From the Floors Up

Small Spaces Series – How To Decorate and Design a Tiny Bedroom – Part 2

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WINDOWS

Windows are one of the most reliable ways to work magic in a tiny room. First and foremost, try not to cover them up with anything. If you are going to use the floor space beneath them, choose items that are low profile and won’t obstruct any light. Harness the power of the natural light as much as possible because it has an airy quality not found in artificial lighting. Airy rooms seem bigger. Increase this effect by flanking the window with sheer drapes. The window will seem larger and the lightweight fabric will add visual volume to the room without weighing it down.

Opt for long, tall, sheer drapes and hang the rod high near the top of the wall. The long line will make the ceiling seem higher. Try putting two sheers on each side and bunching them together to increase the sense of size and volume around the window. It’s okay to make a small window seem much bigger in a tiny room. To add additional light, and a bit of whimsy at night, hang small, twinkly holiday light strands behind the sheer drapes.

COLOR

The use of color is an art unto itself. To keep it simple, though, let’s take look at a few basic concepts for visually maximizing a tiny space. Try selecting a palette that adds distinct color but is light and subtle. Crisp colors work well also. Avoid strong, dark colors as they will make the space seem much smaller than it is. Softer colors create a sense of flow, and they blur the hard lines at the edges and corners of the room so that it feels less restrictive. Furthermore, a low ceiling will seem higher and you can even paint the ceiling the same color if it’s not too intense. Lighter tints are also excellent for reflecting light. Options such as antique white, buttery yellow, and ballerina pink do wonders for opening up a room.  Especially in day light when pastel colors help reduce the harshness of direct sunlight.

GO BACK AND READ PART 1 – DECORATING TINY BEDROOMS – INTRO & CORNERS

Shutters Create Soft Mood

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Shutters

Window coverings can be one of the most challenging design choices in a home. Balancing light access, privacy, cost and design benefits can be complex. In the meantime, you may be living with sheets tacked to the walls with painter’s tape.

This space shows some of the advantages of shutters. The look is clean and inviting, and light is completely under your control. A simple adjustment of the louvers allows you to let in plenty of daylight without compromising privacy. And the light provided is soft and appealing.

This corner feels like a perfect place to settle on a summer Saturday morning. The white-on-white style is well suited to the filtered sunlight, and yellow-green accents keep the space feeling cool and clean. You can curl up and read a book – the light is just right – or talk with the person sitting in the matching chair on the other side of you.

Notice that there are just a couple of features in other colors. The dull silver of the labels is a good foil to the green, and the little turquoise-colored box on the top shelf pops gently in comparison to the other hues. Someone spent some time planning this corner, and the shutters provide just the right background for this design.

If you’re planning your window coverings, why not consider shutters? They can be custom-made to suit any size or shape of window, and provide a wealth of options in terms of color and materials. They make a great companion to almost any design, and can be a major contributor to the overall look and feel of a space, as this corner shows.

Choosing the Right Window Treatment

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18055454_SWhether you have just moved into a new home or are redecorating a room in your house, choosing the right window treatment can make or break your decorating scheme. There are so many options when it comes to treatments so you’ll need to do your homework to decide if you want blinds, shades or draperies.

Keep in mind the style of the house, your budget, the room the windows are in, and, of course, the windows themselves. Large draperies will look overpowering on small windows, while blinds on large windows may be overwhelming. Think about your color scheme when selecting the treatments.

You also want to think about how easy your window coverings will be to keep clean. Options for blinds include plastic, faux wood or aluminum. With regular dusting and an occasional wipe down with a damp cloth, blinds are fairly easy to maintain. If you pick heavy draperies they will need to be washed or dry-cleaned a couple of times a year.

Do you want your window treatments to provide privacy and block the light or do you want them purely for aesthetic reasons?

To get ideas look through home magazines, go through model homes, surf the web and look at what your friends have done. You definitely want a foundation of what you love before you start looking in stores.

Most importantly, measure, measure, measure! You don’t want to purchase a window covering, get ready to install it and then find out that it doesn’t fit or isn’t long enough.

Windows Instead of Walls

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There is a lot of talk about focal walls in decorating. What if you have more windows than walls in your room? Sun rooms and rooms with walls of windows can be tricky to decorate given you don’t have wall space as a focal point. In the case of too many windows, let the view outside be the star.

 

Garden rooms and sun rooms can have three walls of windows, leaving just one wall as a place to hang art or place a television. Place furniture in an arrangement that highlights both the view through the windows and the focal wall. Common arrangements of furniture right up against the perimeter will mean you are facing away from the view in a room full of windows—and not taking advantage of the view.  Some furniture that faces into the room is acceptable to create conversation areas.

 

Use flooring to designate seating areas in the sun room or garden room just as you would a living room. Often sun rooms feature both sitting and dining areas so rugs can help distinguish these two spaces. Ask your retailer about color stability in sunlight when purchasing flooring for a sun room or room with a wall of windows.

 

A wall of windows can be dressed with window treatments that allow you to control the light flow into the space. Curtains and shades, even when left open, will give the windows a more finished look. Coordinate these design elements with other colors and patterns in the room.

Did You Know That Window Coverings Can Be Green?

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And no…..we don’t mean the color green although you can get many Hunter Douglas window covering products in shades of green!

Hunter Douglas is the worldwide leader in creating innovative, energy-efficient window fashions that save valuable energy resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Significant energy efficiency improvements at the window began for Hunter Douglas with the invention of the Duette Honeycomb shades back in 1985. Air contained within the honeycomb cells proved to be an effective insulator, keeping heat inside in the winter and keeping it out in the summer. The huge success of the Duette brand has spawned other energy saving innovations including Silhouette window shadings, Vignette Modern Roman Shades, Luminette Privacy Sheers and Pirouette window shadings.

A new creation called Duette Architella honeycomb shades takes energy conservation to a whole new level. The patented honeycomb-within-a-honeycomb design forms 3 air pockets to dramatically reduce heat flow at the window. If installed in every window of every American home, these shades have the potential to cut our annual energy consumption by 2 1/2%! That may not sound like much, but it’s the equivalent of a 33% increase in fuel mileage for all passenger cars on US Roads – which would save about 450 million barrels of oil annually and reduce CO2 emissions by almost 200 million tons.

Hunter Douglas also has a corporate commitment to minimizing their own impact on the environment through an aggressive plan to reduce energy consumption by 15%, water usage by 40% and overall carbon emissions by 20% over a three year period.

Other green efforts from Hunter Douglas include financial support of the Arbor Day Foundation in its efforts to replant trees lost in US fires and to preserve dwindling rain forest lands. Their investment is expected to result in 15,000 new trees and help save over a million square feet of rainforest.

From products to processes to philanthropy, environmental responsibility is a core Hunter Douglas value. For the future of our children and our children’s children, they are indeed “Hunter Green”!

Call your local retailer today to find out how you can have Hunter Douglas “green” products in your home!

From the Floors Up

From the Floors Up blog was created with the goal of providing a destination for consumers, designers and those interested in the flooring, design, and kitchen and bath industries. Here you’ll find, current, accurate and informative information that is always just a click away!

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