When decorating or making decorating decisions for new homes, it is important to remember that your decisions will be a part if the home for a long time – unless you can afford to re-decorate every few years. Before purchasing any furniture, paint colors or accessories consider your lifestyle and how you plan to live in the home. Also, throw out any pre-disposed notions of your old home; since the new one is structurally different. This is when you need to be open-minded and creative. Take your time and don’t rush and by all means don’t be influenced by friends, family or trends (unless you absolutely love the ideas).
The most important matter of concern when designing or planning interior design for new homes is to build an environment that caters to your specific needs. Creating a space that is accommodating to each person’s lifestyles is the general principle of new home design.
This may seem like very unusual advice concerning interior design for new homes especially coming from someone who is working within the design industry; but there is good explanation for this reasoning. A large, open space without viewing or visualizing any furniture content within that space is quite easy to get a little carried away with while making structural changes.
Try to get an idea of the type of furniture style you will want. If you already have a specific style be sure it will fit in the specific areas of the new home. Some furniture might be too small for large rooms.
Paint color should not be decided until you get all your items (furniture, fabrics accessories, ect.) together and finalized. Painting the wall color before deciding on the furniture could be costly if it does no work with he furniture colors.
Wallpaper is another choice that you might reconsider using while building interior design for new homes. Again, removing wallpaper and resurfacing the surface is often times quite a headache that can be avoided by using other alternatives for creative wall finishing. A great alternative for wallpaper that adds a great texture to the wall surfaces would be a finishing technique such as faux finishing, sponging, or stenciling. These choices offer you a variety of substitutes that are equally appealing and much easier to change then wallpaper. If you absolutely must have wallpaper in any of the rooms, try using a border to achieve the look you’re going for instead of covering the entire wall surface. If you prefer wallpaper be sure to follow the installation instructions fully or hire a professional.
Interior design for new homes can be a tricky process. There is a good possibility that the area pertained in your new home will be slightly larger or smaller then the space in your previous home. It is this reason that planning placement and theme of each space in your new home is so vitally important to successful interior design of new homes. Be sure to measure widths of furniture and doorways before moving day comes in order to avoid hassle while getting the furniture into your new living space. Take careful notice of any moving activity that occurs into and around your new home. Careless moving errors can disfigure floors and walls and create flaws in your new house before you have even begun living there.
Placement of furniture in new homes is one of the key aspects of unique interior design for new homes. If a room is very large you may want to consider making several seating arrangements rather than spacing the pieces out to fit the room. And separated seating groupings can give more privacy for reading and conversation away from the rest of the room activities.
August 19, 2010
Home Design Sense – New Home Decorating
August 5, 2010
Custom Home Design – Important Floor Plan Considerations by Design Alternatives
During the development of your custom home design, there are numerous floor plan features that should be considered. Maximizing the enjoyment of your custom home can be accomplished by devoting ample thought to key areas of the overall floor plan. Areas of consideration for your custom home design should include and open layout concept, ceiling heights, traffic flow, recreational areas, sight lines and exterior views.
Becoming a key feature of almost every custom home design, an open floor plan concept allows better flow between spaces. A good custom home design floor plan will maximize the useful square footage of the custom home while also creating a sense of special separation. One way to achieve this effect is implementing half walls as a design element between rooms. Maximizing the open concept for your custom home design can also be done by separating each space with a change in floor treatments. The open concept can also have some influence on how the ceiling heights affect the whole design.
Varying ceiling heights or changing the design elements of the ceiling can also create an open feeling throughout the custom home. Tall ceilings and vaulted ceilings are popular trends used to create the open concept of the custom home design floor plan. It is common to see ceilings in great rooms achieving heights of 20 feet either by vaulting or 2-story space. Additionally you will find ceiling heights of 9 to 10 feet in kitchens, dining rooms and bedrooms of new custom homes.
Particularly in an open concept custom home design, the floor plan must cater to the overall traffic flow throughout the home. Single story custom homes typically have bedrooms adjacent to a family room or media room. When designing these areas, Design Alternatives also makes sure too much traffic flow doesn’t cross over one another since the kitchen is usually located in proximity of the family room as well. Although the importance of traffic flow is often neglected in custom home design, experienced designers will also give much consideration to the location of stairways in the overall traffic flow scheme.
Home technology and home theaters have also increased the necessity and importance of recreational areas as a key aspect of custom home design. Adequate thought must be given to not only identify where the television screen will be located, but also how the furniture will lay out around the home theater speakers and components. If the recreational area is not attached to the kitchen, consideration must also be given to including a wet bar as part of this floor plan concept.
As previously mentioned the open concept has become an increasingly important feature of new custom home design. By creating an open floor plan, it opens up sight lines between spaces and to the outside. A quality custom home design incorporates wall openings and doorway locations to utilize critical sight lines. Limiting sight lines not only creates a mundane space, but will also make the whole house feel smaller due to the visual obstructions. These sight lines should open up all the way to the exterior surroundings as well.
Locating the house on the building site is just as important as the custom home design itself. Care should be given in considering how the sun will enhance the natural lighting throughout the home. If there are certain views that should be maintained, window type and positioning are also critical features which need to be planned out. Design Alternatives Custom Home Design incorporates all these important aspects when designing each and every floor plan. Your dream home is a big investment, so your custom home design should be completed by a designer who knows how to maximize all these important features.
