Guest Post - Home Design Trends: What Does Luxury Look Like in 2019

As spring quickly transitions into summer, we are gaining a good sense of how luxury home trends are shaping 2019. Homeowners are incorporating a sophisticated features to their home, and finding complementary decor to satisfy the current trends on the market.

Industrial Chic: Accents and Spaciousness

Industrial chic continues to reign as one of the most popular design trends in luxury decor. Featuring exposed beams, high ceilings, bare brick and concrete walls, wooden floors, and metal accents, industrial chic is all about reoccupying and repurposing America’s dynamic past.

You can add a touch of industrial luxe to outdoor spaces or in your home by incorporating some simple metal fixtures, such as brass sculptures, silver leaf furniture, decorative copper art, and gold-colored or unpolished metal lamps and hanging lights for a sophisticated effect.

One of the top motives behind this aesthetic is spaciousness and openness, so don’t clutter your floors and horizontal surfaces. But you can do more with your walls and even the ceiling, through creative mounting and hanging.

Raw, Unprocessed Textures

Luxury decor is all about texture, simplicity, and transparency. That’s why natural and raw materials are in vogue right now. Consider including earthy materials such as pottery and wood in your decor, as these also have the benefit of blending well together with the metal accents of the industrial look.

Textures, meanwhile, play and work together to create a certain mood. The craze used to be everything shiny, but recently there’s been a shift toward dull, unpolished, mottled, or distressed decor. Artisan and hand-finished items made from natural textures add a unique, rustic charm to your home furnishings and can boast the luxury of having a human touch in an age when most things are machine-assembled and mass-produced.

Mix Up Your Textures for a Personalized Look

Don’t worry about combining a range of textures and materials in your home decor — mixed textures are in! To keep your decor cohesive and streamlined, consider choosing different accents for separate areas of the house. For example, feature metal in the living room, woven fibers and pottery in the bedroom, and distressed wood in the dining area.

You can even drill down further than this and devote certain walls or lines of sight to one aesthetic, and different walls and sight-lines to a different aesthetic. This creates a crisp and visually stimulating contrast effect that many people are playing around within their homes.

Form-Focused Light Fixtures

Track lighting and recessed lighting have been popular for years, and still are, but more recently there has been a resurgence of interest in visually interesting light fixtures. Pendant lights, hanging lanterns, and the long-forgotten wall sconce are all making a comeback.

This is a good time to experiment with a redecoration of your home’s lighting. There are many new designs on the market. But instead of the showy, pristine styles that dominated last time these trends were en vogue, today’s fixtures offer minimalistic lines, abstract or geometric features, woods and metals, and a weathered or distressed look.

“Old World decadence” is also a trending niche, just like with the more mainstream industrial chic trend. There is definitely a throwback happening to the old mansions and even palaces of bygone eras.

Find Your Own Style

The most important thing about joining a trend is to put your own spin on it and really make it yours. Your individual note makes all the difference.

About the Author: Katie Tejada is a writer, editor, and former HR professional. She enjoys writing about events, travel, decorating trends, and innovations for the home, but also covers developments in HR, business communication, recruiting, and CRM solutions.

Guest Post - How To Decorate Your First Home On A Budget

Buying or leasing your first home is a milestone. Whether it’s a small apartment or a large house, it’s your residence. Yet it takes more than your signature on the paperwork to make that space feel like home. The bare walls and empty rooms of which you’ve taken ownership likely will need a lot of work before you can feel truly comfortable there.

It can be challenging to decorate on a budget. You’ll need to find furniture, area rugs and other accents that fit your style, personality and financial limitations. Fortunately, you can find ways to refresh your home even if times are tight. You just have to be smart about how you shop and learn a few tricks for cost-effective interior design. For instance, don’t underestimate the impact that color coordination can have on a room.

Even if you have to buy individual pieces of furniture from multiple sources, you can make them all fit more effectively by painting them matching colors. Estate sales and online retailers also offer opportunities for bargains if you’re willing to do the legwork. For even more tips to help you decorate smarter for your first home, see the accompanying infographic.

