Decorating Guides

Matching Corian to Oak Cabinets

Offered in a variety of shades and patterns — 110 in the time of publication — which will complement and improve oak cabinetry, Corian can be utilized for your counters, sink and sink alike, creating a seamless appearance. The insulation is resistant to most stains and can be mended in your house if the need ever arise. Layout and contour are limited only by your creativity as Corian can be easily molded and formed to any shape. *For consistency, all cabinetry discussed is solid red oak with a natural finish to highlight the grain *.

Light and Beachy

If your thoughts are tending toward a mild neutral that is going to keep the kitchen feeling warm, try either **Clam Shell or Burled Beach**. Clam Shell is the lighter, more neutral of both with only a subtle pattern and small color variation; whereas, Burled Beach introduces both yellow-brown and gray-brown tones and veining to its layout. Both have adequate gray they’ll highlight stainless steel appliances without allowing them to dominate the space. Consider a light maple floor to enable the cabinetry and counters to shine.

Dark and Earthy

**Deep Caviar** is a warm, dark chocolate brown with no notable pattern which will pull the darker oak grain and diminish the influence of the oak’s natural yellow undertone. Add in an earthy element by installing a backsplash in **Basil**, which features [“dramatic waves of green and nutmeg fennel peppered with gold metallic sparkles”](http://www.dupont.com/products-and-services/construction-materials/surface-design-materials/brands/corian-solid-surfaces/products/corian-all-colors/sub-products/basil.html). The material’s natural movement sends the eye around the room while picking up on stainless steel and nickel accents. Paint the walls a muddy green and the lines of either olive or sage.

Icy Cool

Hazelnut is a cool white with motions of gray and brownish coriander. But depending on the lighting and other materials utilized, **Hazelnut** occasionally appears to also consist of green tones. The grays and browns improve the darker tones of this cabinetry while the white and dark gray hues create maximum flexibility for either white, black or stainless steel appliances. For the ground, install big dark gray-brown tiles compared to glossy white glass subway tile and accent glass mosaic band with chrome or charcoal accents. Layer in white ceramics and glass via lighting and accessories.

A Different Dimension

From afar, **Elderberry** looks like the ocean, featuring multiple shades of dark blue. Upon closer inspection, you can also see white highlights and speckles of black and gold. It’s both dark and dramatic. To lighten it up but keep the flow moving between counter and backsplash, consider **Venaro White**, a white-on-white pattern having a gentle marbleized appearance. Conversely, choose a gray and white flat strip mosaic. Both backsplash options will maintain the feeling of movement, and the kitchen will feel cool but refined.

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DIY Storage Shelves for a Room Divider

Well-positioned shelving can double as a space divider, enhancing design flaws and increasing storage requirements. Explore DIY notions using poles, windows, ladders or novels as the starting point for half-wall or full-height layouts. Safety is optimal; build a tall divider only if you’re able to properly secure it to joists or even a neighboring wall to keep it from toppling.

Boxed in

Wood crates, particularly vintage crates, such as old apple poles, come with glowing charisma and hardy storage possibilities. Stack same-size boxes on their sides, lengthwise, offsetting them brick-style for equilibrium and a stepped or zigzag effect. Face another one backward for two-sided use. For security, only stack them to half-wall height. A half-wall divider is ideal for entryway separation, shoe storage and light flow in an open-concept dwelling. If you intend to generate a tall divider, fasten the crates with wood screws, and affix the unit to your wall fireplace using brackets. For a modern effect, build the divider from white or bright-colored plastic crates.

Rung Out

When an older stepladder can no longer be trusted because of its intended use, upcycle it like a room-divider shelf. Lay weathered planks across each teeming and its opposite back rail as glowing shelving; seal the entire unit for bug-free storage. Keep any heavy items on the bottom; an attached pail shelf at the top is a bonus and handy for lightweight storage. Line up two or three ladders to fill in a wide span. Bushy hanging plants fill V-shaped voids in between, if you position the ladders feet, as opposed to side by side. An alternative is to make a vertical row of three or three standard or single ladders a foot or so apart as multilevel pot-hanger-style shelving, again securing the top ladder to joists using chains.

