After Photo




Before Photo


The Story Behind the Design – Part 1
You may think that being an interior designer requires only making tasteful selections and a little creativity, but there is much more to it than what meets the eye. A friend of mine has a daughter majoring in Interior Design at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. I got a big chuckle from her comment about her daughter’s journey through college. She said that getting through college and keeping her grades up was a lot harder than people gave her credit for. “You know, Interior Design isn’t just “pillow picking”. There’s a lot more that goes into it than that, Mom.”
So, I thought that I would illustrate what goes on in the mind of the designer while making decisions in their client’s behalf. I will give you 4 examples of the many challenges in designing spaces, starting from an Accessorization ™ then going to a simple redesign with an Accessorization ™, next to a 3 step space plan, and finally to a complete revamp of an entire home.
The first example is the simplest and least expensive of all my projects. It’s called Accessorization™. My clients had moved into a model home. It was almost entirely beige. Nice to make an impression of cleanliness and openness, but after living there for a year or so, they felt that they needed a punch of color to liven it up. Ah… my favorite thing- adding COLOR!
As you can see in the before photos, the sofa is beige, the walls are beige, the window treatments are beige, the shutters are an off white and it continued into the kitchen with white cabinets, beige granite countertops, and white tile backsplash and flooring. To resolve this dilemma, we chose rusty red tones as our accent colors. Red is a color that is used most often in restaurants for a few good reasons. It increases one’s appetite, heightens one’s sense of smell, and creates excitability. All are great reasons to use rusty red in a great room. Eventually, we will be adding color to the window treatments, too.
If you would like to read parts 2 and 3 please go to http://thestorybehindthedesign-part2.blogspot.com and http://thestorybehindthedesign-part3.blogspot.com

Before – Very Beige After – Just a punch of color added