Author Bio: Shelley Alexanian is spokesperson for Alexanian, one of Canada’s most successful and versatile full-service flooring and window covering businesses. With several years of industry experience, Shelley is skilled at creating beautiful designs under a variety of budgets — she believes design is at the heart of everything. 

Guest Post - Outdoor Living Space Ideas to Make Your Own Enchanting Oasis

Our backyard is a great place for you and your family to unwind and have fun. Of course, you have to work at making it one. A bare backyard isn’t likely to do much for you, so make an effort and spend some money to convert your backyard into an enchanting oasis that will provide you, your loved ones, and even your friends an outdoor getaway just a few feet out of your house’s back door.

So how can you transform your outdoor living space into a beautiful and soothing escape at home? Putting up a patio misting system to keep everyone cool even at the height of summer would be an excellent idea. Here are some more.

Declutter your backyard

Before you can do anything fancy to your backyard, you have to clear out whatever clutter might be there. Old furniture, old playground equipment that your kids have already outgrown, or anything that doesn’t belong there must go. If your backyard has overgrown trees and hedges, prune them. Only when your backyard is clutter-free can you start work on your backyard getaway.

Make your backyard greener

In case your backyard doesn’t have trees or plants, make an effort to make it as green as you can make it. Plant a tree that will give the area plenty of shade, as well as plants of different sizes. If you can place plants that produce blooms, then that would also be great.

Build water features

Is there anything more relaxing and soothing than the sound of flowing or cascading water? When you put up any type of water feature in your backyard, you can make that part of your home feel like a sanctuary where you can just retreat and spend entire days in with only a book for company. You can build a mini pond, a small waterfall, or a column fountain.

Of course, the ultimate water feature you can have in your backyard is a swimming pool. So if you have the budget not only for its construction but also for its maintenance, then go ahead and build that swimming pool to make your backyard the closest thing to an actual oasis.

Put up a patio or a deck

If you’re going to make your backyard an oasis where you can spend a lot of time unwinding, you must have an area where you can do just that. A patio or a deck will be that spot. Throw in comfortable outdoor furniture, and you’ll have a place where you can relax all day. Patios or desks are also perfect for entertaining guests or having dinners there.

A fire pit for your patio

Not only will a fire pit help illuminate your backyard and keep everybody warm on a colder night. It can also be used for a barbecue! All you have to do is place grills or grates over your fire pit, and you can grill whatever you want. If you’re going for a permanent fire pit, have one built using stone, clay, or brick. There are also portable fire pits that you can buy at your neighborhood home improvement shops.

Lighting ideas

Your backyard must be well-lit to make it inviting even at night. You can go as creative as you want to be when it comes to illuminating your backyard. Wrap some string lights around tree trunks. If you want more natural lighting for your backyard oasis during one of your parties, oil-burning bamboo tiki torches will do the job, although you have to take all measures to ensure that they will be safe. You can also install garden path lights to make sure people can see where they’re going.

Fence it all in

It’s hard to relax in your backyard when neighbors and all sorts of nosy people can see you. For some privacy, it’s best to build a fence around your property. From white picket fences to rattan or bamboo fences, you have a wide range of choices that will fit your style preferences and needs.

These are just basic ideas to help you start transforming your outdoor living space. With a bit more imagination and creativity, you can come up with dozens more to help make your vision of a backyard oasis a reality.

About The Author: Anna Fox is the Content Marketing Strategist of Señor Mist, a Phoenix, Arizona-based company that provides high pressure misting systems/fog effects, comfort heaters, patio drop shades, hvls fans and more. When not writing, she makes use of her spare time reading books and hiking with her dog, Blaze.

Guest Post - Door Design: What First Impression Do You Want Your Home to Give?

It takes less than 1/10 of a second for someone to make up his or her mind about you from a single glance at your face. What you do or show later has little effect.

