Infloormation

As more and more people work from home, finding space for a home office has gotten more important. If you have a spare bedroom it’s easy to add an office to your living space but if you don’t, where can you set up without interrupting regular living space?

One great option is a formal dining room. You already have a large table for working, and plenty of chairs. The simplest way to make the conversion is to set your laptop on the table and get working.

You can be as basic or as complex as you want. Do you need file space? One simple solution is to pick up a rolling file cart at your local office supply store. Want more? Look for a wooden file cabinet that coordinates with your dining room furniture and will fit in a corner.

Need space for office supplies? If possible, try to find a drawer or cabinet in your kitchen or dining room buffet. Internet access and printing is easy with today’s wireless options. Does your dining room lighting meet your needs? If not, pick up a floor lamp to add the brightness you need.

If you find yourself using the office enough that it’s time to get a comfortable office chair on wheels, be sure to protect your dining room floors. While it may make a great office, you don’t want to do permanent damage to your formal dining room flooring.

When you’re ready for a family gathering, simply move the “office” to another room out of sight, and you’ll be ready to entertain.

Are you having trouble deciding on the right layout for your living room? Sometimes it’s difficult to see the full design of a space. One way to help you look at your home with new eyes is to take photographs. Step back to give the broadest view or use a camera lens to include the entire space in one shot.

Once you do this, you may find that something that looks good close up doesn’t work as well from a distance. This room is a good example.

The sofa and art work very well together. The mix of neutrals with a few pops of color creates a warm and inviting feel. The concrete floor is an effective choice for a modern space, and with that cool grey flooring, an area rug really makes a difference.

Just as this photo shows what works well, it also shows the design mistakes. There are two in this room: the choice and placement of the area rug and the placement and accessorizing of the coffee table.

Picture this room with a lighter area rug in a warmer lighter shade, and positioned with the length running parallel to the sofa. Add a dark wood coffee table with a shape similar to the one in the photo but with fewer accessories.

With a more limited budget, simply turning the rug and table 90 degrees and moving them closer to the sofa would be a great improvement. But whether you want to make a large change or a small one, taking a photo gives you the insight to make a room what you want it to be.

One of the most common decorating mistakes homeowners make is having all the furniture hug the walls rather than take advantage of the whole space. This room shows an extreme example of this situation.

The light wood floor sets a wonderful tone. The window trim and the room’s molding carry the warm wood theme, as does the furniture. With just a few changes and additions, this room can meet the potential provided by the architectural decisions.

A colorful area rug would suit this room well. Consider a combination of greens and blues to reflect the view out the windows. A cream sofa and dark brown chairs would echo the wood and wall shades while providing contrast.

The row of wood furniture doesn’t show off the potential of each piece. Breaking up the four pieces and moving them around the room would be a better use of both the function and look of this furniture. It would also be nice to keep that right window unblocked by pieces such as the television.

The art seems like an afterthought. Bringing the pieces down to eye level could help. With the large view through the windows, art could be eliminated or kept to abstracts to keep distractions to a minimum. Customized wood blinds to match the wood frames or the flooring would provide light and privacy management without compromising the look of the windows or their vistas.

Take a moment to step back and look at each room in your home. Does your furniture and accessory placement take full advantage of your home’s potential?

Would you like to use discoveries you’ve made on your travels to personalize your home but you’re not sure where to start? Let’s take a look at one approach that works well.

This room carries off a number of elements from other countries while still feeling cohesive and inviting. Careful initial planning created a space that is well-designed for a variety of styles.

To begin with, the wood floor invites flexibility. This floor has a rich mid-tone that will work with any other type of wood or materials such as metal and fabric. The simple coffee table is a good fit with the floor. Having a tone similar to the floor and simple lines, it allows accessories to play the most important role.

The large upholstered furniture pieces also provide a simple background to the more intriguing international elements. The light cream walls and black trim suit the space well.

One very smart decision by these travelers is focusing on more than art and accessories with their purchases. The light fixture, carved chair and bench in the hall are all from other countries. The light fixture is the most striking – catching the eye and setting the mood. The chair is a nice foil to the sofa and coffee table with its strong character. The light lavender seat complements the purple/pink cushion on the ironwork bench. Thanks to the other neutrals in the room, this room can and does carry a number of different colors.

If you like to travel and want to bring special pieces home, plan your décor to support the interesting souvenirs from other places that will make your home unusual and inviting.

This dining room is striking yet simple. The clean lines and limited color palette help you appreciate every element.

Let’s start with the flooring. Choosing a light neutral tile allows a great deal of flexibility for decorating. The white walls also open up the options.

The decision to go extremely modern works well in this room. The dark ebony wood table and chair frames bring the rich tone that’s needed to keep the room anchored. The white leather chairs are simple with just enough design to them to add interest. Then there’s the big finish – red.

By adding red to two chairs, some artwork and the three bowls sitting on the table, the room moves from bland to daring immediately. This choice tells you that the home’s owner doesn’t want to play it safe.

It might be tempting to carry more red into the room, but it would be gilding the lily. By choosing only a few pieces in the exact same shade of red, the statement is modern and clean without becoming boring.

Although the look is contemporary and fresh, the tile floor and wipe-down leather chairs make this room easy to maintain even after quite an elaborate dinner. It is also child-friendly. The simple look opens up a rich variety of possibilities for table linens and serving elements. It would also be really tempting to kick it up even further with a bouquet of red poppies to add to red’s pop in the room.

Most of us will never get to see our kitchen this way, but there’s a lot to learn about design by taking this bird’s eye view.

