<span style="font-size:100%;">Creativity is a subtle, but important quality to have when considering interior design as a profession. Much of your advancement will depend on your ability to be original in your creative efforts to design any space. Clients will always want to keep a designer that can offer them something that nobody else has.</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />You will also need to be able to turn whatever items that they already have into works of art. Sometimes clients do not want to change everything, or buy new furnishings and draperies; they simply want to make whatever they do have look and feel different. Creative thinking is the only thing that is going to help here.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-2328313897147674196?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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Believe it or not, Interior Designers have to be extremely well organized to be able to handle all of the little details that go into doing a good job. You have to be able to keep track of your entire inventory, while keeping on top of other things also like, materials, tracking orders, employees, and making sure that you stay on or below the budget that your client set out for you.<br /><br />It is no easy feat to try and keep track of all the things that have to be done; especially when you’ve got people constantly surrounding you. You must monitor what everyone is doing and still manage to keep up on what you should be doing. Do not forget that you also have to appear calm because your clients will likely be asking you a great deal of questions. If you are scattered and panicked, it will be difficult to answer all the questions and look cool at the same time.<br /><br />The ability to know where everything is at, and where every person is at is another aspect of organization. It is very hard to keep jobs if you are constantly wondering where things, and employees are.<br /><br />You will need to be very well organized if your design projects lead you to having to add or remove a room and/or wall. This type of work requires the use of blueprints. You must be able to read them as well as draw them up; you cannot do this without a great sense of organization.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-5529917499476708702?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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<div align="left">The ability to problem solve is a necessity for an Interior Designer. As an Interior Designer, you will encounter glitches, and it is a must that you can deal with them. Many times, these glitches will need to be solved on the spot.<br /><br />Your organizational skills will come in handy when you need to solve a problem as well. An organized workplace will help you to have an organized mind. Thoughts have a way of being cluttered when your work space is likewise.<br /><br />Being able think quickly and under pressure is a definite asset to problem solving. Your problem is not going to get easier if it takes you too long to come up with a solution for it. Actually, waiting can just give the universe more time to make the problem get bigger.<br /><br /><center><A HREF="http://www.tripleclicks.com/results.php?dept=10/10028355"><br /><IMG SRC="https://www.sfimg.com/Images/Banners/banner212.gif" border="0"/ ></A></center><br /><br /><center><A HREF="http://www.tripleclicks.com/10028355/go"><br /><IMG SRC="https://www.sfimg.com/Images/Banners/banner390.jpg" border="0"/ ></A></center><br /><br /><center><script src="http://widgets.amung.us/map.js" type="text/javascript"></script><br /><script type="text/javascript">WAU_map('cshru27ptyxi', 420, 210, 'natural', 'star-red')</script></center></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-6573601866178345296?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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If you have been in Venice then you know the Murano Museum and its beguiling collection of Venetian glass, that old glass so vastly more beautiful in line and decoration than the modern type of, say, fifteen years ago, when colors had become bad mixtures, and decorations meaningless excrescences.<br /><br />A bit of inside information given out to some one really interested, led to a revival of pure line and lovely, simple coloring, with appropriate decorations or none at all. You may already know that romantic bit of history. It seems that when the museum was first started, about four hundred years ago, the glass blowers agreed to donate specimens of their work, provided their descendants should be allowed access to the museum for models.<br /><br />This contract made it a simple matter for a connoisseur to get reproduced exactly what was wanted, and what was not in the market. Elegance, distinguished simplicity in shapes, done in glass of a single color, or in one color with a simple edge in a contrasting shade, or in one color with a whole nosegay of colors to set it off, appearing literally as flowers or fruit to surmount the stopper of a bottle, the top of a jar, or as decorations on candlesticks.