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☆ Low Ceilings Got You Down? Steal These Height-Boosting Tricks From Design Pros
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

RAISE YOUR GAME An all-white plan enlarges and brightens designer Ghislaine Viñas’ confining living room in her Bucks County, Pa., home. Photo: Jason VarneyIn the series How to Live With a Room You Hate, we ask design pros to solve everyday interior problems. THOUGH THEY CAN MAKE a nap-inducing bunk room or cottagecore Hobbit house feel more snug, low ceilings tend to be a real design downer otherwise. “They feel quite oppressive and limiting,” bemoaned Nicole Salvesen of the London firm Salvesen Graham. Not to mention a surefire way to thwart that coveted “light and airy look,” added New York City designer Ghislaine Viñas.

Persons: Ghislaine, Jason Varney, downer, ” bemoaned Nicole Salvesen, Salvesen Graham, ”, Ghislaine Viñas Locations: Bucks County, Pa, London, New York City

☆ Need More Closet Space? 6 Chic Interior Design Solutions
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-05 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/style/design/need-more-closet-space-interior-design-solutions-a283dc53

Persons: Dow Jones

☆ No Entryway? How Interior Designers Fake One
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/style/design/no-entryway-how-interior-designers-fake-one-f1426b67

Persons: Dow Jones

☆ Transform Your Gloomy Basement Into a Place You’ll Love to Be
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

BASEMENT INSTINCT New York designer Kati Curtis’s mantra: Add personality. Photo: Thomas Loof / Art Dept NYWHEN TRYING to make use of a basement, many people default to dusty wine cellars and ignorable gyms. But if you want a truly livable space such as a bedroom down there, said Manhattan interior designer Kati Curtis, “the most important thing you can do is add personality.” Curtis recently turned the garden duplex of a residential building—a first-floor-and-basement space previously a doctor’s office—into a homey apartment for a client.

Persons: Kati Curtis’s, Thomas Loof, Kati Curtis, ” Curtis Locations: York, Manhattan

☆ Hate Your Windowless Bathroom? 5 Smart Tips to Make It Less Dreary
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-18 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/windowless-bathroom-tips-to-make-it-less-dreary-fc110ef3

Persons: Dow Jones

☆ This English Country Home Is a Master Class in Decorating With Personality
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

MAD HOUSE In a family home near London, designers Salvesen Graham didn’t want any room too perfect—in the British country-house tradition. Photo: Simon BrownAN ALMSHOUSE is, historically, a place of refuge where all are welcome, which is an excellent ethos for a warm and comfortable family home. Constructed to provide housing for rotating guests, the structure outside London comprised a row of rooms, with a chapel at the end. At the same time, the series of idiosyncratic and colorful rooms that would reflect the client’s “bubbly, vivacious and really fun” personality had to somehow cohere. A few of the unifying aesthetics: From a richly floral Josef Frank fabric on the family-room sofa to the blush-painted cabinets in the kitchen, “fresh, bright and breezy pinks and reds thread the property,” said Ms. Graham.

☆ Why You Should Travel Abroad With Interior Designers
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

WHEN MELANIE BURNS of Oklahoma City first entered the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, she was stunned by its sheer size and the pathways winding through its tented structures like a tangle of yarn. Though well-traveled and an old hand at hunting one-of-a-kind objets, she’d never experienced such an onslaught of potential riches. The duo led Ms. Burns to a shop layered deep behind other shops. “It was no more than about 14 feet square, and stacked high with the most beautiful hand-woven vintage tapestries I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Burns recalled. They are walking encyclopedias, they speak the language and when you shop with them, you don’t overpay.”

☆ Is This the ‘It’ Chair of 2023? Interior Designers Think So
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

AN UNFUSSY and downright brutish, midcentury vintage chair design has been muscling its way into even the most traditional of homes lately. Some look like little more than two pieces of wood attached to legs, but keyhole details or sculpted backs can make them sweeter. Designers and dealers are calling the increasingly in-demand seats, which hail primarily from Scandinavia and Europe, brutalist. At online marketplace 1stDibs , searches for “brutalist chair” are up 115% year over year. “I used it as a decorative accent, as though it were a piece of art,” she said.

☆ Gas and Electric Fireplaces Are the Future. We Asked Design Pros How to Make Them Seem Real.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

WHEN FAMILIES GATHER around the fire this holiday season, the odds are better than ever that no real kindling will be involved. Due to concerns about health and air quality, regulations against wood-burning fireplaces and stoves have grown increasingly strict—San Francisco, for example, forbids them in new construction—and homeowners drawn to flames have moved on to alternatives such as gas and electric. This doesn’t mean such new-technology adopters are willing to give up the ghost of Christmases past, however. “For generations, fire has been the center of the home,” said Julie Buckner, an interior designer in Petaluma, Calif., who often installs electric fireplaces instead of gas or wood. “It’s a light show,” she said, “but once we commit to not burn wood, it becomes easier to accept that it doesn’t look completely natural.”

☆ New England Cozy Meets L.A. Chic in a Charming California Home
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

When Jack Donaldson and Julia Bredrup bought a 1920s house in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, it came with a lot of sunlight but not much warmth. In searching for an emotional back story to inform its new décor, Mr. Donaldson, a screenwriter, and his wife couldn’t help but draw from their meet-cute at Middlebury College in Vermont. When they hired local interior designer Stefani Stein, the shared goal was to inject understated New England style into the more refined L.A. life they live now. “It was a great fit,” said Ms. Stein, who happily brought this mashup-design script to life: “I love the juxtaposition of raw and relaxed with elegance.”“Home to me is midcentury Vermont, but I recognize that is not what a Southern California house should be,” said Mr. Donaldson, whose wife grew up in Chicago. He knew not to ask for mudrooms and green plaid, but Ms. Stein indulged his craving for New England by suggesting organic materials, woods that would show use and unique crafted touches designed to remind the couple of being back East.

☆ Does Your Yard Need a ‘Garden Room’? A Guide to This Growing Outdoor Trend
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-23 | by ( Antonia Van Der Meer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WHEN GLEN GARDNER, a landscape designer in Charleston, S.C., bought his house in town, his outdoor area was just 30 feet by 60 feet, much of it paved in concrete. Rejecting the idea of an open lawn, he transformed it into four interconnected garden spaces—a terrace room, a parterre, a dining area and a pool. Mr. Gardner defined a rectangular grassy space, ideal for dinner parties, with three-foot-tall Japanese yew hedges. He built a brick wall, now veiled in fig vine, to set off plantings of boxwood hedges in a traditional parterre. For further privacy, he hid a neighbor’s house with a towering holly hedge.

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