Stacked Up

Bookshelves are common room pillars, but shelves made of books — perhaps not so much. It’s simple: Utilize wide, matching height — 1-foot or-so — hardcover or magazine stacks to hold the end of each shelving panel. The panels must carefully match the books’ width, and the unit must not stand overly high –, half-wall height or so — to get security. This job provides a way to set a vintage, dust-collecting novel or magazine collection to use, while showcasing it at an unusually creative manner. Form the notion of more stature on a short divider by organizing tall, lightweight silk plants or vases of divisions or dried ornamental grasses on the top shelf.

Ceiling, Down

Turn a few antique wood-framed windows to your light-filtering space divider. Etched glass or frosted movie offer solitude. String the windows with floor joists to ceiling joists, using eyehooks and chain; find solid joists using a fireplace. Cut a narrow plywood shelf to position lengthwise between the chains, perpendicularly below each window, securing it using wood glue and screws. Paint the window-ledge-like shelves to complement the window frames, and use them to get lightweight storage. A hanging window divider is a focus on its own, but one created from framed stained-glass amplifies the artful effect.

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Decorating Guides

How to Glaze Using a Gel Stain

When you cemented a stained finish, it offers a way to deepen the colour, alter it or include antiquing consequences. You can use glazing chemical and include your seeds or you can do what many woodworkers use and do use gel stain instead. As a penetrating pigment stain like liquid stain, gel stain’s thick consistency makes it an excellent double for a glazing compound. The secret to beautiful glazing is appropriate preparation of the wood.

Gel Stain Enhancements

Gel stains don’t penetrate unfinished wood as deeply as liquid stains, which makes them more suitable for staining wood with knots and other grain irregularities. When you apply a gel stain to unfinished hardwood, you wipe it on with a cloth or sponge, make it time to sink, wipe the gel off with another cloth, leaving only a layer of coloured wood. The process is the same once you use gel stain as a glaze, however, the distinction is that the wood already includes a finish, and it may already be stained.

Glaze Planning

Before you apply a gel stain, it’s important to seal the wood with a finish; staining the wood seals it into your level, but it also ought to have a picture finish. A coat of lacquer sanding sealer or shellac is perfect, but you might also glaze over a coat of water-based acrylic or polyurethane. To prepare the wood for glazing, apply the stain, then allow it to dry for one to two hours, then apply one coat of finish. Sand the end with 220-grit sandpaper once it dries. This provides the smooth substrate that you require for glazing.

The Stain Color

If you want your glaze to provide color overtones and shading, you must use one that’s either the same colour as the wood stain or one that’s darker. You can also alter the hue of the base color by utilizing an appropriate gel stain. As an instance, utilizing a Cabinet gel stain to glaze over a pine cabinet stained with a golden oak stain gives the cabinet a reddish tinge, and that will make it even more at home in a room with a sunset motif featuring terra-cotta colours and indirect light. Another strategy is to add frosting by glazing with a white or light gray gel stain.

Stain Application and Protection

Because the wood already includes a finish, you don’t have to take care when applying a gel-stain glaze. Wipe the gel over the surface you’re glazing at a circular movement, and if you’re aiming for shading effects, perform it into corners and crevices around trim along with other capabilities. The sum you wipe off with another cloth controls the shading as well as the tone of this finial finish. Always wipe with the wood grain and avoid leaving streaks. Give the stain eight hours or more to dry before protecting it with a coat of the finish of your choice.

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What Color Walls Move With Teal & Brown?

The wall color in a space with teal and brown pendant can turn this land-and-sea duo to a scheme that is vividly pronounced or gently reserved — it is up to you. Choose the walls’ color by matching your style preferences to the room’s function, whether it is a space for sleeping, socializing, sauteing or imprisoned.

A Bright Kitchen

A kitchen in snappy colors kick-starts your culinary adventures and revs your own appetite. Use a high-contrast wall color as the catalyst for this kind of daring design. On the color wheel, across from cool blue-green sit warm pink, red and coral hues. Select from these warm shades to fit your preference, but keep your choice in accord with this teal’s balance degree — vivid pink with bright teal, like. For balance, the wall color should not overshadow or look washed-out by blue-green dishware, tea towels and canisters. Espresso, walnut or mid-brown pine cabinets or furniture help to stabilize or anchor the room’s sass.

