3 Key Rules for Interior Design Online Shopping

Jay Johnson - Shopping online for furnishings and home goods? Well, good luck to you. Some people need to sit in a chair or sofa in order to experience what it would be like to use the furnishings in everyday use situations. But most people love the convenience of online shopping, and it's a great way to shop around from store to store while saving gas, driving time, parking, and in-store jostling. Do you remember when most people went into book stores to buy books? Now 60% of all books are bought on Amazon.com - and online stores are growing in popularity and sales that outrun their brick-and-mortar counterparts.

In a recent guest post I wrote for Williams-Sonoma Designer Marketplace - which, by the way, is an excellent collection of advice for anyone interested in interior design - NYC designer Irwin Weiner and I checked out Pottery Barn online; he selected some favorites and we applied three criteria for picking out excellence in interior design purchases in an online experience. Read the Williams-Sonoma piece here: How to Shop Online for Your Clients. (It actually applies to purchasing home goods for yourself, too.) Check out the items we loved during our online shopping spree, and click on the photos in this article to see my current favorites from the store. Happy online shopping!

Irwin Weiner, interior designGuest UserJanuary 29, 2012Pottery Barn, home goods, online shopping, tipsComment

Classic Decorating Is All About Tablescapes

(David Hicks tablescape)

David Hicks, British superstar interior designer, coined the phrase “tablescapes” back in the 1960s. Tablescapes are creatively composed accessories set on a table, each piece specially chosen until the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Hicks has long since died, but his design flair and attention to detail still inspires designers of today. The attention to detail led Hicks to compose miniature design scenes on tables so meticulous that his tablescapes became mirrors of his overall design concept. The classic tablescape shown in the photo above alludes to the Greek classical décor behind the table. The simple but elegant ceramics and earthenware – a staple of Greek interiors – is a beautiful way to complement the surrounding room.

When arranging a tablescape, the guidelines that designers pay attention to are

the focal point,
the various heights,
scale,
the number of items on the table,
how the accessories harmonize with the other items, and
the overall color scheme.

With his classical tablescape, Hicks employs an overall neutral color scheme to complement the classical theme – varying shades of cream and beige and touches of muted sage green and malachite to prevent it from being boring. Hicks also paid attention to the heights of the items, mixing up accessories of low, medium, and tall heights to provide interest on varying eye levels. The scale is limited to small and medium sized items so that they don't overwhelm the background artwork on the walls. Finally, the bouquet of flowers provides the focal point for the whole tablescape as well as softening the hardness of the surrounding vases and bowls.

interior designGuest UserJuly 28, 2011David Hicks, accessories, tablescapes, tips Comment

Adding Color to Your Walls

Irwin Weiner ASID -- Color is very visceral. It's very emotive for people. Picture a white room or a black room -- people feel very different in different colored spaces.

One way to choose color for a room in your home is to follow the advice of master interior designer Samuel Botero. I was told by a friend that he led one of his clients to the refrigerator and said, "Alright, here are the vegetables. Pick your colors." And food in the fridge made up the colors his client chose: hot peppers, green peppers, butternut squash, etc.

Different spaces call for different colors, and even different countries and the quality of the natural light in different parts of the world often determines appropriate color palettes. England is often dark, gloomy, and gray, and the Victorians went with very bright colors for porcelain, paint, and accessories.

Scandinavia, with its relatively weak sunlight, inspired pale grays and whites in home colors (see photo below). By contrast, Country French has its palette inspiration from hot and sunny hues. Mixing up colors and appropriate connotations can be sometimes jarring, like having hot colors in Scandinavian interiors. (Although rules should always be broken!)

In times before the 20th Century, color pigments were very expensive. Cobalt blue was made from lapus lazuli. Turquoise came from turquoise gemstones.