. 
On that note, we’ll end today’s Design Sleuth blog. On Thursday, I’ll share with you one of Nathan’s favorite pieces of furniture sitting on the store floor right now. It’s one of those wonderful dual-function problem-solvers everybody wants. Talk with you then.
Deborah
A.k.a. Design Sleuth
With the changing of the guard in Washington comes the changing of the furniture. We all may remember the scandal created when the Clintons left the White House a little less full than it was when Bill took office. I heard a pretty funny story about that the other day from someone who had to endure the not so gentle probing of the Washington Post, but not wanting to be one to spread rumors I won’t repeat it…unless you twist my arm.
My friends at Vanguard Furniture have the honor of making a special tufted settee for the Obama girls. 
Rank hath its privileges which is why the President got his settee made in about a week while the rest of us have to wait the normal eight to ten. Michelle Obama has shown a strong sense of style in her choice of furnishings as well as some financial restraint as compared to her aforementioned predecessor. Check out the photos I got from my inside source! 
The holidays are over and a new year is upon us. Time to paint the walls, right?
Some people are surprisingly afraid to make a paint color decision and struggle with the weight of it all as if failure to choose wisely would lead to negative eternal consequences. St. Peter at the pearly gates: “Well, I was going to let you in until you put Calico Cat on your ceiling…”
If you are planning to sell your house, slap a neutral on the walls and call it good. Staying put? You can pick up a copy of the latest home magazine brimming with advice on the hot new colors and bring it to your local paint store. Or, heaven forbid, you can have a nice conversation with your spouse about paint preferences and see who wins.
My wife, Judy, usually has a color direction in mind when she’s ready to paint a room, but makes the final decision by having a half dozen quarts of varying shades mixed with which she splashes the walls, creating large splotches like she’s covering graffiti, and lives with it until one of them speaks to her. (Another way to do this would be to buy large pieces of white board and paint them with your alternatives rather than defacing your walls, but that’s one of those battles not worth waging and I don’t want to mess with tradition.) But if you want your home to be warm, or bright, or make a statement, and can’t make a decision, call your designer.
There’s usually a reason somebody is really good at what they do and sometimes it goes beyond passion or desire. Ted Williams, arguably baseballs greatest hitter ever, said that he could see the pitch so clearly he could tell you if he hit the ball on, over, or under the seam. Pretty amazing when you consider the ball is traveling nearly 100 mph and is spinning. Talented designers have a similar ability with color. I’ve heard that they have highly active or sensitive cones in their eyes, allowing them to see color at a much higher level than us mortals which explains why I’ve seen designers return to our studio from a client’s house and pull their colors out of a paint palette with perfect accuracy. Do you have any idea how hard that is?
So, why all the stress? Certainly nobody wants to go to all the effort of painting a room only to be unhappy with the results. It’s not always obvious to predict what will happen when an entire room is painted based off the color selected from a little sample chip. I think that’s why some people are more comfortable borrowing colors they see on the walls of a friend’s house. But that strategy isn’t always foolproof and the reasoning lies tangled in the web of color theory.
Without getting all professorial, the same color can change appearance depending on its environment. Did you ever do that experiment in art class where you took two swatches of the same color and surrounded them by two other colors, or black and white? The very same color could be made to look remarkably different when given a new background. They call this spontaneous contrast, I think. So maybe your neighbor’s walls looked really cool painted in a crispy Pinot Noir, but that may have had something to do with the color of their furniture and carpet, the amount of natural light, the interior lighting, the shade of tinting on the windows, the window coverings, the wall color of an adjoining room, blah blah blah. More stress.
Speaking of lighting, did you know that there are many choices of fluorescent lighting all using various combinations from the color spectrum? We have some in our studio that seem blue and they match the color of natural light. They use a different color at a butcher shop, probably with more red, to enhance the color of meat. Seriously!
Oh, and the color of natural light in Georgia can be different than, say, Colorado. In the summer the skies are white here and crystal blue there.
Back to your walls. I haven’t helped much yet, have I? If you are going to paint a room and not change anything else, your job should be easy if you are wide open to color selection because the right choices should reveal themselves when you look at the tonality of your carpet, furnishings, window treatments, etc. A designer or an expert at your local paint store should easily be able to help. The key is not to fall in love with a specific color and force it into your home, but rather to choose a general color and allow the room to determine its perfect shade and tone.
If you are redoing a room, please fight the urge to start with the paint. Paint should be THE LAST decision you make. Moving into a new home and need to have fresh new walls to erase evidence of the previous owners? I don’t care. Arrange your furniture and then choose your paint. If you have money to burn, go ahead and paint the house neutral, arrange your furniture and paint again.
Many designers start a new room by choosing an area rug. Can you believe that? Then they choose the upholstery fabric, then the window treatment fabric, then the paint. Why? It’s easier to move in the ascending order of choices available. What? There is a finite selection of rugs, much narrower than upholstery grade fabric, so it would stand to reason that you would have better success finding a sofa fabric to match a rug than the other way around. There are even more fabric options available for window treatments which make it easier to marry them to the new sofa. Paint color options are infinite, which is why you should make that choice last.
As my dad would say, “thus endeth the lesson”.