Coolness in the Bedroom

It’s no secret that cool colors relax the senses, making them suitable in the bedroom. Cocoon the room with light blue or light green walls for a small contrast behind pale teal components, using textured fabric or paint wallpaper. Varied textures keep a cool-colored space from appearing flat or stark. A pale-brown rug warms your toes and enhances walls, teal-on-white bedding, a white bedside table topped with a classic teal-tinged mason jar of baby’s breath sprigs, along with other white and soft-teal accents throughout. Lush, lined, velour drapes in light brown tie into the ground and prevent daylight on day-off mornings.

The Social Setting

Should you believe brownish a dated shade, then introduce it to grey. Silvery-gray walls behind overstuffed brown furniture is an uncommon but tempering mixture. A greige (gray-beige) rug with a brown and gray pattern makes sense of this color pairing. Contemporary teal cushions, watery-colored stained-glass art and teal-colored hydrangeas jump out from their neutral-colored environment. Bright yellow curtains and a couple of sunny-yellow touches spike the space with much more modernity.

Welcome With Color

The entryway gives guests their first glimpse of your house, therefore make a welcoming impression by keeping it tidy and airily coloured. Pure white walls, though bright, can be too stark, but tinged with buttery yellow, they offset a brownish coat rack, wood flooring, teal-tinged sheers and an antique or distressed teal-painted dresser and attached mirror — yes, you can use dressers in rooms aside from bedrooms. It’s not about your visitors, however; a good-looking entrance welcomes you, too, every time you return home.

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Decorating Guides

Types of Flooring for Open Floor Plans

A home with a spacious floor plan — a living, family or fantastic room open into the dining and kitchen areas — generates a sense of massive space within the house when you choose the right flooring material. If you use different materials for each one of these regions, you interrupt the flow between rooms. If you must use a different material for the kitchen, avoid using contrasting colours between flooring choices; choose the shade of this flooring material for the kitchen that blends or matches together with the flooring material throughout the rest of the space.

Natural Stone

For any kind of open floor plan, to create the rooms transition to one another, choose continuous flooring. Butting a wood floor from the family area against a tile flooring in the kitchen jars the eyes at the transition — and it normally doesn’t look right. Because kitchens call for hardy, easy-to-clean floors, go with natural stone tile throughout the space, but choose materials that alternate colours, like slate tiles with separate tile colours that go from blues and grays to rust and beige with multiple colors in between. Well-placed area rugs add warmth to dialog or dining places in a house with an open floor plan.

Durable Strand-Woven Bamboo

Strand-woven bamboo flooring can work in a kitchen — along with the rest of the house — because of its hardiness and resilience. Strand-woven bamboo is the most hard-wearing and durable choice for an open floor plan; only confirm the producers used eco-friendly adhesives in the process of creating the flooring. On the Janka hardness scale, strand-woven bamboo is more difficult than most American hardwoods, coming in at 2900, well over hickory, pine, maple as well as ash, which vary from 1290 to 1800 on the scale. Another benefit of bamboo is that it is an eco-friendly option.

Mediterranean Warmth

In a house with a Mediterranean, Tuscany or Spanish architectural influences, saltillo tiles in octagon or square shapes bring warmth to your continuous flooring. You can extend these tiles to outdoor patio areas to make a unified appearance between the interior and exterior living spaces in the house. Though tiles traditionally give off a cold atmosphere, saltillo tiles come in varying colors of browns, that gives your open floor program a warm, earthy foundation.

Low-Maintenance Aggregate Flooring

For open floor plans, you can’t beat the price and durability of the epoxy aggregate continuous floor compared with other materials. This flooring seems seamless and produces open places seem even bigger. Color and design options are nearly limitless, since you can decide on the shapes, sizes and also the colours of the aggregates from hundreds of options. The aggregate is made of small chips, pebbles and stones and is hand-floated over concrete or wood for a smooth effect, and also covered with an epoxy sealant. It allows for layout options that have such things as border colour changes and intriguing patterns in entryways.

