I’ve been catching up on reading decorating blogs and magazines lately. One advantage of ploughing through a backlog of posts from recent trade shows and magazine feature articles looking for trends is that it clarifies whether what you’re seeing are passing fancies or a change in the zeitgeist. I believe this is definitely one of those moments of change. The way we decorate  is changing for a variety of reasons, from the economic climate and the resulting desire to make homes more cosy and comforting, to environmental concerns impacting the materials we use and how we use them, to the open-source do-it-yourself ethic of the internet generation. These factors are creating seismic structural changes in the decorating service industry, dictate what the furniture industry is offering, and are reflected in what the shelter mags and design bloggers choose to cover.

Let’s take a look at what zeitgeist-changing trends make a home sexy now:

1. Traditional upholstery details like deep button tufting, welting, and tiny nailhead trims are showing up on new eco-friendly furniture lines (the ones that use FSC-certified wood and latex or soy upholstery foams). They’re also using timeless texture-rich natural-fibre fabrics like (organic, naturally) cotton twill, cotton velvet, linen, or jute. Both the fabrics and the way they are used create contrasts of texture in a room.

2. Grasscloth, a wallcovering made of woven plant fibre, is a timeless eco-friendly choice for adding more gorgeous texture, this time to your walls. What makes it newly trendy – as with paper wallcoverings – is that grasscloth manufacturers have brought bold colours, metallic finishes, and graphic patterns to the party. The feature article on grasscloth in the June 2010 print issue of Style At Home demonstrates this beautifully (but isn’t on their website). Not recommended for damp rooms, and beware of vinyl imposters.

3. Something the high-end shelter magazines and blogs showing the homes of more ordinary people have in common are that the rooms showcased usually have highly personal mixes of vintage finds, family treasures, exotic souvenirs, and iconic designs – instead of matched furniture sets straight from a catalogue or showroom floor.  Why? They’re more interesting, soulful, and expressive to look at and to live with! On the ‘exotic souvenir’ side of this equation, watch for the ikat fabrics and mother-of-pearl inlaid tables that are making the world-traveller look feel fresh. However, what really makes this approach environmentally sound is that it’s using pieces that already exist, and that you will love for a lifetime .

4. What also looks fresh now isn’t the midcentury modern design that filled the pages of AT and Dwell a couple of years ago, but a new traditionalism and glamour (as noted at Apartment Therapy recently – not that I can find the link now in their labyrinthine maze of posts). This shows up in the use of metallic finishes (especially gold), generous draperies, traditional furniture shapes, and antiques as focal points. This doesn’t mean the rooms aren’t meant to be used for day-to-day living, like grandma’s parlour. It means people are using timeless decorating techniques to make their rooms feel cozy, warm, and rich.

5. The International Contemporary Furnishings Fair (ICFF2010) showings this week included a lot of cleverly designed pieces made from minimal materials – like Graypants’ Jupiter series pendant lamps, MIO-Culture’s pop-up baskets, and Ben Huggins’ Little Star table. All three objects are also shipped flat-packed; if you’ve ever been to Ikea you’re already familiar with the environmental rationale for doing that. Smart and sustainable sure sounds sexy to me.

6. The move toward handmade, handcrafted furniture and accessories (the New York Times noted that many of the ICFF2010 editorial award honorees shared this approach)  is so irresistable that sometimes even mass-produced plastic objects are being hand-personalized (as with the Oh chairs in the Umbra booth at ICFF). There are lots of reasons people are choosing handmade and personalized items, but I think most of them come back to authenticity and soulfulness.

Authentic, soulful, smart, warm, rich, interesting, expressive, and touchable – like the perfect mate, you’ll want to grow old with rooms designed using these ideas. And maybe make out in them just a little.

Remember my upcycled chandelier tutorial? I had listed the fruits of that project on Etsy, and a couple of the pieces were purchased by designer Robert Delpazzo of  iCrave Design in New York for “a little cafe project” he was working on. It turns out that the project was The Collective, at trendy ONE Little West 12th in the Meatpacking District. Everything in the space is made from salvaged materials, mostly sourced locally in NYC, and I recognize a number of the upcycled-art pieces as coming from other Etsy artisans. It’s a gutsy, artistic, and soulful slow-design concept in a world of interchangeable and boring bistros.

