Physical has five traits, characteristics, or descriptions. Line, form, mass, color, and texture.

Light, reflecting from surface is color, is the most important one as it determines what we see.

Mass is size. The sizes of physicals, in relation to each other, determine proportions.

Proportions can most easily be described, or analyzed, as a pleasing balance for aesthetics.

All parts must be balanced equally for the highest level of aesthetic pleasure.

This principle is not adhered to in much of residential design and construction because of unawareness or other factors given a higher priority.

If you consider yourself serious about the beauty of your residential environment, inside and outside, you must adhere to the priority importance of proportions.

Look around. What do you see? How do you react? How does it make you feel?

What is the status, or role, of proportions where you live?

Food for thought.

Status has been a realistic aspect of animal behavior since the beginning and an important part of human civilizations.

Over time, as society became more equalized, that ascertainment became less resolute.

In contemporary society, finances, education, politics, and accomplishments trump ancestry in hierarchy.

Different segments of culture now express status reflective of themselves more freely than adhering to just one criterion.

Regardless of who, what, when, where, or why of status expressed, such, in and of itself, does not assure parallel levels of aesthetics.

Yet, to some people, the history of their status is, as is sometimes expressed, second only to oxygen.

People seek to express what is more important and satisfying personally.

It’s your choice as to how your life is manifested.

Food for thought.

Art is not just for museums or wealthy patrons.

Art is basically available for anyone who seeks it.

Much can be known about a personality by the art chosen, or not, for their personal living environment.

One’s understanding and appreciation of art is expressed by one’s reaction to it.

The highest level of art captures a time mind of their creation.

Financial worth of artworks is not always congruent with aesthetic appreciation.

Social-economic status does not necessarily determine aesthetic quality artworks.

Ownership is not required for the appreciation and enjoyment of aesthetics.

Artworks of merit don’t all have to be signed originals.

Artworks complete the design of residential interior living spaces.

What expressing your personality artworks have you chosen for where you live?

Food for thought.

Luxurious living is often desired as an epitome experience while inhabiting this planet.

What determines the attainment of this highest status for living?

Star architecture and designer labels, in and of themselves, do not necessarily manifest luxurious living.

Status, itself, is not a factor in pleasure of the senses.

Price, as a factor in quality, does not always determine luxury.

Comfort, function, fit, convenience, pleasurable, personal, completeness, abundance, quality, and aesthetically pleasing are characteristics of what determine a luxurious living environment.

Individual choices determine the physical and priority of each.

One size, way, or anything else does not fit all.

Luxury should be a desired quality when used.

What is your desired level of luxury for where you choose to live and how have you, or not, manifested it?

Food for thought.

Resources state that there are over 600,000 basic words in the English language with technical and cultural changes constantly adding more so that actual numbers are constantly changing.

All of these words are made from the same 26 letters.

These words came into being from the growth, advancement, and cultures of different civilizations over history.

Words functioned communication and expressed their time and place.

While variables and different situations are relevant, the same cannot always be said for the options we choose to express our personal living environments.

The designs of residences, and their interiors, do not always grow and advance reflecting their time and place.

Many times, the designs of previous cultures are replicated.

What needs are fulfilled by choosing these directions?

It is of the highest importance that words used in our current culture be of their time and place for maximum effectiveness.

Can we apply these same standards to our personal living environments?

Thousands of words were made from 26 letters over time.

What results have been made, from available options, for where we personally live?

Does where you choose to live express your time and space?

Food for thought.

Any client embarking on building, remodeling, or making changes to their residences has many choices to make in achieving the optimum results.

What is the ultimate goal for undertaking this endeavor?

Do you want to be a sheep and follow the crowd by choosing current trends, what’s new, what’s traditional, what’s cost-effective, what’s least polluting, what’s least expensive, or what is quickest?

Do you want to design a marketable result for selling to a mass market sometime in the future?

Do you want to show the world your current, or desired, social, economic, prestige, or some other status standing?

Do you just want to satisfy your personal comfort and likes regardless of the results?

Or do you want to make a brave choice, by thinking outside the box, and design a residence that elevates the results to a higher quality and more advanced level of function, intelligence, aesthetics, creativity, and complete living experience?

These choices, and many others, are available.

What choices will, or did, you make for where you live?

The results of any design are determined by the intelligent use of the laws of physics and the principles of aesthetics.

Food for thought.

Most residential interior spaces, rooms, are based on some variation of the rectangle.

This rectangular shape can be manifest in virtually unlimited variations and sizes.

This specific shape has six planes.

The wall will be four of these planes. Various openings, doors and windows, will be cut into the walls and various additions such as cabinets, moldings, and light fixtures can be added. The finishing material, color, texture, and pattern are chosen.