<br /><br />It was in the Museo Civico of Venice that we saw and fell victims to an enchanting antique table decorations formal Italian garden, in blown glass, once the property of a great Venetian family and redolent of those golden days when Venice was the playground of princes, and feasting their especial joy; days when visiting royalty and the world's greatest folk could have no higher honor bestowed upon them than a gift of Venetian glass, often real marvels mounted in silver and gold.<br />We never tired of looking at that fairy garden with its delicate copings, balustrades and vases of glass, all abloom with exquisite posies in every conceivable shade, wrought of glass a veritable dream thing.<br /><br />Finally, nothing would do but we must know if it had ever been copied. The curator said that he believed it had, and an address was given us. How it all comes back! We arose at dawn, as time was precious, took our coffee in haste and then came that gliding trip in the gondola, through countless canals, to a quarter quite unknown to us, where at work in a small room, we came upon our glass blower and the coveted copy of that lovely table-garden.<br /><br />This man had made four, and one was still in his possession. We brought it back to America, a gleaming jeweled cobweb, and what happened was that the very ethereal quality of its beauty made the average taste ignore it! However, a few years have made a vast difference in table, as well as all other decorations, and to-day the same Venetian gardens have their faithful devotees, as is proved by the continuous procession of the dainty wonders, ever moving toward our sturdy shores.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-7566267190783999563?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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From Greece, culture, born on the wings of the arts, moved on to Rome, and at first, Roman architecture and decoration reproduced only the classic Greek types; but, as Rome grew, her arts took on another and very different outline, showing how the history of decorative art is to a fascinating degree the history of customs and manners.<br /><br />Rome became prosperous, greedy, powerful and imperious, enslaving the civilized world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece, waxed luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the austere rigidity of the Greek style of furnishing.<br /><br />We know that in the time of Augustus Caesar the Romans had wonderful furniture of the most costly kind, made from cedar, pine, elm, olive, ash, ilex, beach and maple, carved to represent the legs, feet, hoofs and heads of animals, as in earlier days was the fashion in Assyria, Egypt and Greece, while intricate carvings in relief, showed Greek subjects taken from mythology and legend. Caesar, it is related, owned a table costing a million sectaries ($40,000).<br /><br />But gradually the pure line swerved, ever more and more influenced by the Orient, for Rome, always successful in war, and had established colonies in the East. Soon Byzantine art reached Rome, bringing its arabesques and geometrical designs, it’s warm, glowing colors, soft cushions, gorgeous hangings, embroideries, and rich carpets. In fact all the glowing luxury that the new Roman craved.<br /><br />The effect of this misalliance upon all Art, including interior decoration, was to cause its immediate decline. Elaboration and banal designs, too much splendor of gold and silver and ivory inlaid with gold, resulted in a decadent art, which reflected a decadent race and Rome, fell! Not all at once; it took five hundred years for the neighboring races to crush her power, but continuous hectoring did it, in 476 A.D. Then began the Dark Ages merging into the Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth centuries)<br /><br />Dark they were, but what picturesque and productive darkness! Rome fell, but the Car-loving Ian family arose, and with it the great nations of Western Europe, to give us, especially in France, another supreme flowering of interior decoration.<br /><br />Britain was torn from the grasp of Rome by the Saxons, Danes and Normans, and as a result the great Anglo-Saxon race was born to create art periods. Mahomet appeared and scored as an epoch-maker, recording a remarkable life and a spiritual cycle.<br /><br />The Moors conquered Spain, but in so doing enriched her arts a thousand fold, leaving the Alhambra as a beacon-light through the ages. Finally the crusades united all warring races against the infidels.<br /><br />Blood was shed, but at the same time routes were opened up, by which the arts, as well as the commerce, of the Orient, reached Europe. And so the Byzantine continued to contend with Gothic art that art which proceeded from the Christian Church and stretched like a canopy over Western Europe, all through the middle Ages. It was in the churches and monasteries that Christian art, driven from pillar to post by wars, was obliged to take refuge, and there produced that marvelous development known as the Gothic style, of the Church, for the Church, by the Church, perfected in countless Gothic cathedrals, crystallized glories lifting their manifold spires to heaven, ethereal monuments of an intrepid Faith which gave material form to its adoration, its fasting and prayer, in an unrivalled art.