A Home With Good Bones : Construction

January 16, 2020 Paul Miller

Up until very recently, when I thought about a house with ‘good bones’, I came at it from a place of how the home looked to me.

I asked my colleagues Leesa Mayfield of Leesa Mayfield Architecture and David Logan of Vintage Building what the phrase ‘good bones’ meant to them. In our third installation of our A Home With Good Bones series, we discuss the construction techniques and next-level choices homeowners can make whether they’re starting from scratch or renovating any age of home.

A Home With Good Bones : Materials

December 10, 2019 Paul Miller

Up until very recently, when I thought about a house with ‘good bones’, I came at it from a place of how the home looked to me. I asked my colleagues Leesa Mayfield of Leesa Mayfield Architecture and David Logan of Vintage Building what the phrase ‘good bones’ meant to them.

In our second installation of our A Home With Good Bones series, we discuss the literal ingredients of a fine house, the materials that provide for lasting performance in both old and new homes.

Design 101: Wallpaper

September 26, 2019 Paul Miller

For anyone who grew up with a lot of it, or even just a little bit, but it was not their taste - or certainly for anyone who has ever stripped it on their own - wallpaper can be viewed with a little skepticism. Yet it has never been more relevant, more transformative, or varied.

Here is my advice for picking wallpaper that will please your senses year after year. But, first, the things you need to get over.

Design Solutions : Furnishing Small Spaces

July 15, 2019 Paul Miller

After almost two decades in design, I have become an expert at intelligent space planning, but as the owner of a modest home, the tricks I've learned for making the most of tight spaces are particularly close to my heart.

What Our Upholstery Is All About

May 23, 2019 Paul Miller

Upholstery is the most hard working furniture in the home, providing enduring comfort and establishing the personality of the room through its stylings and fabric. No one wants to regret this choice either on delivery day because the fabric doesn't compliment the room or a couple of years down the line because the sofa hasn't held up to wear and tear.

Sized Just Right: The Large Luxury Home

May 8, 2019 Paul Miller

This blog is not about what kinds of rooms or how many should be included in a large house blueprint. The one piece of advice I always pass along to my clients is to build their home not for future owners or by any standard but their own. Choose your spaces because you think they will enrich your home life, not because other houses in your neighborhood have them.

This blog post is for people who want a large luxury home where every space is useful and all of the details and proportions make the right statement.

Sized Just Right: The Small Luxury Home

April 18, 2019 Paul Miller

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.

Busting 5 Design Myths

February 19, 2019 Paul Miller

Interior design makes spaces look great and function optimally. Thoughtful consideration of lighting, space, color, and organization can improve our quality of life and our mood. Yet many people choose not to seek professional help for a myriad of perfectly understandable reasons.

Eclectic Design: Updating Your Style Without Throwing Everything Out

February 12, 2019 Paul Miller

Eclecticism is a term designers use to describe a mix of furniture periods and styles, trends, colors, and textures. It is not new, although it really took off about the time I started in design.

Read to the bottom for answers to your questions!

6 Ways To Steer Clear of Trend Dead Ends

April 28, 2018 Paul Miller

Over two decades of working in the design industry, I've learned a few lessons to better navigate the rise and fall of trends.

Design Solutions: Zoning Large Spaces

February 20, 2018 Paul Miller

When you strip away the frills, my design expertise essentially revolves around recognizing and solving problems. Large rooms are usually considered ideal, but they also require smart space planning to assure comfort and functionality.

The Dark Side of Color Theory

March 20, 2017 Paul Miller

By Paul Miller

Interior Designer, IDS Professional Member

There are many things to consider at the high level conceptual stage of an interior design, but one of the most expressive fundamentals is crafting the color palette. Here are two palettes from recent projects that, while distinctly different visually, rely on a similar theoretic principle. Each palette was based on the decision to promote artistic drama rather than the oft over-prescribed notion that spaces should be made to seem larger.

The Garret Room

When we began to noodle the best approach to a family media room in an attic of an historic home, we rejected the obvious choice of painting the walls in light, bright hues to make the space appear larger. In this home, we had already created fresh, sunny palettes on the main and second floors, so we felt the attic could be better served is a deeply-shaded and cozy away space. We theorized that the value of visually expanding the room was not trumped by the greater goal of giving the homeowners a nurturing and even theatrical sense of place.

Because the house has a classic mansard roof, the walls slant on four sides as they approach a narrow jot of ridge at the middle of the room. Two dormers - one tasked for window seating and the other for a modest custom bar - provided a fair amount of natural light. By painting the walls from base to ridge in a dark blue, we promoted a cozy sensibility for the attic. The rather beaten up original wood flooring we had painted in a green hue equal in saturation and value to the wall color, so that while there was some variation, the floor and walls had minimal visual distinction; our goal was to keep the eye moving fluidly with the architecture instead of the gaze hanging up on sometimes awkward transitions. A large sectional in dark chestnut leather further promoted the rich palette, while accents in bright yellow and taupe provided points of brightness and chilly contrast.

The Jewel Parlor

There was something about this parlor in another historic home that seemed to be waiting for dramatic wall color. And our client has a peaceful and yet magnetic energy that we felt would be nicely expressed in a space with muted variations of jewel tones. Starting with a jade lamp the homeowner wanted to use in the room, we built an analogous palette that moved away from blue-greens and toward yellow on the color wheel. The use of a rich plum on the walls managed to serve both a warm and cool helping of wow factor.

Because the parlor had a large vista onto a sunny, off-white dining room at one end, and a large, off-white builtin at the other, we knew that there was plenty of lightness to offset our wall color choice. We had purposed a boxy turret space adjacent to the builtin for a handsome Japanese travel bar; we opted to carry the soft whiteness of the trim onto this alcove to further contrast and highlight the plum tone of the primary space - and to frame the bar for emphasis. Using dark emerald velvet on a tufted accent chair and a geometric woven in chartreuse and cream to wrap the outside back of the sofa, we pinned down our progression of green to yellow-green hues.

We're big fans of white-wall decor and recognize the place it has taken in contemporary interior design, but our opportunities to work in dark hues are always a welcome change of pace. The important things to consider when deciding whether or not a room should go to the dark side is how the color choice will serve the overall purpose of the room and how you will construct a palette with enough variation and contrast to not be flattened out by the weight of the main color itself.

Tips

Remember that the walls will be the background of the canvas, and the furnishings will create the layering towards the foreground. If larger furnishings have sufficient lightness, they will alleviate the heaviness of the wall color.
Darker rooms swallow light, so consider using a paint finish with a bit of sheen to help bounce both natural and artificial light. Know that sheen will highlight imperfections in the wall surface, so we recommend a professionally applied skim coat to make the walls picture perfect.
In a room where the wall color is more assertive, the textures of fabrics should be far bolder and the scale of prints riskier. The beauty of starting from a place of intentional drama is that boldness is welcome and necessary for harmony.
Consider how a dramatic paint color will impact the visual rhythm of a space. If there is a series of awkwardly placed closet doors, it is sometimes advisable to paint them out in the same color as the wall. The same can be said of a chair rail, which becomes a light belt around a dark room, often cutting the perceived height of the walls and pulling attention away from more important elements of the design.
Before panicking when the paint is half up and you begin to waver in your resolve, pull a few pieces into the space and view them against the walls. You'll never feel more vulnerable about your choice than when the room is without any of the components that helped inspire the color.