7 Floral Designs from a Bountiful Bouquet
Supermarkets, organic grocery stores and farmers markets offer flower bouquets which combine a bounty of seasonal greenery and flowers. For a reasonable price a large vase can be filled with leafy greens and flowers to add color to a room. Seven different floral arrangements were composed by the design directors of INSTUDIO using one $15.00 [...]
Design Enhanced by Color, Art & Accessories
A high-rise Condominium can be a blank slate of crisp white walls and beautiful new hardwood floors. The space is personalized by a thoughtful furniture plan that reflects how the homeowner intends to use the rooms. After the plan and furniture selection, color, art & accessories give the room personal style. INSTUDIO Design Directors thoughtfully [...]
Is More Really More?
Deciding when enough is enough is a choice determined by personal style and taste. A room enhanced with abundant layers of interesting extraordinary furniture, art, textiles, collections and colors can be a waking dream for someone who loves every piece used to compose the room. The same room can be a daytime nightmare to someone [...]
DESIGN PLUS CONSIGNMENT GALLERY
What happens to beautiful stylish well cared for furniture, accessories and lighting when a change in design style demands new furnishings or perhaps your existing pieces won’t blend within the new décor of a room? They go to a home furnishings consignment store like Design Plus that offers a responsible option for someone else to [...]
Using store bought furniture? Always mix, never worry
We all have our favorite retail furniture stores and websites. It’s easy to shop for furniture, lighting and accessories at places that are familiar because we consistently like their new offerings. It’s best to mix it up a bit to avoid interior design that looks more like a particular store or website and less like [...]
Compositions in a Room
Residential interior design and decoration is built upon four basic layers of elements within an overall composition that personalizes living space. The first layer is the Interior architectural space or room. The second is the defining details of the architectural space. The third includes floors walls and ceiling or the “shell”. The furniture plan and [...]
Experience Architecture & Design at the Museum
Furniture Design, Textile Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design & Lighting Design can usually be found at Museums of contemporary art. Curators of Architecture and Design focus their progressive thinking on practices across all design disciplines. Museums act as a time capsule for what was contemporary decades ago and what is considered cutting edge design today. [...]
Shelving Style
Shelving; you gotta have it. But, it doesn’t have to be mundane, it can make a statement. The Design Directors at INSTUDIO discovered some great wall systems by Flexform. They are distinctive, interesting, have great form, and most importantly, get the job done. Display, storage of items you need at your fingertips and a place [...]
Feng Shui inspires Artist William Rhodes
Artist William Rhodes Feng Shui Series brings together his journey as an artist. His dynamic works of art are composed of properties designed to create positive energy. Equally talented as an artist, craftsman and furniture maker his pieces in the Feng Shui Series defy such categories as painting, sculpture, furniture or accessory; the works are [...]
Orange You; Intrigued?
INSTUDIO Design Directors have been noticing orange in the homes of designers, as an accent color for interior design, in street graphics, as accessories, on both vintage and new upholstered pieces, as textiles and even as a fruit! There is always a good reason to add this lively color that knows no season to interior [...]
SWANK Venetian Glass Lamps from Dallas, Texas
INSTUDIO Design Directors can often be found searching local shops for interesting vintage lamps to complete design projects. Vintage lighting and lamps have individual styles that add unexpected shapes, colors or finishes to a room. In design that combines old and new furnishings Venetian glass lamps can look both contemporary and rare at the same [...]
Can your picture capture your Design Direction?
The gentleman’s suit is a well tailored classic glen plaid, his hair is neatly groomed. A trim mustache says that he may think a little out of the box. A pocket square tells us that he may like a few extra details to enhance his overall presentation. Posing in front of the trophy taxidermy says [...]
COLOR! COLOR! COLOR!
Color is all around us. Nature provides an envelope of color when we are outside. All colors are found in nature. Color is also the envelope of our interior spaces where we live and work. The Design Directors of INSTUDIO are constantly aware of the envelope of color in the development of an interior design [...]
Developing Design with Color, Scale & Repetition
Artist Andy Warhol was a master of using color, scale and repetition for visual imagery. Although best known for his silk screened celebrity images, his knowledge of fashion, interior design, photography and film making were combined to make him a universal artist. What Warhol can teach us is how to use color, scale, and repetition [...]
The Green, Green Glass of Home
Modern, contemporary or retro style rooms are enhanced by the use of vintage green glass vases, vessels or objects. Vintage green glass is green twice; first because of the color; second by the fact that it is given a new life by being used in fresh new design and décor. Green glass is affordable. Look [...]
INSTUDIO Design Direction SUMMER 2011
Summer brings to mind warm weather (unless you live in San Francisco), water, the colors of sand, blue skies, travel & outdoor living. INSTUDIO Design Directors are both artists & interior designers and for design inspiration we start our summer journey by looking through our studio window at lush green trees. Rather than relying on [...]
Are You Finnish Yet?
The architects of the modernist movement designed and produced simple classic furniture to complement the interiors of their sleek innovative buildings. Most of the furniture designers of the modernist movement cultivated classic designs utilizing steel & glass. Environment, materials & production methods influence the design development of architectural & furniture design. Finnish architect Alvar Aalto [...]
Seeing Vintage Desk Lamps in a New Light
Big desks & the lamps used to illuminate large work surfaces are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Small computers or laptops allow for smaller work surfaces both at home & the office. As work spaces have become less defined, old fashioned desk lamps from the 1940’s to the 1960’s begin to look like [...]
The Master Study
Artists will frequently study a great master by reproducing a master work themselves, thereby learning how the artist used composition, color, brush work, perspective, proportion, balance and interest to create their masterpiece. Many of the same tools show up in a well designed interior space: color, proportion, balance, interest and the overall “feel” (composition) of [...]
Take “A” Letter Antoinette
The set design of “Mary’s” apartment included the letter “M” as decorative art on Mary Tyler Moore television show of the 1970’s. INSTUDIO interior Design Director Samuel Fleming Lewis remembers seeing the graphic statement. The use of letterforms as art in design & decoration was etched in his mind for decades. Even letterforms that are [...]
Furnishings Follow Fashion in 60′s & 70′s Interiors
The 1960’s & 1970’s brought a revolution in fashion that inspired the young generation of the day to “Do their thing”. The buttoned down look of the 1950’s was replaced by a sense of self expression with Jumpsuits, Edwardian Collars, Medallions, Midi & Maxi Skirt Lengths, Tie Dye T-Shirts, Safari Jackets, Bell Bottom Pants, Turtleneck [...]
The Fine Art of Lighting Exhibited at ArtHaus
The interior Design Directors of INSTUDIO suggest keeping an open mind when considering resources for home design and décor. A shopping trip that leads you to all of the usual places for a particular item may leave you empty handed and uninspired. When looking for high quality unique lighting an art gallery may have exactly [...]
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Who Recycles Best of All?
Recycling centers across the country offer low cost materials to artists, crafters, and creative decorators. All of the interior Design Directors of INSTUDIO not only offer design services but produce art & craft projects when not developing design for clients at the office/studio. While visiting the architectural material recycling center Building Resources in San Francisco, [...]
Kuba Textiles as Natural Contemporary Art
Imagine having a fashionable wardrobe of special clothing that is handmade from natural fibers, each piece being artistically interesting, contemporary and detailed. An interesting wardrobe embellished with bold and graphic patterns. Wouldn’t you be tempted to proudly display your clothing on the wall as art? The Design Directors of INSTUDIO like to think globally when [...]