<br /><br />There is one early Gothic chair, which has come down to us, Charlemagne's, made of gilt-bronze and preserved in the Louvre, at Paris. Any knowledge beyond this one piece, as to what Carlovingian furniture was like (the eighth century) we get only from old manuscripts which show it to have been the pseudo-classic, that is, the classic modified by Byzantine influence, and very like the Empire style of Napoleon I.<br /><br />Here is the reason for the type. Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Empire, when in 726 A. D., Emperor Leo III prohibited image worship, and the artists and artisans of his part of the world, in order to earn a livelihood, scattered over Europe, settling in the various capitals, where they were eagerly welcomed and employed.<br /><br />Even so late as the tenth to fourteenth centuries the knowledge we have of Gothic furniture still comes from illustrated manuscripts and missals preserved in museums or in the national libraries. Rome fell as an empire in the fifth century. In the eighth century, Venice asserted herself, later becoming the great, wealthy, Merchant City of Eastern Europe, the golden gate between Byzantium and the West (eleventh to fifteenth centuries). Her merchants visiting every country naturally carried home all art expressions, but, so far as we know, her own chief artistic output in very early days, was in the nature of richly carved wooden furniture, no specimens of which remain.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-9134867400442416822?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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In a measure, the materials for hangings and furniture-coverings are determined more or less by the amount one wishes to spend in this direction. For choice, one would say silk or velvet for formal rooms; velvets, corduroys or chintz for living rooms; leather and corduroy with rep hangings for a man's study or smoking-room; thin silks and chintz for bedrooms; chintz for nurseries, breakfast-rooms and porches.<br /><br />In England, slipcovers of chintz (glazed cretonne) appear, also, in formal rooms; but are removed when the owner is entertaining. If the permanent upholstery is of chintz, then at once your room becomes informal. If you are planning the living-room for a small house or apartment, which must serve as reception-room during the winter months, far more dignity, and some elegance can be obtained for the same expenditure, by using plain velveteen, modern silk brocades in one color, or some of the modern reps to be had in very smart shades of all colors.<br /><br />If your furniture is choice, rarely beautiful in quality, line and color, hangings and covers must accord. Genuine antiques demand antique silks for hangings and table covers; but no decorator, if at all practical, will cover a chair or sofa in the frail old silks, for they go to pieces almost in the mounting. Waive sentiment in this case, for the modern reproductions are satisfactory to the eye and improve in tone with age.<br /><br />If you own only a small piece of antique silk, make a square of it for the centre of the table, or cleverly combine several small bits, if these are all you have, into an interesting cover or cushion. Nothing in the world gives such a note of distinction to a room as the use of rare, old silks, properly placed.<br /><br />The fashion for cretonne and chintz has led to their indiscriminate use by professionals as well as amateurs, and this craze has caused a prejudice against them. Chintz used with judgment can be most attractive. In America the term chintz includes cretonne and stamped linen. If you are planning for them, put together, for consideration, all your bright colored chintz, and in quite another part of your room, or decorator's shop, the chintz of dull, faded colors, as they require different treatment. A general rule for this material bright or dull is that if you would have your chintz decorate, be careful not to use it too lavishly. If it is intended for curtains, then cover only one chair with it and cover the rest in a solid color. If you want chintz for all of your chairs and sofa, make your curtains, sofa cushions and lampshades of a solid color, and be sure that you take one of the leading colors in the chintz. Next indicate your intention at harmony, by "bringing together" the plain curtains or chairs, and your chintz, with a narrow fringe or border of still another color, which figures in the chintz. Let us suppose chintz to be black with a design in greens, mulberry and buff.<br /><br />Make your curtains plain mulberry, edged with narrow pale green fringe with black and buff in it, or should your chintz be grey with a design in faded blues and violets and a touch of black, make curtains of the chintz, and cover one large chair, keeping the sofa and the remaining chairs grey, with the bordering fringe, or gimp, in one or two of the other shades, sofa cushions and the lamp shades in blues and violets (lining lamp shades with thin pink silk), and use a little black in the bordering fringe.