Interior of The Collective, MePa, NYC. See the green light fixture next to the graffiti wall? That's my SCOOPED chandelier, made of laundry scoops from the ReUse Centre! via Gothamist.

The interior design does look extremely busy in the preview photos that I’ve seen on the web – many commenters have been unkind, and one reviewer called it The Hoarders meet Metropolitan Home. However, I have a feeling that when you’re sitting in the space and it’s packed with people, you can’t see so much of it, and all the details that fight for attention in a photograph can be appreciated in a more intimate way. The lego-patched brick wall idea has gotten bloggers excited previously, and the styrofoam ceiling treatment is really ingenious. And you can’t argue with results: the design was inspired by both environmental and fiscal concerns, fully reflects that, and was completed for a fraction of the $2M budget typical of such projects. Judging by its reviews on Yelp, it seems it’s drawing the youthful, hip demographic that it targetted.

Here’s a roundup of articles I found about the space:

- New York Times‘ Home and Garden section

- Fast Company

- Gothamist (includes some very kind comments from restaurant patrons who describe the space as creative and inspiring)

- Martiniboys (didn’t like the decor but praised the menu)

- Zagat Buzz

- Eater

- Derek Loves Shopping

- Joonbug

- Haute Living

Lately, I’ve been really intrigued by Slow Design, which is a cousin of the Slow Food, traditional skills, and voluntary simplicity movements, and the Zen Buddhist concept of wabi-sabi. The published Slow Design Principles (Strauss and Fuad-Luke, see www.slowlab.net) are couched in academic language, and the case studies cited mostly involve the design of objects or artistic installations. However, the principles and practices of Slow Design are tools that are useful to sustainable designers, decorators, and artisans of all disciplines. To summarize (and loosely quote) that document’s main points:

Slow Design:

• facilitates ’slowness’ and provides a balance to the industrial-consumerist model of design.

• seeks to shift the user’s awareness and attitudes about materials, processes, time, and natural environment.

• reveals experiences and materials that are often missed or forgotten.

• strives for truthful, exposed use of materials and process (so the hand of the maker is visible).

• facilitates creative interaction between the user and the object or its location.

• makes users think about where the object came from, inducing contemplation & ‘reflective consumption’.

• allows the object to change, grow, or alter over time to reflect its history and usage, and continue to be used; and reflects its history prior to its current usage.

• comes from open-source, collaborative, transparent, and evolving processes.

• focuses on localness and community, through collaborations and co-design with the local community and local artisans, mapping and using local knowledge, reflecting local values & visual vernacular, and using affordable local materials, to give the finished design an authentic sense of place.

• celebrates diversity and pluralism by engaging a large range of stakeholders in the planning process. (For example, the charette process used in LEED building projects.)

• recognizes the urgent need for stewardship of the natural environment and resources, as well as honoring local knowledge and traditions, and encouraging engagement with place.

To try to illustrate what these ideas mean in everyday life, I brainstormed this list:

Slow Design is: Slow Design isn’t:

authentic                                                                    mannered, artificial, phoney

heirloom-quality                                                      semi-disposable

refurbished Victorian homes                                NeoVictorian subdivisions

modern (while respecting the past)                     like living in a museum exhibit

gardens                                                                          outdoor living rooms

rain barrels & watering cans                                     automatic irrigation systems

clotheslines                                                                  tumble dryers

timeless                                                                           trend-driven

cedar shakes                                                                 vinyl siding

handmade                                                                     machine-made

reupholstering & refinishing                                   buying new

Etsy                                                                                  Ikea

personalized and creative                                         impersonal and off-the-shelf

local                                                                                  imported

reduce, reuse, recycle                                                   buy, buy, buy

limited-edition or one-off                                            mass-produced

renewable                                                                      fossil fueled

So, what do the principles of slow design mean to you? What would you add to my list? How are you incorporating slow design into your home or decorating projects?

SCOOPED limited-edition pendant lamp, 1/20, colour: Spring, of discarded laundry detergent scoops, photographed without flash

SCOOPED 2/20, colour: Stripe, installed in its permanent home at Lucid Lifestyle

I’m excited to have recently added handmade pendant lamps created from upcycled materials to my portfolio. (Most materials are “downcycled”, degrading in quality and value, as they are recycled into new products – an oft-cited example of downcycling is the recycling of paper fibres from cardboard into office paper into toilet paper. “Upcycling” is the opposite of this, creating an object of beauty and increased value from a material that would otherwise be discarded.)