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DIY Rustic Distressed Table

One nice thing about owning a distressed table isn’t having to worry about dinging or denting it. Distressed furniture has a look that brings design or country charm to your decor. And a desk — a secondhand-store locate or that old table from the attic — doesn’t take a lot of ability to get it to look great. As long as you start with a solidly built piece of furniture, then you can distress end, a kitchen or a coffee table and cover it with the finish of your choice very quickly.

Clean It First

It doesn’t matter what size table you intend to distress is the same — wash it. Dirt doesn’t while used and abused furniture that is distressed looks OK, and a filthy distressed table does not allow for the finish to correctly seal. If you’re planning to paint or stain the item, remove using a agent in a room that is well-aired, before you begin, or sand the old stain in places away. Eliminate and wash with a mild mix; rinse clean and wipe dry.

Paint or Stain It

A distressed table can be painted or stained unless you intend to leave its normal color to the table; then you’d skip the paint or stain stage. If you plan on using chalk or milk paint, primer isn’t needed by you, but if you’re planning to just paint it, cover it using primer. As the other layers will probably show through after painful, you can choose to add over 1 coat. You may also paint it a color that is dark and cover with milk paint that lets some of the areas that are darker to show through if you are finished. After painting, then wipe off a few of the paint before it is dry to give a look to it.

Distress It

The step that is painful may be the part of the project. You can distress the table by hitting it with a hammer, a heavy chain or scratch lines into it using a nail or other object along its upper and edges. Sandpaper also works to wear areas down, particularly if you’ve selected the appearance that is painted distressed. Of distressing you increase the table, the amount depends on your preference. However, be certain that you cover the side panels beneath the tabletop, if any, the entire tabletop, and the legs with quantities. You can’t really make a mistake with debilitating; the entire look is based on imperfection.

The End Coat

The finish coat protects the timber and the appearance you created. For a desk that is painted, use a paste wax to seal it. Rub on paste wax in motions; let it sit and buff to a sheen. For stained tables, make use of a polyurethane or varnish in a mattesheen or product, based on the way you would like it to look. Than once you use a low-sheen or matte finish, the high-gloss finish coat show more of these imperfections. Wear protective equipment and work in an area that gets a great deal of clean air when working with polyurethane and varnishes.

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The way to Decorate With Chocolate, Blue and Burgundy

Outside of the occasional fabric pattern, blue and burgundy rarely come together from the sphere of interior decorating. Although it’s uncommon, this combination works because of the blue undertones discovered in burgundy, a color comprised of warm red, deep blue and a hint of black. Chocolate brown is recognized as a neutral color that naturally pairs with both blue and burgundy.

Cozy Bedroom

Create a warm, cozy bedroom with chocolate brown paint on the walls. Balance the dark walls using an ice blue comforter or bedspread, which contrasts nicely with dark brown. Accent the bed with toss cushions featuring a dark blue and burgundy design or solid pillows in colours of navy and burgundy. Drape a burgundy or dark brown toss over the foot of their bed or the back of a navy blue seat. Consider bedside table lamps with burgundy or dark blue colors.

Dramatic Dining Room

Paint the walls in a dining room with an appetizing shade of burgundy, reminiscent of a fine wine. Treat the windows using floor-to-ceiling chocolate brown drapes, repeating the rich color in an area rug anchoring the dining collection. Include jewel-toned blue accents such as a floral centerpiece with dark blue flowers, a set of deep blue vases on a sideboard and cobalt blue glassware displayed in a hutch or china cabinet.

Elegant Living Room

A combination of navy and burgundy upholstered furniture pieces at a living room can easily be tied together with an oriental or Persian-style area rug featuring both navy and burgundy. Use a lavish upholstery fabric such as velvet or micro-suede to match the upscale look of the rug. Unify the grouping further by accenting navy upholstery using burgundy cushions, and vice versa. Balance all of the vibrant upholstery using impartial wood furniture and lampshades or honeycomb cellular window colors in chocolate brown.