<br /><br />If you decide upon very brilliant chintz use it only in one chair, a screen, or in a valance over plain curtains with straps to hold them back, or perhaps a sofa cushion. Whether chintz is bright or dull, its pattern is important. As with silks, brocaded in different colors, therefore never use chintz where a chair or sofa calls for tufting. A tufted piece of furniture always looks best done in plain materials.<br /><br />In using chintz in which both color and design are indefinite, the kind that gives more or less an impression of faded tapestry, you will find that the very indefiniteness of the pattern makes it possible to use the chintz with more freedom, being always sure of a harmonious background. The one thing to guard against is that on entering a room you must not be conscious either of several colors, or of any set design.<br /><br />The story of the evolution of textiles (any woven material) is fascinating, and like the history of every art, runs parallel with the history of culture and progress in the art of living, physical, mental and spiritual.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-2069355341865145987?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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The classic periods in French furniture were those known as Francis I, Henry II and the three Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. One can get an idea of all French periods in furnishing by visiting the collection in Paris belonging to the government, "Mobilier National," in the new wing of the Louvre.<br /><br />It is always necessary to consult political history in order to understand artistic invasions. Turn to it now and you will find that Charles VIII of France held Naples for two years (1495-6), and when he went home took with him Italian artists to decorate his palaces. Read on and find that later Henry II married Catherine de Medici and loved Diane de Poitiers, and that, fortunately for France, both his queen and his mistress were patronesses of the arts. So France bloomed in the sunshine of royal favor and Greek influence, as few countries ever had.<br /><br />Fontainebleau (begun by Francis I) was the first of a chain of French royal palaces, all monuments without and within, to a picturesque system of monarchy, Kings who could do no wrong, wafting scepters over powerless subjects, whose toil produced Art in the form of architecture, cabinetmaking, tapestry weaving, mural decoration, unrivalled porcelain, exquisitely wrought silver and gold plate, silks, lovely as flower gardens (showing the "pomegranate" and "vase" patterns) and velvets like the skies! and for what? Did these things represent the wise planning of wise monarchs for dependent subjects?<br /><br />We know better, for it is only in modern times that simple living and small incomes have achieved surroundings of artistic beauty and comfort. The marvels of interior decoration during the classic French periods were created for kings and their queens, mistresses and favored courtiers.<br /><br />Diane de Poitiers wished perhaps only dreamed and an epoch-making art project was born. Madame du Barry admired and made her own the since famous du Barry rose color, and the Sevres porcelain factories reproduced it for her. But how to produce this particular illusive shade of deep, purplish-pink became a forgotten art, when the seductive person of the king's mistress was no more.<br /><br />If you would learn all there is to know concerning the sixteenth century furnishings in France read Edmund Bonneffe's "Sixteenth Century Furniture."<br />It was the Henry II interior decoration and architecture which first showed the Renaissance of pure line and classic proportion, followed by the never-failing reaction from the simple line to the undulating over-ornate when decoration repeated the elaboration of the most luxurious, licentious periods of the past.<br /><br />One has but to walk through the royal palaces of France to see French history beguilingly illustrated, in a series of volumes open to all, the pages of which are vibrant with the names and personalities of men and women who will always live in history as products of an age of great culture and art.<br /><br />The Louis XIV, XV and XVI periods in furniture are all related. Rare brocades, flowered and in stripes, bronze mounts as garlands, bow-<br />Knots and rosettes, on intricate inlaying, mark their common relationship. The story of these periods is that gradually decoration becomes over-elaborated and in the end dominates the Greek outline,<br /><br />The three Louis mark a succession of great periods. Louis XIV, though beautiful at its best, is of the three the most ornate and is characterized in its worst stage by the extremely bowed (cabriole) legs of the furniture, ludicrously suggestive of certain debauched courtiers who surrounded the Grande Monarch.