I have had potential clients say to me upon receiving my contract for interior design services: “I know and can order from people who sell furniture. My wife knows how to buy furniture.”. So, what’s the point? So, what does such information have to do with the designing of an interior?  In reality – nothing. Furniture is only about 7 % of a designed residential space. And yet, so many people think interior design is the buying and selling of furniture. To them, if they have new furniture, they have a new space.  In viewing the inside of such a house, you will often find a few pieces of furniture in other wise bare rooms, but they can tell the world how savvy they are because they got “such a deal” on the furniture purchase and how much money they didn’t spend.  So what about the other 93 % of the space? Doesn’t it count for anything? How does such behavior reflect their priorities, life style, and personality? Their doing such is much like their saying we don’t eat out because my wife knows how to buy groceries.

So, you say, your wife knows how to buy furniture. Does that mean that she has training and experience as a purchasing agent? She knows how to deal with manufacturers, shipping companies, and delivery firms?

She is familiar with the selection, grading, treatment, construction, assembly, and finishes for wood furniture?

She knows what is good design in the style of furniture?

She knows all of the various materials available, types, and methods in padding upholstered furniture, how such relates to comfort and longevity, and which is best for each individual piece of furniture? What are standard features and what are special or custom made?

She is familiar with all of the fibers, weaving, patterns, colors, and weights of fabrics and which are appropriate for what type of furniture and how they are to be seamed, finished, and treated.

And, of course, she knows what is the best design of furniture to fit into the composition of the room for the best aesthetic results.

So, if you have all of these contacts for furniture and your wife has all of this knowledge, experience, and savvy, why are you contacting an interior designer for just one element of a designed interior?

And, what does  buying furniture “wholesale” have to do with the planning, selection, and types of lighting used for natural and man made light in the room,  the construction, materials, and finishing of wall floors, and ceilings,  the designing, selection, materials, placement, and installation of windows, doors, and other construction features, the size, selection, placement and finishing of moldings, trims, et cetera, the treatment of windows, choosing the fiber, weaves, colors, patterns, and installation of floor covering, the genre, quality, and selections of the art and accessories in the room, knowing how to use line, form, mass, color, and texture for everything in the space to plan and execute a complete aesthetic composition for the room.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and not in the price. You usually get what you pay for. Why should you go to a fine restaurant where you can select, be served, and enjoy eating a delicious meal ( and you don’t have to do the planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning, or dishes) when you can go to a grocery store?

Food for thought.

The colors that we see are determined by the light that reflects off of a surface.  If all of the light is reflected off of the surface, what we see is white. If all of the light is absorbed by the surface, what we see is black. The colors that we see in between are determined by the chemical composition of the surface on which the light shines. Since the beginning of civilization, mankind has experimented and sought to find chemical compositions to produce colors to expand our expression of aesthetics. And the search still continues. Color is a big part of all physical objects in existence.

Colors are determined by the laws of physics. Colors are totally physical. They have no non-physical elements, traits, or characteristics. Yet, as human beings, we attribute emotions and psychological traits to our reactions to them. As such, we project our reactions on to colors and behave accordingly. Color is a very big factor in human behavior.

Which brings us to the color black. In theory, one could say that black and white are not colors because they don’t reflect colors, but how else would you describe them?

Coco Channel said that every woman should have a little black dress. And there are a lot of women still wearing black dresses to dress up events. The primary color for men’s tuxedos is black. There are social events described as “black tie”. Black is thus used for chic fashion and formality.

Black is a very popular color for women’s under garments  and stockings and is promoted for it’s sex appeal. It is suggested that such black items make a woman alluring, desirable and feminine. Black is sexy.

Religious orders often use standard black uniforms for their personnel to give an air of dignity and seriousness. Black limousines are used much the same plus as a symbol of money and status. College caps and gowns used for graduation ceremonies are traditionally black. Black is serious and dignified.

Black is in our culture considered the appropriate clothing for funeral wear and is often used as being associated with death. There have been times in our culture when there was an industry exclusively for mourning attire. The disastrous plague that killed much of Europe was known as the black death. Bad and depressing feeling are often described as black moods. When certain living organisms die, they turn black. Black is death.

Black is used some times as a “catch all” in some situation, especially clothing, because it is a”neural color” and thus goes with every thing. Black is often used in maintenance places because it”doesn’t show dirt” and thus is easier to maintain. “In the black” is used to describe a business that is making money and profitable. Black is versatile.

Black is thus classified as a color that is chic, fashionable, serious, sexy, formal, dignified, goes with everything, doesn’t show dirt, mourning, versatile, and is still neutral and profitable. Can something be mourning and sexy at the same time? What a mouthful. Black is inanimate and is not affected by any of this. It’s all in our head.

Food for thought.

Aesthetic design is the creation, thinking, imagination, planning, and putting together of various elements and components to achieve a desired end result of beauty which is whole and complete and which is more than the sum of the individual parts.

