Calder Red for a Palm Springs Family Room
INSTUDIO Design Directors have an annual design direction meeting in Palm Springs, California with clients who purchased a furnished vacation condominium. Each year the clients replaced existing furnishings with a combination of mid century, contemporary, vintage, local and used furniture, art and accessories to match their personal style. The clients developed a palette of sandy [...]
Design Direction for the Green Room
In movies set designers take artistic liberties when developing interiors for real and fictionalized stories to make us believe in the characters that are portrayed on the silver screen. INSTUDIO Design Directors used their imagination to develop the story of an urban movie loving couple who decided to turn their small home media room into [...]
Contemporary Custom Lighting with a Vintage Vibe
SOMA, or South of Market in San Francisco, has been known for cultivating artistic talents for decades. Creativity can be seen in galleries, shops and manufacturing businesses where interior designers source one of a kind items for their clients. INSTUDIO Design Directors frequent The Malder Company where a wide range of custom lighting design, services [...]
Design Direction for a San Francisco Remodel
Living in a recently purchased house for six months to a year can often be the best way for homeowners to figure out what is needed to mold their house into a home. A San Francisco family of four found a house that suited them but did very little to it except for a change [...]
Can’t get enough of that funky STUFF
After finding a parking space across the street, INSTUDIO interior Design Director Samuel Fleming Lewis dropped into stuff for the first time. For decades, 150 Valencia has been an interesting odd place to buy old or used furniture from a long time San Francisco moving and storage company. Now, within the huge warehouse of stuff, [...]
Clearly Captivating Design & Décor
Developed in the 1930’s transparent thermoplastic was used as a lightweight shatterproof alternate to glass. Lucite, Acrylic, Plexiglas, Perspex were the early names given to the then new clear material now commonly referred to as polycarbonate by manufacturers. Industrial, furniture and interior designers continue to explore the use of plastic products for their unique ability [...]
Sustainable Furniture from Cisco Home
Sustainable furniture conjures images in one’s mind of artless boring utilitarian pieces developed by tie dye wearing tree huggers intent on saving the planet. You can erase that image when you visit San Francisco’s Cisco Home Hayes Valley location. The stylish furniture store draws you in with visually pleasing arrangements of art, unique case goods, [...]
Samuel Fleming Lewis gets Pinned
INSTUDIO interior Design Directors show their avid interest in all things related to art & design by utilizing instudio-sf.com and social media sites. By exposing artists, products, ideas, designs, history, images, small local shops or global manufacturers the goal is to let those interested in design or potential clients see what the Design Directors see [...]
Evolution of the Tolomeo Lamp
In 1987 Italian lighting manufacturer Artemide introduced the contemporary classic Tolomeo table lamp designed by architects Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina. In 1989 the Tolomeo table/task was given the Italian industrial design award “Compasso d’Oro” for achieving the perfect marriage between design and engineering. The lamp has become a global icon. Over decades a [...]
A&G Merch of Brooklyn NY now in SF
No need for San Franciscans to fly to NYC and take the subway to Brooklyn, A&G MERCH is now in the Castro! While searching for accent tables and accessories to complete a design project INSTUDIO Design Directors happened into A&G MERCH. There they found cool retro style sofas and chairs accented with the latest in [...]
INSTUDIO gets INSIDE THE DESIGN
Everyday products that we recognize as global icons for their beauty, efficiency, reliability, innovative qualities or stunning design are featured on the Science Channel program INSIDE THE DESIGN. Within a 30 minute program three classic designs are explored. Viewers are given a glimpse of the production of enduring products, their history and design development. Manufacturing [...]
San Francisco Loft Living
Decades ago New York City artists, actors and the avant-garde pioneered loft living. Creating a new way to live these people made their own rules by converting warehouses, manufacturing spaces and industrial buildings to spacious light filled dwellings and work spaces. The first lofts had the challenges of developing kitchens, bath rooms and heating systems. [...]
Ask INSTUDIO Interior Design Directors
With the changing light and climate we plan to spend more time at home during the fall season. The winter holidays are rapidly approaching and often thoughts are geared towards entertaining family and friends. This brings to mind starting a few decorating and design projects to make ourselves and our homes a bit more inviting, [...]
INTERIOR DESIGN QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Design Plus Consignment Gallery & the Interior Design Directors of INSTUDIO come together to present a free public discussion and demonstration of creative interior design solutions for the home. Design Plus offers a plethora of gently used home furnishings, art and accessories. Match your design style whatever it is with items from Design Plus and [...]
Get off the Chair & Design your Room
October already and before you know it the holidays will be here. Family and friends will soon be knocking at your door. Now is the time to spiff up your interiors with a little paint, some wallpaper, a new rug, hardwood floors, tile, crown molding, a new furniture arrangement, new window treatments, and maybe some [...]
CULTURE, COMPOSITION, COLOR & COMFORT
Why does Buddha seem so serene? Is it secrets of relaxation and meditation? Is it the placement on a dark polished wood chest? Is it the warm glow of the lighting? Or does the juxtaposition of the abstract art beyond Buddha create a calming vignette that pleases the eye? These questions and many more will [...]
Contemplating New Interior Design?
Interior Design is more than just moving your furniture into a room and expecting it to reflect how you live and your personal style. How the furniture is arranged determines not only how the room is used but how we interact with family friends and pets. This is where a good furniture plan overrides design [...]
Be a Design Rebel with a Cause
Developing personal interior design style can be a rebellious act in that it takes strength of character to ignore design trends to create rooms that reflect who you are. Finding your style requires looking at furniture, art, lighting & accessories from various sources. While the internet and established furniture stores can provide foundation furnishings what [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Ingo Maurer Lighting, Sculptural Works of Art
Lighting by Ingo Maurer is experienced as art that provides illumination. He was always among the first to experiment with new lighting technologies that included cable & halogen, now with light-emitting diodes. His work can be described as artistic, sculptural, humorous, imaginative, futuristic, global & magical. By encouraging you to see light in a different [...]
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 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 [...]