<br /><br />Louis XV legs show a curve, also, but no longer the stodgy, squat cabriole of the overfed gallant. Instead we are entranced by an ethereal grace and lightness of movement in every line and decoration. Here cabriole means but a courtly knee swiftly bending to salute some beauty's hand. So subtly waving is the curving outline of this furniture that one scarcely knows where it begins or ends, and it is the same with the decorations exquisitely delicate waving traceries of vines and flora, gold on gold, inlay, or paint in delicate tones.<br />All this gives to the Louis XV period supremacy over Louis XVI, whose round, grooved, tapering straight legs, one tires of more quickly, although fine gold and lovely paint make this type winning and beloved.<br /><br />Corner of a Drawing Room, Furniture Showing Directoire influence A delightful bit of a room. The furniture, in line, shows a Directoire influence. The striped French satin on sofa and one chair is blue, yellow and faun, the Brussels tapestry in faded blues, fauns and grays. Over a charmingly painted table is a Louis XV gilt appliqué, the screen is dark in tone and has painted panels.<br /><br />The rug, done in cross-stitch, black ground and design in colors, was discovered in a forgotten corner of a shop, its condition so dingy from the dust of ages that only an expert would have recognized its possibilities.<br /><br />From Louis XVI we pass to the Directoire, when, following the Revolution, the voice of the populace decried all ostentation and everything savoring of the superfluous. The Great Napoleon in his first period affected simplicity and there were no longer bronze mounts, in rosettes, garlands and bow-knots, elaborate inlaying, nor painted furniture with lovely flowering surfaces; in the most severe examples not even fluted legs! Instead, simple but delicately proportioned furniture with slender, squarely cut, chastely tapering legs, arms and backs, was the fashion.<br />In fact, the Directoire type is one of ideal proportions, graceful outlines with a flowing movement and the decoration when present, kept well within bounds, entirely subservient to the main structural material. One feels an almost Quaker-like quality about the Directoire, whether of natural wood or plain painted surface.<br /><br />With Napoleon's assumption of regal power and habits, we get the Empire (he had been to Rome and Egypt), pseudo-classic in outline and richly ornamented with mounts in ormoulu characteristic of the Louis.<br /><br />The Empire period in furniture was dethroned by the succeeding regime.<br />When we see old French chairs with leather seats and backs, sometimes embossed, in the Portuguese style, with small regular design, put on with heavy nails and twisted or straight stretchers (pieces of wood extending between legs of chairs), we know that they belong to the time of Henry IV or Louis XIII. Some of the large chairs show the shell design in their broad, elaborate stretchers.<br /><br />The beautiful small side tables of the Louis and First Empire called consoles, were made for the display of their marvelously wrought pieces of silver, hammered and chiseled by hand, "museum pieces," indeed, and lucky is the collector who chances upon any specimen adrift.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-7354656596335473569?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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Look carefully at the room, which you intend doing over. Cannot you, unaided, find out why all of your efforts, some of them expensive ones, have failed to make it attractive?<br />You say that the moment you enter your room you have an impression of confused disorder pervading the whole plaque. Has the mantel too many things on it, and are these objects placed without any plan as to orderly, balanced arrangement? This is true in most cases where the general impression made by a room is one of disorder. Perhaps your mantel ornaments are neither beautiful nor interesting, and are unrelated in shape and color to the other decorative objects in the room.<br /><br />Until amateur decorators learn to make the mantels in their rooms the keynote of their decorative schemes, it is wise not to experiment beyond the rule of three ornaments. These must be absolutely in character with the other furnishings. That is, your Colonial room is not the place for French ornaments, nor your French room the place for Colonial ornaments and clock, unless you have made yourself so familiar with the characteristics of the styles that you. Recognize related periods and can therefore combine them. In a room with very inexpensive furniture and hangings use equally inexpensive ornaments. In every case harmony is beauty.<br /><br />Suppose you continue the analysis of your room by asking yourself if it has too many things in it to be "restful"? Have you, perhaps, used furniture, which does not go together as to shapes, color of woods or the materials used as upholstery? Have you too many "spots" in the room? By which we mean, are there too many figured materials with different designs and colors, used as hangings and for furniture coverings? Is your figured material, chintz, cretonnes or brocade, all of one design and coloring, but have you used too much of it, so that the effect is confused and un-restful?