19 Agustus 2009

How Something As Simple As Interior Design Impacts Our Lives

You know the old saying; the only sure thing in life is change. While this may not seem very straightforward at first, think about all of the changes mankind has experienced throughout human history. If technology is always changing, why shouldn't our taste in styles change, too? As their lives change, people want their living spaces to change as well. Pink princess wallpaper may work for a little girl, but a sixteen year old wants something different. 1980's-style chrome is completely passé in today's interior design style. Design changes not only affect living spaces, they affect those living in them, and this article details how.

In what ways does the interior-design of a space impact me?

You can answer this question by checking out your current environment. What color are the walls painted? What shape windows are there? What kinds of coverings were chosen for the floor? Answering these questions, for all intents and purposes, defines how you are affected by interior design. While some design scenarios convey a feel that tends to be more formal, there are others that make those experiencing them feel comfortable and at home almost immediately. An interior designer is capable of modifying space in a positive fashion to the delight of most people. The simple placement of a painting on a wall can enhance one's mood and productivity level. Though you may not be aware of it, the interior design of the buildings, rooms and spaces you're in each day have an effect on you.

What kinds of rooms can gain excellent results from interior-design?

There isn't any room that couldn't improve with the help of interior design. No space is too small to benefit from an attractive and practical design. Single-room loft owners are often perplexed about what to do with so much open space and no clear separation of living areas. Using design, defined areas can be created by an interior designer while including the most storage space possible. A good designer can help you redesign a small bathroom to make it look bigger and brighter. It gives the sense of a much bigger area even though it is actually an optical illusion.

What impact does architecture have on interior designs?

Interior design is greatly affected by architecture. A living space's overall design is tremendously influenced by its architecture, and while you may not notice this at first, a closer inspection of the doorways, arches, and moldings will reveal its impact. Today's interior designers have been deeply influenced by the work of great American architects. The clean lines and form that they employed work quite well in modern decorating.

How do I learn more about interior-design?

A great place to get information about interior design would be through magazines. Various interior design magazines, full of tips for remaking any space, are available to the public. Such publications will generally feature before and after photos as part of their articles. The extensive techniques and tips offered by internet design websites can also be a highly useful source of interior design information.

As an upscale hotel developer for more than 18 years, Steffen La Roche has worked with many professional interior design firms. Steffen recommends award winning interior design company, Est Est, to any architect, developer, or builder looking for a full-service design company.

Interior Design: Achieving Harmony

This is a two part series of articles dealing with creating harmony in interior design.

Harmony is likened to a jigsaw puzzle in interior design. Putting up together a myriad of pieces that seem to be unrelated is an interior designer's challenge. The designer's task is to put all the pieces together and come up with a beautiful interior design. Putting the pieces together to produce a harmonious room requires a vivid imagination from the designer. Interior designers develop in their minds a finished picture of what the room will actually looks like after all the pieces are placed together. This mental image usually guides an interior designer on how to execute every move successfully and come up with a design that elicits his or her client's happy approval.

How do interior designers develop this mental image of a finished picture? There is a basic decorating philosophy that interior designers follow. This is to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative and when it cannot be eliminated, camouflage it. Take for example a room with windows that don't appeal much to the designer, but since the budget doesn't warrant the removal of the structure, eliminating the negative is not an option; rather camouflaging the negative becomes the better way out. To come up with a better interior design, usually the designer in this case designs a window treatment that will hide the undesirable feature and make the windows look more attractive.

You may want to redecorate your own home or help a friend create beautiful changes in his or her place. How do you use this philosophy in your own interior designing projects? You should look around the room. Notice any distinctive features and these should include both the good and the bad features. Have a conversation with the room. This could be a good starting point for all your plans. Create a mental image of a finished picture that will terminate in a well-executed interior design of a given room. Look for striking features such as a beautiful view, a fireplace, a sweeping staircase or a distinctive architectural detail. Let's say you want to change the interior design of your living room. The first thing people will notice when they enter the room is your fireplace. How should you handle this? Is it a good feature or a bad feature? Do you want to accentuate it, eliminate it or camouflage it? Also look out for problem features like badly placed columns or pillars. After identifying these distinctive features, whether bad or good, ask yourself on how to accentuate any good features that you see. For bad features, ask yourself whether to eliminate them or just camouflage them.

After deciding on what to do with the distinctive features of the room, you should realize that you have already started to formulate a picture in your mind of how the finished room will look. From this budding mental image of the room, you will find that other pieces of the puzzle will start fitting right into place and you are on your way to creating a wonderful interior design of any given room and this is just the beginning.

Michael Russell - EzineArticles Expert Author

Moving Homes - How to Make the Move With a Child

For all members of a family, moving to a new home is a big change. But for children in a family, moving homes can be an especially stressful and disorienting time. What for an adult may constitute a chance to switch up lifestyles and take on stress, for a child is a world-altering event with repercussions extending well beyond those stressful months of preparation and settling-in. As parents, one of your primary goals in attending to the needs and confusion of your child should be to create a dialogue about the move with your child. Dialogue is a useful and productive tool for creating a horizon of expectations, addressing concerns family members may have, and establishing ground territory for your family to proceed from as you continue to thrive as a unit.

Dialogue does not erase power imbalances in a family or put everyone on an equal playing field. When your household comes together to talk, it should be with the goal of allowing everyone to voice their opinions, but it should not be expected that all members will be ready to hear or provide an opinion on the move. This hesitancy is not a fault of your family's or of dialogue as a method; it is simply something that needs to be addressed. If you or one of your partners feels reluctant to express your fears in front of your kid take the pressure off of face-to-face communication by doing a trial run. Practice speaking with each other about your nervousness and worries and allow each partner ample time to express fully the anxieties that they feel. Intelligence and style do not score points in an open dialogue, one partner may be better or listening and the other and speaking, or one partner may appear to be gifted at both aspects of communication, these traits should be taken as facts of the dialogue and not as sicknesses to be cured or faults to be fixed. Once you have spoken enough with your partner, after each of you have voiced your concerns about moving and feel you can present yourselves well as parents to your child, invite your offspring into a dialogue.

For the parent/child dialogue each family's comfort level, openness, and emotiveness will vary according to the climate of the family. There is no one correct way to talk to your son or daughter about a move except for the way that seems to address the needs of the families' members best. If you feel that fully voicing your own concerns and expectations will help your child best feel at home in their new home, do so, but keep in mind that this is not the law or the goal of dialogue. While complete openness with a child may seem refreshing, it should be taken with caution. As parents, you should not lift a burden off yourselves by shifting it to your child. For example, if one of your worries is that your new home is near an area where tornadoes have hit before, it might be a poor idea to confide in your child that you are terrified of the tornados that you expect to hit. On the same token, if you are inclined towards less openness with your son or daughter, try pushing the boundaries of the dialogue just a little by admitting one or two small things that you are concerned about.

There is no single right way to conduct a move and no single right way to conduct a dialogue about moving. A benefit of starting a dialogue about moving is that it establishes trust and companionship among members of the household. If you approach talking about moving as an opportunity to enjoy your situation and come closer as a family, you will be prepared for anything the new home has in store for you.

Mr. Oliver is a marketing agent of Lifestyle Builders. The new home contractor builds and develops new homes throughout the Richmond Virginia area. For more information on their New Home Builders please visit their website.