Grandma said there is more than one way to cook chicken and Julia showed us many different cooking chicken results.

Environmental factors, such as cultures, traditions, times, locations, circumstances, and personal taste preferences, affect chicken cooking .

Additionally, kind of chicken, cooking method, preparation, seasoning, cooking time and temperature, serving, et cetera affect the ultimate goal of taste.

Yet, for all of the above, most people have favorable eating experiences with chicken on menus.

These approaches can also be applied to residential interior design.

One way of designing does not fit everyone’s personal life style.

The population majority will go for the designs that are most popular, readily available, and of the time and location of where they are.

These masses, like sheep, follow the crowd and come a part of it.

Some people, who are confident and strong, choose individuality, away from the crowd flow, in expressing their personal living environments.

Seeking unique, custom, personal, functional, and aesthetically pleasing environments for residential living spaces is par as is wearing custom made clothes.

Both the cooking of chicken and the designing of residential interior spaces are like recipes in that each of the multiple element choices involved is a part of the whole and affects the experienced aesthetic results.

How do you cook your chicken?

Food for thought.

With others added daily, the English language, throughout development, has used twenty-six letters to form over one million words.

Line, form, mass, color, and texture describe physical nature.

As we’ve done with our language, using creativity, imagination, and intelligence, there is no limit to what can be created and developed aesthetically for our lives.

When was the last time you had an “aha” experience with physical aesthetics?

How much of residential interior design today is a replication of past aesthetics, designed to sell, and lacks aesthetic quality?

Everyone uses words.

Everyone does not use aesthetics.

What aesthetics are manifest in your daily life?

Food for thought.

“The sense of what is fitting, harmonious, or beautiful, discernment” Random House

One’s personal choices.

Many generations ago, some people in the upper echelons of financial, intellectual, and social status in this country took it upon themselves to make known to the rest of the population what is “good taste”, and highly desirable, in one’s residence.

These standards took on many of the characteristics of snobbery.

In today’s world, good taste is not as prominent when relating to the selections of one’s home furnishings.

However, there are several characteristics of good taste which, when applied to today’s lifestyle, manifest a higher overall quality level of living results.

Always choose furnishings that are fitting and logical, regardless of the reason therefor, for their situation. And don’t treat common sense as an undesirable relative.

All parts and aspects of a space should manifest as completing the whole.

Always be discerning in your life choices.

Just as we make efforts to see that what we eat taste good, we should make the same efforts to assure that our home furnishings, regardless of their raison d’etre, are beautiful and reflect their time, place, and culture.

Any residence that shouts financial, social, achievement, or ancestry status or is flaunted, for any reason, usually is a trait of insecurity, lacking confidence, and incompleteness of the person who expresses it.

The use of snobbery should be carefully thought out before being expressed as to it’s desirability or merit according to your personal ethical standards.

Adhering to these principles may not benefit one financially, or otherwise, but it will nurture a higher, more pleasant, and enjoyable living experience and isn’t that what we all want in life?

Food for thought.

When selecting where you choose to live, what is your ultimate fulfilling goal and what resources are available for expenditure in reaching that goal?

How is your personality best expressed as self and seen by the world?

What are your intellectual and aesthetic positions, and what is the importance thereof for your lifestyle?

What chapter is this living space in the book of your life?

What is the financial availability, value, and relationship thereof to the level of desired quality?

What are the short and long-term requirements, desires, and goals for this disbursement?

What design, construction, and aesthetic manifestations best achieve this ultimate goal?

Do you want to blend in with and follow the popular masses crowd, or do you want to travel your own personal life pathway for this aspect of your life?

What is the merit of the above to you and what you do?

Food for thought.

Art: “What is beautiful.“

Science: “Systematic knowledge of the physical and material world”

Random House

Both are necessary for the completely successful manifestation of an interior design project.

Our mind conceives what we physically express.

Skills and talents use scientific knowledge for the construction and furnishings of residential interiors.

As the saying goes, these laws of science are “set in stone”.

We know how physical laws work.

How well do we know art?

Art is a mirror to the culture of its expression.

While certain principles have developed over the history of civilizations, mankind’s mental and emotional needs for beauty are subjective.

There are no laws “set in stone” for art.

How the subjective designs the physical determines the quality of beauty.

The two have to work together.

Who, or what, decides aesthetics in today’s society?

What roles do artificial intelligence and other advancements of knowledge play in our current and future concepts of aesthetics?

Are such possible capabilities available, or desirable, to replace the subjectivity of the human race?

Food for thought.

Quantity: “considerable or great amount”

Quality: “distinguishing, high grade, great excellence“

Random House

With numerous choices available when making purchases for many situations the question arises as to what level of quality to choose.

To be considered are what best fulfills the purpose, what level of quality is desired in fulfilling said purpose, length of duration desired, and best financial expenditures for wished to be attained results for said purpose.

These questions are of most importance when it comes to furnishing one’s personal living spaces.

One’s residential living spaces are not changed as often as one changes clothes.

What we do with where we live is a permanent decision that can last for years, decades, a life time, or centuries.

As a general rule of thumb it is a better life route to choose the higher road of quality.

Why?

The attribute of excellence makes for a more complete experience.

Monetary worth longevity is greater.

The mood of the environment is enhanced.

