Grand picture walls offer maximum impact and color in any space from a hallway to a gabled room. Grand picture walls present themselves in a variety of ways. A wall can be considered grand due to the size of the pictures. The amount of wall space covered by pictures — or the sheer number of pictures — can create a grand scale, even in a small room. How pictures are arranged on … [Read more...]
Two-Tone Four Poster Beds
Designers style up four poster beds with a quirky two-tone treatment. Giving four poster beds a two-tone treatment adds color as well as visual interest to an otherwise predictably conservative bed frame. And the idea is especially useful for updating salvage or thrifted pieces which are often repainted -- but only one color! What I love about each of these two-tone four … [Read more...]
Mild Winter Garden
No snow for Christmas this year, just a mild winter garden glistening with hoar frost on cold mornings. Hoar frost is a staple of mild winter gardens and I've always wondered about it. Defined as “a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor formed in clear still weather on vegetation, fences…” it looks like icing on the grass. It sparkles before it evaporates, … [Read more...]
Lavender and Friends
Lavender has surprising décor power for a pastel hue and it plays nicely with others. Lavender is working harder than ever in a variety of décor roles — from accent, to background to focal point color. It’s a hue I am drawn to so I always notice how it is used. When we first moved into our house I had the guest room painted lavender. I though it would be soothing but, on a … [Read more...]
Scampston Hall Walled Garden
The Scampston Estate Walled Garden has a modern style with woodland plants and ornamental grasses. The walled garden at Scampston Hall is one of two must-see gardens in northern England. On the grounds of a Regency country house in Yorkshire, the house and garden has been in the hands of the same family for more than 300 years. Like many stately British homes, public tours of … [Read more...]
The Chic of Peaked Headboards
Treatments for headboards range from painted to upholstered, but the silhouette always shapes up. Headboards have come a long way from the days of default dark-wood 4-posters, sleigh beds and frames. Architectural motifs, color, a variety of covering styles are making bed-heads into furniture statements rather than neutral go-along pieces. Many are taller and more imposing … [Read more...]
Holidays in Bloom
Having confessed that I hate gardening, the flip side is I love arranged flowers for the holidays. Living in the country has given me an appreciation for vines, berries, branches, and pods that I never would have understood as a city person. Of course, living in New York City, where floral trends originate, gave me an appreciation of how far flowers travel, especially for the … [Read more...]
Riveted Range Guard Kitchen
The riveted range guard wall above the range takes on uncommon decorative power. For a spacious kitchen in a newly constructed Spanish country home, architect Pablo Carvajal and designer Isabel Lopez-Quesada created a stunning riveted range guard behind a white Lancanche Sully with an electric (or perhaps induction) top. Protecting the wall with fireproof material is … [Read more...]
Fuchsia Flashes
Dubbed Hollywood Cerise and Fandango in the early part of the 20th century, fuchsia is a floral hue. While the magazines and color gurus are trying to sell us a saccharine hue dubbed Honeysuckle, I’ve been seeing something stronger – fuchsia -- pop up as an accent color with black and white, green and gray. We’ve see a lot of it on the web (FFOOFF) and forever in Crayola boxes … [Read more...]
Embellished Walls
If all over decoration on embellished walls feels like too much, consider the idea of a frieze. The frieze is a really old idea -- as old as the Parthenon, the original source. Today it can be used on embellished walls as a band of pattern that creates a deep border for the top of a wall just below the ceiling. If a room has crown molding, the frieze sits just below that. It’s … [Read more...]
Christmas Room Variations
Christmas room decorating includes an unexpected variety of locations for holiday décor. This has been such a hectic season it wouldn’t surprise me if many of us were a bit tardy in getting to our seasonal Christmas room decorating tasks. While most people have their traditions which dictate where the tree and the gifts are put each year, some like to put a festive mood … [Read more...]
Dining Room Bookcase Walls
A dining room bookcase transforms a single-purpose room into a modern multipurpose space. Think about a dining room bookcase. Seriously. Ask yourself how much a dining room table and chairs, buffet and cabinets costs vs how often those pieces are used? Apart from answering “I just like it,” most of us could put the dining room to better, more practical use. For me, it feels … [Read more...]
Plummy Dark Rooms
Plummy dark rooms -- purples and oxblood reds -- are deeply romantic and fashionable this year. The red-and-purple color scheme in what I call plummy dark rooms has a special impact in these two English living rooms. Red rooms are hardly a novelty, especially in dining rooms. But brining this type of dark hue into the living room feels like a statement about creating an … [Read more...]
Hollywood Style
A home by Michael S. Smith in Hollywood colonial style has antique furniture worthy of a starring role. “I don’t know whether it’s cause or effect -- because I work with so many clients in films, or the reason I have so many clients in films, but I have a cinematic feel for interiors,” Michael S. Smith told an interviewer from House & Garden magazine. Smith, a … [Read more...]