VESSEL:FLARE limited edition pendant light, 1/30, colour: Clear

While my creations are available in my Etsy shop, I’m only one person, and there’s a lot of discarded plastic and glass out there waiting for a new life. So, to celebrate Earth Day, I’m posting photos and instructions for creating your own lamps created from reclaimed materials readily available in your local thrift shops and reuse centres. (more…)

Formal Entry-Living-Dining area, After

In November, Canadian ReDesigners Association members from several Edmonton-area decorating businesses (including me) pooled their talents and resources to redesign and decorate a home for the Homes For Christmas Tour. This fundraiser benefitted the  St. Albert Senior Citizens Club, a not-for-profit that has been providing support services and programming for seniors in the community since 1975. (This was the Tour’s second year, six decorated homes were featured, and the tour ran Thurs Dec 4th til Sat Dec 6th, 2008.) Our team of volunteers worked fabulously together, and we are all so very proud of the transformation we made on a shoestring budget, without the multiple-major-retailler support that typifies other tours of this kind. So, I thought I’d share some of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos here.

(more…)

Staging has revolutionized the real estate industry by maximizing homes’ appeal and potential, drawing attention to selling features, and helping buyers to imagine the home as their own, so that homes are shown at their absolute best. Similarly, a green revolution is now sweeping new home builders as public awareness of global environmental problems, indoor air quality issues, and the need for energy and water conservation has become the new norm. The importance of this movement is underscored by recent estimates that our buildings are currently responsible for 35% of North American carbon dioxide emissions, and improving them will be the quickest and cheapest way to reduce North America’s impact on climate change. Sustainable staging brings the green revolution to the real estate resale market.

This is excerpted from my article, Sustainability and Staging (PDF), which introduces the principles of sustainable design, outlines the benefits of applying them in a real estate staging context, and provides a detailed checklist for decorators, redesigners, and stagers to use in greening their staging practices.

I am thrilled that this article will be incorporated into redesign and staging training provided by CRDA instructor Val Sharp. It is my wish that it be freely shared among interior decorators, redesigners, and stagers, so that sustainable best-practices will be quickly adopted within our industry.

(But please, don’t plagiarize it for your website. It’s bad karma. You may quote it if you ask my permission and provide a link back to this post. Thanks.)

Update (4 April 2009): If you have previously downloaded the PDF, you may have found it difficult to read and print due to the background graphic. The link above now leads to an updated, simpler version for your convenience.

Update (20 September 2009): I’m delighted that this article is to be reprinted in HomeStagersTODAY, the online publication of the British Academy of Home Stagers! [29 Oct 2009: find it in the Green Staging section!]

Urban Eco Chic, by Oliver Heath. This will be joining the books below on my reference / inspiration shelf shortly.

(this article was first published in January 2008 in vol.1, no, 1 of the ecoDomestica reDesign newsletter)

Here are a selection of the publications that inspire and inform my work. Enjoy!

Books:

- Alan Berman. “The Healthy Home Handbook: Eco-Friendly Design” (2001) …This practical, British guide to making eco-friendly choices for the construction and decoration of homes is wildly inspirational, with photos of sustainable interiors in a variety of styles from around the world.

- Kari Foster, Annette Stelmack, and Debbie Hindman. “Sustainable Residential Interiors” (2007) …The definitive reference book for North American interior designers on environmentally and socially responsible design principles and practices. Quote: “The finishes in a home can exemplify environmental responsibility, as well as reflect the inherent beauty of design.” (more…)

Redesign services are called different things, depending on which decorator is doing it and who trained them: redesign, staging, tweaking, one-day decor, no-cost decorating, use-what-you-have decorating, re-decorating. There’s a show on HGTV (both US and Canada) called “FreeStyle” that’s all redesign before-and-afters; this service has also been featured on “Decorating Cents” and “Oprah”, and in numerous newspaper and magazine articles (most recently, Real Simple’s May 2008 issue).

Essentially, redesigners use the principles of interior design to help their clients redecorate in a single day without buying anything new. Redesign clients may be blending families, merging households, welcoming a new baby, downsizing to smaller quarters, moving to a new home, preparing for a big party, or just feel like they’re having trouble pulling a room or rooms together. Staging a home for the real estate market is a subset of redesign, as well. (more…)