For aesthetics, the elements are line, form, mass, color, and texture which are descriptive of all physical objects. Each of these elements has it’s own characteristics and reactions when used with the other elements. The results are determined by the laws of physics.

The most aware element is light followed by proportions.

How we perceive and react to aesthetics is determined by every aspect of our mind, body, emotions, DNA, experience, and anything else that makes up our existence. Emotion probably plays the biggest role for most people.

Over the course of the evolution of humankind, certain traits, characteristics, standards, and methods of what is beautiful have developed and formed and are most often found in classical art. We continue to explore and seek new levels of aesthetics. New discoveries, products, and inventions add to the potential of what can be done.

For residential interior design, this means that all of the above is applied to the walls, floors, ceilings, furnishings, and every other aspect of the space to achieve aesthetic results.

In general, most people spend a large amount of their income on where they live either as a mortgage or rent. It fulfills the basic requirement of shelter.Many people also spend a large amount of their income on cars. There is a need for transportation, but the amount of money spent on cars goes way beyond that basic function. Some people spend more of their finances on cars than they do on their housing. What does such say about their priorities in life? To them, a residence is shelter, but a car is a social-economic statement, a status symbol that one can show to the world, being “in” with what is the latest fashion and design, and what’s new. It matters not what the rest of my life is like, look at my car! In some parts of this nation, one is evaluated by the car one drives.

Eating is required to survive. We all have to do it to live. We have to have a certain number of calories, nutrients, vitamins, minerals, et cetera to meet this basic need. Our physical health is affected by the food we choose to eat. Our body is literally what we eat. Yet, think about it. What is primarily taken into consideration in fulfilling this basic  need? Taste. We primarily base our food choices on taste. We choose to eat food that we like how it taste to us. We will seek to fulfill cravings for certain flavors. We spend hours shopping, cooking, using different  recipes. methods of cooking, seasonings, ingredients, et cetera. Are all of these resources expended for nutritional value? No. Not to fulfill our basic nutritional needs, but because we like the way it taste to us. Such is the way most of us live.

So what does all of this comment have to do with residential interior design? We expend resources up and above what is needed to fulfill our transportation and our nutritional needs. What happens when it comes to our needs for shelter. Is all that we do to primarily fulfill that need? Or is our residence just to be a financial investment with all expenditures to be exclusively on a financial returns basis or a service station where we eat, sleep, and dress?

For human beings, a residence should be more than a shelter. It should be our home. It should be the base from which we go out into the world and to which we return from the outside world. It should be our haven and refuge. It should be our place of emotional and behavioral expression. It should be where we live and have our being in the fullest meanings of the words.

If we do what we do for transportation and food, would it not be of merit to use the same approach for our residence? The physical need for shelter and other wants and desires can both be satisfied.  The principles of choosing different ingredients, methods, and results for food can also be applied to our residential interior. If you want your house to be  a social-economic status symbol, that can be done. If you want to show the world your level of design and taste, that can also be done.

You have to decide what are your priorities in life and how do you want to experience your basic needs on this planet? Think about it.

Food for thought.

Have you ever thought of the inside of your house as an environment? It is such.

Behavioral professionals say that our environment affects our mental and emotional state of being as well as our physical daily activities. We are probably not aware of this influence. Have you every looked at your home’s interior and thought about how it affects you?

What is where you live to you? Is it a home or a residence? Is it your base of warmth, security, and love or just a place to fulfill the physical necessities of existence? Is it a sanctuary to let loose and be free from the demands and requirements of the outside world or just a place when there is no where else to go?

The financial advantages of home ownership is often listed as one of the reasons for it. Do you feel that you get non-financial advantages in your place of living?

Pride is often listed as an emotional reward for a house. Are you proud of the place you live and always look forward to going there and being there? Are you happy with what they see when people come to visit you?

Businesses, institutions, places of worship, stores, places of entertainment, restaurants, et cetera all put a lot of resources in their surroundings to make the experience there fulfilling. Is it not worth the same expenditure of resources to make our home environment the same?

As an extreme, some people treat their residence much like a service station only for people instead of cars. They use it as a place to eat (fill up with gas), a place for bodily functions and hygiene (rest room), sleep (rest area), et cetera. Other people go to the other extreme where their residence is the major factor in their non-business life. It is a palace or expression of economic-social status to be protected and preserved and only secondarily for their use (You can’t sit in that chair! It’s an antique!). Where do you put your self on this scale?

It is wise for every one to evaluate the effect their residential environment has on their physical and non-physical behavior and to expend the necessary resources to make that environment the best it can be? Be those resources physical, financial, mental, or emotional resources. Where are you on the matter?

Food for thought.

The dictionary  defines furniture as articles used to make a room usable. Which sort of says it all in a nut shell. Basically, there are two things to consider in the selection of furniture.