The floor, the fifth plane, has to be built for weight and stability, finishing material chosen, color and texture selected, and the use of rugs decided.

Much thought, and input, is extended for these five planes to manifest the ambiance and function of the room.

The ceiling, the sixth plane, is usually painted white and ignored.

Why?

The ceiling and floor are basically the same area, and yet, one is designed with great efforts and planning, and the other is not.

The ceiling is often treated as the unwanted stepchild of a room.

The principles shown here can be applied to non-rectangular situations.

Many of the international residential interior design photographs, which come across my desk, have walls and ceilings expressed similarly so that the results appear as designed furnishings in a box.

Get out of your rut. Expand and explore traditional approaches. Use your intelligence for creativity and imagination.

If you want to experience the highest levels of beauty, think of rooms as six planes manifestations with each plane being an equal part in the final complete aesthetic composition.

How would you evaluate the ceilings, of where you live, for their overall contribution to the enhancement of your house?

Food for thought.

“People can’t see what you’ve got,” said an observer to someone who was putting a decorative brick wall in front of his house.

“She built her house so you can’t see it from the road“, was expressed by a woman’s neighbors.

What’s this big deal about passers-by seeing what message you are sending out to the world, from the roadside view, is to be seen as what you’re worth?

Most often, this position, which is completely different from curb appeal, is to “show” the world your financial and social status.

Why is it important to the people who do it, and what does it say about their personality traits and characteristics?

What needs does doing such fulfill for them?

For whom is a house to be designed and built? And, for what purposes, and activities, is it being built?

What part does the front facade play in the complete outside design of a house? Is it the only outside part to be designed?

If you are a whole, complete person, who is stable and comfortable with your financial and social status, you should have no need, or desire, to care how passers-by react when viewing your facade.

Houses should be designed and built, inside and outside, to the highest aesthetic levels for the functions of the structure and to reflect the personalities of the people who will use it.

What does the front of your house say about you? What does it mean to you? What are your reactions when seeing the front facades of other people’s?

Food for thought.

Constantly coming across my desk are what some interior designers would always, or never, have in their homes.

Some point out what looks outdated, and some give examples to update.

Present trends in colors, furnishings, desirable and undesirable features, additions, changes for appearances, and what raises or lowers the financial worth of a house in the current market are noted by professionals in the housing industry.

What new resources, techniques, requirements, and other options are available?

Many times, these guidelines are one hundred and eighty degrees from each other.

How is a layperson to digest this flood of information for personally accurate and usable information?

By asking pertinent questions of yourself.

Who are you, and where do you want to reside?

What are your current, short-term, and long-term financial options to obtain this goal?

What, while occupying this place, are your present-day and future lifestyles?

What personal expressions do you want for now and for years to come?

Do you prefer the ambiance in your living environment to be constant or to vary?

What, in order, are the priorities for where you live?

How long do you plan to live there?

Are positions opinions or validated by scientific facts?

Use your intelligence to research and evaluate the wheat from the husks to obtain what is needed for your decisions.

Using the guidance of professional services will be a more tranquil process and produce a higher level of quality results.

Food for thought.

For much of its existence, the aesthetics of residential interior design were primarily used as status and as exemplary for cultural refinement and taste.

For life as it exist on this planet today, such is not the case.

Cell phones, computers, electronic devices, climate changes, awareness of our environments, more understanding of the sciences of life, and many other factors have determined what are, or should be, more desirable goals of professional residential interior designing.

What is considered, or should be, is not just the beauty of our indoor living spaces, but the environments and activities of those people who will be in them.

What direction does it face in relation to the sun? What is the long-term pattern of the weather in the part of the world where it is to be built? How does such affect the natural and man-made lighting at all times for activities in these spaces during all hours and seasons?

What are the personality traits, lifestyles, and likes and dislikes of the people occupying these spaces?

What factors are to be considered for the comfortable and healthy control of heating, cooling, and humidity of this interior space?

What currently available physical materials and building techniques are best for this project?

What are the initial financial expenditures for the building and maintenance, upkeep, et cetera for the thereafter lifetime?

What are the emotional, intellectual, and psychological traits of these spaces and the affects of such on their users?

How does the geological and cultural placement of this structure fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is this world?

How does the chemical composition of natural and man made objects affect the physical health of its users?

How does this undertaking design affect global warming and the improvement and advancement of civilizations and people’s lives?

Smart homes are not some bugbear that is going to take control of our lives, but are a current, and growing, method of making the operations of our homes more efficient, more comfortable, more economic, healthier, and time-saving.

Smart houses also make where one lives a more beautiful life.

Food for thought.