The intelligence status is higher.

Discernment is of superior quality.

While some of the population may not seek to obtain these qualities the choices you make in the selections of your residential living spaces make known to all who view it an image of your personality.

What do people see when within your living spaces?

What do you see?

What do you want to see?

Who is responsible for these choices?

Food for thought.

Nature has been around since the beginning with it’s laws of physics and principles of design evident.

People generally have a positive sense of well being and completeness when connecting with nature.

Trees, to me one of the most beautiful examples of nature, are extremely well designed and balanced with the aesthetics and science working together for the final result.

Some of the same design principles can be seen in our respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

Effort results are generally better when working with nature rather than working against it.

If the core value, the ultimate goal, of residential interior design is to experience an interior living environment which will enhance and nourish our best and most complete selves is it not of merit to combine the two for the highest quality level of livability?

This blog has always advocated and encouraged using both the laws of physics and principles of design for the creation of interior living spaces compositions.

Both of these approaches can be manifest from the smallest to the largest aspects of an inside living project.

There have been, and currently are, uncountable efforts in many fields and areas of study to discover, learn, and use what is nature.

There is, and continues to be, scientific evidence that our interior surroundings, consciously and unconsciously, physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and intellectually directly affects people.

This curiosity has been the basic raison d’etre for much of the advance and progress of civilization and life as we currently know it.

As you are inside any where how aware are you of nature and what you experience?

What are your reactions to such and what, if anything, are you going to, or not, do about it for the quality of your life?

Food for thought.

Square feet, number of baths, how many bedrooms, purchasing, renting, inheriting, house, apartment, condominium. existing, to be built, standard, custom designed, schools, location, price per square foot, taxes, insurance, condition, interest rates, current market, maintenance, et cetera.

These are some of the factors to be considered in making decisions about where one is to live.

It is basic to the existence of the human race that we must have shelter from the elements of the weather.

Beyond this necessary requirement what is the basic purpose of housing?

For many people finances are the biggest factor in making these decisions and are treated as such.

And for many people that is where they stay with basically all financial decisions being determined by long term financial appreciation.

In view of all of these factors what is the ultimate raison d’etre of a residence?

In the highest state of reality the only reason for the existence of residences is to live in them.

Residential properties without occupants are of little merit.

People who insist upon evaluating their residential living experiences through a financial lens miss out on the higher and more fulfilling quality of it.

Where are you and what is your thinking about where you personally choose to exist?

Are you living, or merely existing, in your residential spaces?

At the end of your life’s journey is your financial status going to be more important than your quality of having lived it?

Food for thought.

There are two approaches available when it comes to the furnishings for your residential interior living spaces.

You can choose to be a customer or you can choose to become a client.

When you only want to purchase furniture, rugs, window treatments, lamps, pictures, et cetera as individual objects you go shopping for those items at resources available and thusly becomes a customer.

When you want the all of the entire interior spaces including backgrounds and everything in the interior spaces to be designed as one complete aesthetic, functional, and personal whole space you hire a qualified residential interior designer to design and execute the desired results.

The two biggest deciding factors would probably be the levels of quality desired and the financing available.

As a customer one is limited to what is available for sale.

As a client with the creativity, talent, and imagination of a qualified residential interior designer there is no limit as to what can be designed for you.

Another important factor is how long you will be occupying said spaces and how important are the results are to you while living there.

When you are a customer the goal of the people with whom you will be dealing is to sell you what you want to buy regardless of what name or title they give themselves.

When you work with a qualified residential interior design you should have a written agreement with said designer specifying the desired results, the budget for what is to be done, and all specifications for compensation to the interior designer for said services so that their ultimate goal and purpose is to design, specify, supervise, and execute your project.

This agreement is binding and mandatory for both signing parties.

Sales people are generally knowledgeable of only in what they specialize and sell.

Qualified residential designers are knowledgeable about the many options, availability, qualities, accessibility, and choices for all aspects of the desired results project.

In both choices there are ethical, legal, moral, and quality aspects you may encounter as are in much of life’s activities.

How would you characterize your personal experiences and thinking in the choices made

in furnishing your personal interior living spaces?

Food for thought.

According to one of the most successful financial investors of our times the value received and not the price paid should be the deciding factor in making purchases.
And think of purchases not just for the present time situation but for the long term time situation.

This principle can also be applied very successfully to residential interior furnishings.

The quality, comfort, use ability, and lasting time are also value characteristics to be considered.

As how it taste is a factor in what we eat so should design aesthetics be a factor in the ambiance of where we live.

People will spend many tens of thousands of dollars for the thrill, status, bragging rights, and showing off of a new car, as if such were required or expected, but become defensive of such numbers when shopping for furnishing for their personal interior living spaces and instead option for sales, preowned, lower quality, and other sources of low prices.

How long do you keep and use your residential interior furnishings versus how long you use and keep a new car?

Well valued home furnishings, when properly maintained, will literally last and look good for decades.

There is a very wise old ism: Purchase cheap, purchase many times. Purchase quality, purchase once.

A wise quality purchase will almost always be a wise value one.

Think these thoughts when being bombarded with the constant advertisements of life.

What is your position and what are your choices when it comes to the prices paid and value received of the furnishings where you live?

Food for thought.