Weekend reading, "North America through the eyes of a European"

Episode 15: Our Visa Dilemma

We'd been busy, and time had flown faster than usual since design at distance started to take shape back in the early days of 2010. And we had one date that was probably one of the most important looming up like an express train...

Day 2 of “We love...”

 
Making an entrance!

Today we look at how to make a great entrance from a large space.

There's a tendency to think that the bigger the space, the easier to decorate, but making large areas feel

part of a decorative scheme is an art in itself.

The trick when turning an open hall into a functional entrance area, is to use furniture that is sized in relation to the space.

I love to use old “armoires” (french wardrobes) to hang up coats and bags, either in their original wood finishes, or painted, if the colour scheme calls for it. Choose a contrasting colour and paint out the interior to give a wonderful colour shock when you open the doors!

In the series, “We love...”

Making an entrance!

The entrance hall is one of my favourite “impact” rooms to design. It's the first “inside impression” your visitors have of your home, and should be used to “set the scene” for what's to come: the rest of your home!

There are two ways to treat your entrance space: by making it stand out as a statement in it's own right, or by letting it flow in the same decorative style of the neighbouring room. Both work, it just depends how you like to welcome your guests: with trumpets, or violins, with hard rock, or soft soul...

Lets look at compact spaces today: how do we make them functional, and still look great, when you're short on space?

Depending on the home, sometimes we can "steal" some floor space from a neighbouring room,  freeing the actual entrance area. But if we are forced to work with the space we have, we have make sure it's functional...

Weekend reading, “North America though the eyes of a European”

Episode 14: Our first setback

Things were progressing well. Our hand-picked team of designers had started their initial training and were being introduced to our procedures and chosen tools. These were going to form the base of the disciplines that would allow us to set our quality controls, and standards. These were the standards which would define us in the future...