<br /><br />Have you figured and several-colored wallpaper and a chintz with different design and cpk oring? This is a mistake. It is possible to get wallpapers and chintzes to match if you insist on everything being figured. But remember that you’re figured hangings will look their best with plain walls and only one or two pieces of furniture covered with the chintz or brocade.<br /><br />Is your room small and have you made the woodwork a sharp contrast in color to your walls? You will find that in any room, to paint the woodwork the same color as walls adds immensely to the appearance of its size.<br />If the thing that you object to in your room furnished with attractive up-to-date furnishings is shiny black walnut wood-work, of the days of our grandmothers, have some one sand-paper the whole of it and you will be amazed by the result. Under that varnished finish is a charming, dull, sable-brown.<br /><br />Is it possible that your room, which is puzzling you, so would look better if there were no pictures at all on the walls? Is your room really wrong or are you ill and for that reason unfit to judge fairly? There are, no doubt, moods in which, for example, bare walls rest the nerves. There are other moods, which find one grateful for the diversion of pictures. These are points to have in mind when arranging rooms for those who are kept to the house by illness.<br /><br />Are your large pieces of furniture so placed as to give the appearance of balance to your room? And have you provided yourself with a sufficient number of easily moved pieces such as small tables and chairs, so as to form "groups" which suggest that human beings are expected to live in and enjoy this room!<br /><br />Is your desk where the light comes over your left shoulder to the page you are writing? Are the lights in the room where they will be of most use? Can you enjoy your open-fire and at the same time have a good light to read by? If you play cards can you light the table and also the hands of each player? Has your room for informal use books and enough of them! Books and an open-fire are the ideal foundation for a home-like room.<br /><br />If the room under consideration is a bedroom, and you do not want to modify its character, have you provided not only a bed but also a sofa of some kind on which to rest during the day?<br /><br />Is the "cold" atmosphere of this room you want to alter due to the lack of a few bright flowers? Do you love music and have you many musical friends and yet does your home lack a piano? If you are really a lover of music a piano is as much a part of your home as your desk is a natural feature in your sitting room.<br /><br />See to it that your home, your rooms each one of them expresses the tastes of the family. This is how you make "atmosphere" It is wise to furnish slowly. Haste is responsible for most mistakes. Begin by owning good shapes and color-combinations, and as you can afford it, discard your things of no intrinsic value for beautiful shapes and colors with value.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-1936903266218813241?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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In a measure, the materials for hangings and furniture-coverings are determined more or less by the amount one wishes to spend in this direction. For choice, one would say silk or velvet for formal rooms; velvets, corduroys or chintz for living rooms; leather and corduroy with rep hangings for a man's study or smoking-room; thin silks and chintz for bedrooms; chintz for nurseries, breakfast-rooms and porches.<br /><br />In England, slipcovers of chintz (glazed cretonne) appear, also, in formal rooms; but are removed when the owner is entertaining. If the permanent upholstery is of chintz, then at once your room becomes informal. If you are planning the living-room for a small house or apartment, which must serve as reception-room during the winter months, far more dignity, and some elegance can be obtained for the same expenditure, by using plain velveteen, modern silk brocades in one color, or some of the modern reps to be had in very smart shades of all colors.<br /><br />If your furniture is choice, rarely beautiful in quality, line and color, hangings and covers must accord. Genuine antiques demand antique silks for hangings and table covers; but no decorator, if at all practical, will cover a chair or sofa in the frail old silks, for they go to pieces almost in the mounting. Waive sentiment in this case, for the modern reproductions are satisfactory to the eye and improve in tone with age.<br /><br />If you own only a small piece of antique silk, make a square of it for the centre of the table, or cleverly combine several small bits, if these are all you have, into an interesting cover or cushion. Nothing in the world gives such a note of distinction to a room as the use of rare, old silks, properly placed.