To start, although this kitchen is not large, it’s easy to spot the “work triangles” this kitchen offers. There’s an easy transition from the shelves to the sink to the dishwasher on the middle right. The fridge is not in view but its position just to the left as you face the stove puts it in easy reach.

The other great thing about this kitchen is the counter space. With the upper cabinets limited to two tall pieces in the corners, there is plenty of room to spread out and work. Wood has become a popular counter surface lately, and the extra-deep counters to the right do double duty for kitchen work and family snacks.

The floor is vinyl, and very effective in terms of bringing the room together. The range of tones it displays echoes the light cabinets and counters. Most of the color comes from the array of vegetables by the sink, but the yellow tube lights and pink toaster add personality to the room.

The high ceilings and openings into other rooms keep this kitchen from feeling cramped, and the design makes the most of the space and the light available. Altogether this kitchen is well designed and appealing for any cook.

Whether you like blue or not, prefer traditional or contemporary, this room can give you clues to make your own home’s design work better.

A lot of smart decisions went into this room. In spite of the strong blue tone, the designer did not make the mistake of keeping other colors out of the picture. The floral curtains work with the white trim to keep the blue from giving the room an underwater feel. Instead, the blue is an inviting fresh tone against the white.

Pattern choice provided another carefully-thought-out design element. The brocade light blue walls is a classic for this traditional style and is muted enough to feel almost like a solid color. The strongest pattern comes from the rug, which is also the strongest and darkest shade of blue. The rug’s pattern helps it connect to the upholstered furniture, with light blue flowers that echo the tones of the chairs and sofa. The lightest pattern shows up on the chair toward the front of the photo, with a white background and just a few light blue flowers to link it to the room. With a careful balance of tone and style, it can work well to have three or more patterns in one room, even with a primarily one-color palette like this one.

Take a look at the proportions of this room. The ceiling is high but enough features reach toward it to make the room fit into the vertical as well as horizontal space. Most of the furniture is centered in a nice conversation space in the room with just a few pieces along the walls to keep everything connected. Finally, the daring touch of a clear coffee table eliminates the choppy look a solid table would create on the rug.

Are there lessons you can learn from this room? Remember the smart decisions here as you decorate your own spaces.

What makes this room so inviting? A number of elements combine in harmony to create a feeling of calm and simplicity.

The room itself has a natural charm. The wood floor is a lovely medium brown with personality coming from the dark brown graining and edges. This is a floor with style. Its strength is supported by the furniture choices. The black and white furniture means that the only color in the room itself comes from the floor.

Take a look at some of the other architectural elements that add to the character in this room. The French doors make a beautiful focal point. You have a combination of doors, surrounding glass panes, and wood frames and molding. Beyond the doors, the railing and view invite you to step onto the balcony. The green view joins the floor as the only other color in this room.

The fireplace and crown molding carry through on the feel of this space. Look up, however, for the most inviting element in the space – the chandelier. This elegant feature has lines that almost seem too delicate to hold the unusual glass globes. It has a vintage look with a sculptural style. It feels as if it is original to the house, but a number of stores these days carry rescued architectural elements from the U.S. and other countries, so it may have been added later.

This room is definitely traditional and every architectural feature works well with every other. But the furniture is totally contemporary. This eclectic approach works because of the simple approach to design. Lines are clean and both furniture and accessories are kept to a minimum. The final result is a space that balances warm and cool, traditional and contemporary, to welcome visitors.

If you want to make a small space feel bigger, take a few tips from this dining area. Barely the size expected in an eat-in kitchen, this space provides a comfortable and stylish entertainment space for four.

The first key to expanding the feel of this room is limiting contrast. Without a dramatic shift in color or tone that catches the eye, there are no stopping points to indicate limited space.

If you’re going to eliminate contrast, be sure to add texture. From the semi-gloss bamboo floor to the shiny white chairs, pendant lights and glass decanters in the small bar, texture is a good substitute for contrast to keep this room interesting.

The next step is exposing as much floor as possible. There are no rugs to cover the appealing floor choice, and the buffet space and bar are built-ins rather than free-standing furniture. This keeps the amount of floor space covered to a minimum. Imagine this room with a full buffet in the back. The room would seem much smaller.

Finally, expanding slightly beyond the supposed boundary of the room provides just enough additional space to handle that shelf and provide comfortable seating for four. An open space feels roomier. Add some coordinating artwork and pendant lights and you have a cohesive and inviting use of very limited space to create a valuable area to entertain a few friends.

The sophistication and style of this room stands out so that it takes more than a moment to realize that this is actually a basement space.

One reason for the high-end feel of the room is the dramatic staircase. The homeowners removed the standard stairwell and walls to create an inviting entry to their ground-floor space. However, other than this change, the rest of the room was redesigned on a tight budget. Let’s take a look at how this was done.

First, the flooring enhances the space but is less expensive than many other options. By choosing solid surface commercial-style flooring, costs were kept low and maintenance is easy. However, the high gloss turns the flooring into a strong and positive design element. First, the shiny floor mirrors the stairway above it, almost creating a sense of artwork in the reflection. The darker trim around the wall makes the floor feel almost like an area rug and adds another nice design element to compensate for the minimal use of furniture.

The wall of contemporary artwork uses simple prints matted in a number of matching store-bought frames. The layout turns this low-cost choice into another inviting and contemporary design element in the room.

There is an interesting conversation area defined by a zebra throw rug ringed by a white sofa and loveseat. Coffee table and accessories are simple but dramatic and stay with the black and white theme. Bright white walls also create a sense of light in this basement space.

With this much personality and daring, it’s easy to look past its basement origins to recognize this space as an intriguing addition to any contemporary home.