Sized Just Right: The Small Luxury Home

As a seasoned designer with diverse clients, I am often either helping a family decide how much to add to a home they are outgrowing or I am figuring out how to put unused rooms to work in a house that is a little too big for its owner.

Generally my opinion is that less house is better than too much house, but my skills and vision afford me the opportunity to create impactful designs no matter the scale of the project. For the homeowner who is trying to decide the size of their next home investment, there are a number of ways to evaluate what will be the perfect fit.

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Design 101: Perfect Drapery

Every night as we prepare dinner, my husband and I move through the house and pull the drapery. It is a cherished ritual. While we live in a fairly secluded neighborhood, we both find that drawing the panels gives us a sense of coziness. Our stone house has thick walls and tall oak trees, features that we love, but which limit our natural light. Because of this, we do not like for the fabric to cover the glass during the day. Luckily, I am a seasoned designer and know the perfect scale to make the drapery hit all of our requirements. I also know that custom drapery is one of the most impactful changes a person can make in a room.

To help demystify these treatments, here are the factors I keep in mind as I design drapery for my projects.

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Creating A Joyful, Honest & Fearless Home

At a recent house call, my client handed me a photo of a room from her childhood home. When it was taken, the shelving concept was not the subject matter. Instead the grainy snapshot from the 1980s was focused on a group of happy, good-looking people, sitting together in a family room on what might have been a Sunday evening after dinner.

As she looked at the photo and talked about adaptations to the design, she was suddenly overcome with emotion and we were both a little surprised when tears came to her eyes.

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How To Create Transformative Eclectic Style

When I ask clients how I can help, they most often tell me they need my vision to pull things together. Whether you are starting from scratch, working with a fair amount of things you already own, or as is most often the case something in the middle, your primary concern is how does it all jigsaw together to become one cohesive look.

Eclecticism is a term designers use to describe a mix of furniture periods and styles, trends, colors, and textures. From the proud victorians to a relaxed present day style, eclecticism is by no means a new idea…

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