Stately Den

For a rich, masculine look in a den, then use oversized brown leather furniture accented with dark burgundy cushions and floor-to-ceiling navy drapes. Alternatively, use dark burgundy leather upholstery combined with navy cushions and chocolate brown plantation shutters on the windows. Search for wall artwork featuring hues of blue and burgundy. Complement the furniture using a dark navy accent wall, but consider a lighter hue on the rest of the walls to balance out all of the dark colours. If your style is more contemporary, use modern, low-profile leather furniture and textile colors in navy or burgundy to get a streamlined look.

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The way to Get a Primitive Look on White Painted Paneling

White painted paneling bounces light around and wears a faint air of summer beach house, even in the dead of winter. When your decor aesthetic is archaic, transform blinding white planks to your gently worn, faux-aged background for the own folk art which says “home.” You can add or remove to achieve a distressed and wrapped finish that is rich in character and showcases a milk-painted farm cabinet or a wall-mounted weather vane. Use the finishes by hand in a well-ventilated space, and wear a painter’s mask when sanding so you’re not breathing dust.

Sand protruding panel edges and corners gently, to remove paint where time would have worn it away naturally. If you’re lucky, the sanding will show another paint color beneath the white topcoat, but a glimpse of timber is fine, also.

Mix a bit of burnt umber universal tint in the paint shop with water and then rub it over the paneling. Experiment with the mixture proportions on a piece of painted scrap timber to get the aging effect you desire. White paint wasn’t pure white in Colonial times; rather, it was cream, like buttermilk, and yellowed even more with age. The tint takes the modern shine to create a richer, more authentic hue.

Apply the tint alternative with a clean rag, wiping off some of this tint with another clean rag as you go for subtle aging. Allow the tint to dry fully before waxing the planks.

Rub liquid beeswax over the paneling; allow it to dry and then buff it with a clean dry cloth. Beeswax adds a soft, dull gleam to pointed paneling. It was used in early American rural and city residences to protect timber and painted surfaces, and it’s environmentally green — nontoxic to use and to live with.

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What Colour Walls Will Move With a Medium-Blue Comforter?

New bedding often inspires a new style for your bedroom. As the bed is the focal point in the room, it makes sense to build the room’s color scheme around the shade of the bedding. If you’re not certain where to begin, get a color wheel. You’ll find them at most art supply or craft stores, or download a version from the net. This handy tool can allow you to find multiple options to get a wall color for this particular medium-blue comforter.

Monochromatic Hues

Monochromatic color schemes — meaning changing colors and tints of the same color — create a tranquil atmosphere at a bedroom. Open the space up with a lighter shade of blue to the walls. Give your room a tranquil, ocean-inspired texture with hues of aqua, teal or turquoise. Darker shades such as navy blue or heavy blue-gray colors make a nice accent wall behind the bed. A mixture of blues with varying undertones of green and gray supply extra interest.

Cool Partners

Try among blue’s neighbors on the color wheel. Walls with a lavender or lilac tint make a soothing background to get a medium-blue comforter. Go deeper with a gorgeous shade of aubergine. An alternative is light- or mint green walls. If the comforter is much more of a muted medium-blue, opt for olive or sage green. Insert a seat rail for two-toned walls. Duplicate the wall colors in stitch accent pillows or a toss draped over the foot of their bed to help tie the space together.

Complementary Contrast

If you want a look that’s bold and a little daring, go to the other side of the color wheel. Here you’ll find the fiery hue of orange, a color guaranteed to make the blue of the comforter stick out in eye catching contrast. Tone it down to get a more complex look utilizing a dull burnt orange, pumpkin or rust. Go multitonal and insert texture with a glaze or color wash. A complementary hue in an accent wall brings more focus into the bed as a focus.

Beauty of Brown

Brown and blue make a fine couple. These two colors work well together in any shade. Insert a toasty warmth to your room using four walls painted in deep chocolate brown. If natural illumination or space is much more limited, try lighter shades of cocoa, caramel, coffee, nutmeg or wheat. Do a brown and blue color scheme on the walls, vibrant each color with two blue and two brown walls. Mix them up with stenciled patterns, vertical stripes or borders in the ceiling or chair rail height.