The same is true when someone first views your home. The first glance, the first impression, will be what shapes how your home is perceived. And in most cases, that first impression will be your front door. So, the question is, what first impression is your home giving? What impression do you want it to give?

Here’s some ideal matches between door accessory finishes and how you want people to shape first impressions of your home.

Brass Finish

If you’re going for the look of a home that is classically inspired, you can’t go wrong with an antique brass doorknob, door lever, or handle set. Antique brass resembles natural brass as a result of its golden and brown tones. Although it hails from the Victorian era in the 1800s, it features a glossy finish that makes it modern looking.

Antique brass is ideal if your home’s exterior features exposed wood or stacked stone. This type of finish is an excellent choice if you like brass but want to avoid the first impression many people get when they spot bright brass. Bright brass was popular in 1990s homes and in other older, colonial houses. However, it can come off as cheap and non-exclusive since they’re widely available today.

Choose an antique brass finish if you want your home to take on the charming look of a craftsman home.

Bronze Finish

If your goal is for your guests to feel as though they are stepping into the lap of luxury when they visit your home, door accessories with a bronze finish are a smart choice. A bronze door knob works particularly well with handmade, ornate furnishings.

Bronze pairs well with natural tones - for instance wood or paint hues like green, yellow, and brown. The dark brown tones found in a bronze door lever can even achieve a Tuscan or Mediterranean setting look.

Iron Black Finish

A black handle set on your front door can easily give your home an incredibly chic look. That’s because iron black is ultra-fashionable today, catering to the modern look that draws inspiration from Colonial Era blacksmiths’ handmade fixtures, the Bauhaus movement, and wrought iron fences.

What makes iron black such a unique finish option is that it effectively bridges the traditional and modern style worlds.

Iron black is ideal if your home features gray tones, large windows, and the types of geometric forms found in most modern residences.

Rustic Pewter Finish

This is an especially popular finish to use on an outside door, like your front door. Why? Because rustic pewter has a way of adding a powerfully distinctive touch to just about any door.

With a rustic pewter door lever, you can make sure that your front door fits the rest of your home’s decor. Rustic pewter door knobs feature a well-weathered look that can easily make your front door look more elegant.

Rustic pewter is great for accenting a plain door—especially a wooden one—to add that craftsman’s flair that many homeowners have come to love.

Chrome Finish

Like many others, may see chrome as an old-school accessory finish that may give your visitors a negative first impression. After all, bright, polished chrome gets its inspiration from the Roaring Twenties’ jazzy style and the Art Deco movement, as well as the 1930s-1940s minimalist approach.

However, your door accessories’ chrome finish doesn’t have to be shiny and compete with other bright colors. Instead, you can choose a satin chrome finish, for example. This type of finish, which is also linked to the Bauhaus movement, offers a clean, contemporary feel and look. What makes this finish stand out on the front of a modern home is its ability to avoid standing out too much; instead, it meshes well with the majority of styles.

Nickel Finish

Avoid mixing chrome and nickel. While chrome can be described as a cool silver hue, nickel is a warm one. If you embrace an urban feel at your home, you may simply want to go with distressed nickel, whose rustic vibe may remind you and your guests of the well-known Old World.

Distressed nickel offers a unique look that is achieved via tumbling, so no two distressed nickel pieces are the same. This type is great for home facades featuring exposed brick, reclaimed wood or concrete.

Door Accessories for a Number of Home Styles

Enhancing your front door’s appearance with the right accessories can go a long way boosting your curb appeal overall. As a result, you can feel prouder of the place you call home, and if you decide to sell your home in the future, you can expect a better return on your investment.

A wide range of accessory options are on the market today, thus increasing your chances of finding the right accessory for your front door the first time. Start looking for the perfect door design accessories today—accessories that will give your visitors a top-notch first impression every time.

About the Author:

Katie Tejada is a writer, editor, and former HR professional. She enjoys writing about events, travel, decorating trends, and innovations for the home, but also covers developments in HR, business communication, recruiting, and CRM solutions.