<br /><br />The fashion for cretonne and chintz has led to their indiscriminate use by professionals as well as amateurs, and this craze has caused a prejudice against them. Chintz used with judgment can be most attractive. In America the term chintz includes cretonne and stamped linen. If you are planning for them, put together, for consideration, all your bright colored chintz, and in quite another part of your room, or decorator's shop, the chintz of dull, faded colors, as they require different treatment. A general rule for this material bright or dull is that if you would have your chintz decorate, be careful not to use it too lavishly. If it is intended for curtains, then cover only one chair with it and cover the rest in a solid color. If you want chintz for all of your chairs and sofa, make your curtains, sofa cushions and lampshades of a solid color, and be sure that you take one of the leading colors in the chintz. Next indicate your intention at harmony, by "bringing together" the plain curtains or chairs, and your chintz, with a narrow fringe or border of still another color, which figures in the chintz. Let us suppose chintz to be black with a design in greens, mulberry and buff.<br /><br />Make your curtains plain mulberry, edged with narrow pale green fringe with black and buff in it, or should your chintz be grey with a design in faded blues and violets and a touch of black, make curtains of the chintz, and cover one large chair, keeping the sofa and the remaining chairs grey, with the bordering fringe, or gimp, in one or two of the other shades, sofa cushions and the lamp shades in blues and violets (lining lamp shades with thin pink silk), and use a little black in the bordering fringe.<br /><br />If you decide upon very brilliant chintz use it only in one chair, a screen, or in a valance over plain curtains with straps to hold them back, or perhaps a sofa cushion. Whether chintz is bright or dull, its pattern is important. As with silks, brocaded in different colors, therefore never use chintz where a chair or sofa calls for tufting. A tufted piece of furniture always looks best done in plain materials.<br /><br />In using chintz in which both color and design are indefinite, the kind that gives more or less an impression of faded tapestry, you will find that the very indefiniteness of the pattern makes it possible to use the chintz with more freedom, being always sure of a harmonious background. The one thing to guard against is that on entering a room you must not be conscious either of several colors, or of any set design.<br /><br />The story of the evolution of textiles (any woven material) is fascinating, and like the history of every art, runs parallel with the history of culture and progress in the art of living, physical, mental and spiritual.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-454405517439641848?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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Candlesticks, lamps, and fixtures for gas and electricity must accord with the lines of your architecture and furniture. The mantelpiece is the connecting link between the architecture and the furnishing of a room. It is the architect's contribution to the furnishing, and for this reasons the keynote for the decorator.<br /><br />In the same way lighting fixtures are links between the construction and decoration of a room, and can contribute to, or seriously divert from, the decorator's design.<br />It is important that fixtures be so placed as to appear a part of the decoration and not merely to illuminate conveniently a corner of the room, a writing desk, table or piano.<br />In planning your house after arranging for proper wall space for your various articles of furniture, keep in mind always that lights will be needed and must be at the same time conveniently placed and distinctly decorative.<br /><br />One is astonished to see how often the careless placing of electric fixtures upsets the actual balance of a room. Therefore keep in mind when deciding upon the lighting of a room the following points: first, fixtures must follow in line style of architecture and furniture; second, the position of fixtures on walls must carry out the architect's scheme of proportion, line and balance; third, the material used in fixtures brass, gilded wood, glass or wrought iron must contribute to the decorator's scheme of line and color; fourth, as a contribution to color scheme the fixtures must be in harmony with the color of the side walls, so as not to cut them up, and the shade should be a light note of color, not one of the dark notes when illuminated.<br /><br />This brings us to the question of shades. The selecting of shapes and colors for shading the lights in your rooms is of the greatest importance, for the shades are one of the harmonics for striking important color notes, and their value must be equal by day and by night; that is, equally great, even if different. Some shades, beautiful and decorative by daylight, when illuminated, lose their color and become meaningless blots in a room.