The first and foremost is function. What is the purpose of the pieces of furniture and what is it to do to make this room usable for the people using it? What are the activities that will take place in this interior space? What type of people will be using this space? What sizes are the occupants? Are they tall and slender or short and big? What are their ages? What kind of clothes will they be wearing? Will they be all of one type or many types? What are their ages? What physical characteristics should the furniture have to accommodate the occupants? Should seating be soft and comfortable or firm and rigid? What should be the angle of the back and arms and and how high should they be? How high and deep should the seats be? What are the storage requirements of the room and how is that need best achieved? How practical should the furniture be for daily use, longevity, cleaning, maintenance, et cetera? And what is the financial value of the furniture taking into consideration it’s initial costs and how long it will be used?

Almost all furniture in general is made to accommodate many different types, sizes, functions, and ages of people and is mass produced for a mass consumer market.  A small portion is made for more specific uses and characteristics. The biggest deciding factor for furniture factories is financial – costs of materials, labor, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, selling, taxes, et cetera – with little thought given to the questions in the previous paragraph. The smaller and more specialized the maker and the higher the price, the more likely a higher quality to the piece and thought to the many other details.

The second thing to consider is the flavor, personality, ambiance, looks, et cetera of the furniture and how such  fulfills it’s role in the room. What are the colors, types of fabrics, patterns, materials, finishes, sizes, and styles selected? Is everything to be new, antique, previously owned, what you have, or a mixture of many kinds? If you think of furniture as food, these choices are what would give the food it’s flavor and make it taste good and satisfying.

If you plan and execute well these two things, your furniture should be pleasing, lasting, comfortable, and functional for many years. It should not grow dull and routine, but become more pleasant and enjoyable with the years.

It is an interesting observation that in the design and construction of residential spaces, there is a very general name given to a room and construction is based and executed by size of lot, total square footage of structure (most often determined by price per square foot), plumbing, HVAC, windows, doors, shape of house, style, most economical placement of rooms, et cetera. In other words, instead of planning what activities will take place in a room and what furniture sizes, shapes, and placements will best fit those needs and designing a room as such, the room is built and the furniture has to fit into it which is to me a sort of backward approach. Instead of form determined by function, function has to fit predetermined form. Such is why most rooms don’t look put together. The furnishing have to fit the room and the room doesn’t have to fit the activities and furniture. The biggest mistake most people make in this area is size. They put too many pieces of big furniture in too small spaces. It looks out of balance and is  uncomfortable to move around in such a space. The other bad thing many people do is putting too many pieces of furniture together. How many times have you sat at a crowded dining table where you were jammed close to the people on either side of you and hit the table and chair legs getting in and out or had to maneuver around pieces of furniture to move about?

Have you ever been to someone’s house and there was a piece of furnishings which was totally inappropriate and out of place and upon commenting about it you were told that they have to have it because: We got that when we first got married or that it belonged to my grandmother or some other such reason?

As a financial and intellectual exercise make a column of all the monies spend in a life time on home furnishings and how long they last vs a column of all the monies spent in a life time on cars and how long they last.

As in many of life’s decisions, emotional is used over intellectual.

Food for thought.

One sees in various media, paint stores, hardware stores, and other places information about colors which are advertised as new colors, colors of the year, et cetera. Due to the chemical composition of the elements that make up the materials of which the reflection makes the color, new colors are are constantly being discovered. Such is the situation since mankind started using colors. It is always good to have more colors available which gives us more choices in the situations where we use colors. The question to be asked is – what is the best color to use for the design? Is the new color the best for the design or is it more fashionable? Do you even like the new colors? Will the new colors become dated and out of fashion? New colors are an important factor in clothing, cosmetics, fabrics, et cetera. We don’t change our residential interiors as often as we change the clothes, cosmetics, and fabrics we use. Our residential interiors should be designed to last for decades and not to be changed seasonally or yearly as are things like clothes and cosmetics. Well designed interiors become classics and not dated. How important is it to you to be fashionable in the choice of colors for your residential interiors? Because something is new does not necessarily make it good design. It merely means it is new. You have to decide what is most important to you and what reflects your personality and lifestyle.

Selecting a color is more often an emotional than intellectual choice.

Food for thought.

As I drive around residential areas in St. Louis and observe internet news from around the nation about residential construction, finances, marketing, new home developments, et cetera, One thing stands out. Many of the new family residences look the same regardless of their geographical location. They have only one outstanding design element for the street view- a double garage door. What does it say when the front door is back around a corner?

It is my general way of thought that the front people entry should be the welcoming and focal point on the front of a residence. Double garage doors don’t cut it. I have no doubt that such is done for construction, costs, space, and other business reasons. But what is the result? We are getting a cookie cutter result where they all look the same. Do you feel good and comfortable living in such a house? What else do you do that is just like everyone else? Where is the beauty and individual personality of double garage doors? Are we becoming a nation of clones?

Food for thought.

We did it!