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Slow Design: Today's 'Wabi-Sabi' Helps Us Savor the Moment

I have been examining the parallels between contemporary Western style and wabi-sabi, the early Japanese philosophy of finding beauty in things that are imperfect, impermanent and dated. We saw the way the philosophy paralleled modern layout and Arts and Crafts movements, as well as the Shaker.

Today wabi-sabi manifests itself at the Slow Design movement, founded in 2006 by Carolyn F. Strauss and Alastair Fuad-Luke to slow down the metabolism of people, resources and flows. Strauss and Fuad-Luke’s Slow Design manifesto urges designers to “fulfill real needs instead of transient trendy or market-driven needs” by producing moments to enjoy and appreciate together with the individual senses.

There’s also a push to design spaces for thinking, reacting, dreaming and musing. To put it differently, the idea adopts designing for people first and commercialization second, and it aims to balance the neighborhood with the global, the social together with the ecological — Overall, a transformation toward a much hierarchical method of living. This essentially mirrors the wabi-sabi strategy to style. Here are the six fundamentals of Slow Design.

Rama

1. Reveal. Uncover spaces and experiences in everyday life that are often forgotten or missed.

The manifesto urges people to “believe beyond perceived functionality, bodily traits and lifespans to think about artifacts’ real and potential ‘expressions'” This wall displaying artifacts is a good example. Dealing with materials is another.

Megan Buchanan

2. Expand. Slow design believes the real and possible “expressions” of artifacts and environments beyond their perceived functionalities, bodily attributes and life spans.

This principle asks designers to consider facets beyond aesthetics and shape, paying attention to the way we live and interact with spaces and objects. In their paper “Slow Design Principles,” Strauss and Fuad-Luke cite Swedish designer Ramiz Maze’s contention that “style isn’t only about the spatial or physical form of objects, but the form of interactions that take place — and also occupy time — in people’s relationships with and through [them].”

These stairs, that provide an enjoyable way for a child to learn to count, show this principle in action. The plan expands arrangement and more than just its structure.

Laidlaw Schultz architects

3. Reflect. Induce contemplation and “reflective ingestion”

“Product designers are questioning not only ecological values, but also perceptual and emotional experiences that the unique materiality of goods can provide,” Strauss and Fuad-Luke state. They encourage performers to emphasize ephemeral beauty that reminds us that everything is transient and short lived.

Strauss and Fuad-Luke cite Icelander Katrin Svana Eythórsdóttir’s biodegradable chandelier, made from highly reflective sugar droplets; it gradually disappears within months, “encouraging its owner(s) to relish each moment of its existence,” they say.

Waterfalls, like this one in Texas, are another means to take a reflective approach.

4. Engage. Share, collaborate and collaborate in an open-source layout process.

This home, by The Architects Collaborative, was designed following the group’s philosophy of camaraderie instead of hierarchy. Directed by Walter Gropius, eight architects’ team encouraged collaboration to produce the product.

Nowadays design charettes, in which several participants meet to brainstorm solutions to an architectural issue, are another example of cooperation.

Debra Kling Colour Consultant

5. Participate. Make everybody an active participant in the plan process.

Color consultant Debra Kling (whose job is shown here) is an advocate of the notion, and she constantly engages her customers in her designs. “Color consulting with my customers is always a very collaborative process,” she states.

Customers who participate in designing their homes normally get more pleasing outcomes.

Bennett Frank McCarthy Architects, Inc..

6. Evolve. Look beyond current requirements and circumstances to consider how good Slow Design can attest positive change.

Strauss and Fuad-Luke cite architect and societal designer Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates, in which conventional lawns are replaced with all productive domestic edible landscapes; the one here is a good example. Growing food instead of resource-intensive grass not only feeds households but addresses bigger problems of global food production also connects people with their surroundings and their communities.

On the most elementary level, planting a tree, that will provide shade, shelter and possibly food several years afterwards, is evolutionary.

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