<br /><br />We have in mind a large silk lamp shade of faded sage green, mauve, faun and a dull blue, the same combination appearing in the fringe combination not only beautiful, but harmonizing perfectly with the old Gothic tapestry on the nearby wall. Nothing could be more decorative in this particular room during the day than the shade described; but were it not for the shell pink lining, gleaming through the silk of the shade when lighted; it would have no decorative value at all at night.<br /><br />In ordering or making shades, be sure that you select colors and materials, which produce a diffused light. A soft thin pink silk as a lining for a silk or cretonne shade is always successful, and if a delicate pink, never clashes with the colors on the outside. A white silk lining is cold and unbecoming. A dark shade unlined, or a light colored shade unlined, even if pink, unless the silk is shirred very full, will not give a diffused, yellow light.<br /><br />It is because Italian parchment-paper produces the desired glow of light that it has become so popular for making shades, and, coming as it does in deep soft cream, it gives a lovely background for decorations, which in line and color can carry out the style of your room.<br />Figured Italian papers are equally popular for shades, but their characteristic is to decorate the room by daylight only, and to impart no quality to the light, which they shade. Unless in pale colors, they stop the light, absolutely, throwing it down, if on a lamp, and back against the wall, if on side brackets. Therefore decorators now cut out the lovely designs on these figured papers and use them as appliqués on a deep cream parchment background.<br /><br />When you decide upon the shape of your shades do not forget that successful results depend upon absolutely correct proportions. Almost any shape, if well proportioned as to height and width, can be made beautiful, and the variety and effect desired, may be secured by varying the colors, the design of decoration, if any, or the texture or the length of fringe.<br /><br />The "umbrella" shades with long chiffon curtains reaching to the table, not unlike a woman's hat with loose-hanging veil, make a charming and practical lamp shade for a boudoir or a woman's summer sitting-room, especially if furnished in lacquer or wicker. It is a light to rest or talk by, neither for reading nor writing.<br /><br />The greatest care is required in selecting shades for sidewall lights, because they quickly catch the eye upon entering a room and materially contribute to its appearance or detract from it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-6034652953692462365?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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Every Interior Designer has to learn how to price their services. You have to do this so that you can give proper estimates to your clients. This will be invaluable to you as a service provider.<br />Many people find this to be a very difficult process because they don’t want to over price their clients, nor do they want to lose money on the deal. This can be very frustrating and stressful. However, if you know how to break down the costs it gets a lot easier, and helps you break it down to the client so that they are comfortable.<br /><br />Since every job is different, every invoice will be different as well. There are different types of invoices that you should have. They each require a different layout and outline. This makes it easier to break down later for calculating the costs.<br /><br /><strong>Costs and Labor</strong><br />This type of invoice is for designers that have to hire outside contractors to help with the work. (Usually when you need to hire people to do drywall for construction work etc)<br /><br /><strong>Costs</strong><br />This type of invoice is generally just for the costs of the extra furniture and accessories or lighting fixtures that are needed. It also covers the agreed upon extras like paint and wallpaper.<br /><br /><strong>General</strong><br />This is the type of invoice that only covers your prices as the designer. It deals with the work that you do alone. This invoice is always included with one of the others. When trying to decide how to put a value to your services alone, that is pretty much up to you. It is best not to price yourself too high in the beginning because you are not a bankable name yet. There are two ways to charge your clients.<br /><br /><strong>Hourly</strong><br />This method is best for small or simple projects because they are more difficult to price on a per project basis. If you are a starter, you should start yourself at around $15-$20 an hour. At least until you establish yourself in the field. Once you are established you may charge as much as you’d like.<br /><br /><strong>Per Project<br /></strong>This is generally reserved for projects of a larger scale. These are the projects that require the hiring of contractors and various others to help you. Since there is so much work involved, you cannot expect to charge by the hour.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/56087477986580115-1497949831551443566?l=homedesigned.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
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