No, we aren’t talking about getting rid of everything in the room … just what to add to your rooms once you’ve chosen the all-important door handles, and the somewhat important paint and furniture! This isn’t a course in imagination (if we could teach that, we’d be millionaires already) … but we do provide a framework for things you might want to add to give your traditional home or your modern home a bit of personality.

Comfy Bottoms

Where are you going to sit when you are in this particular room? Adding pillows and throw-blankets to a room, especially the living room or bedroom, makes them seem much more inviting and cozy. You may not want too many in the office though… the sight of soft, clean pillows is often a bit too tempting! Or am I the only one that randomly falls asleep when I am supposed to be working … ;-) They are also a great way to expand on a color scheme for the room. You can choose pillows that match the trim, or ones that complement it. Check out floor pillows, which are great for kids rooms, and anywhere your pets are not allowed!

Let There Be Light

Your room most likely has an overhead light - it might be a single bulb sticking out of the center of the ceiling, or it might go so far as to have a shade around it! Well, different lights can create completely different effects in the same room - so it is difficult to go overboard with lights. Track lighting is a popular one in modern homes - a great choice for the hallway, or in little alcoves throughout the house. Spot lights are useful for antiques, pieces you want to highlight, or wherever you want to sit and read in a room! Just make sure that all your different types of lighting also have different switches, so you can mix and match depending on what mood you’re in or effect you want to create. (more…)

If you were one of those people that always imagined fairies at the bottom of the garden when you were a child … or that is fascinated with the physics and art of the stars and planets … you will be enchanted by the range of products from our newest supplier, Les Verreries de Brehat!

Verreries de Brehat produce some absolutely stunning door knobs, that are quite different to anything else on the site. Each one is blown glass, and they include patterns from the fantastic, to the ethereal, to the classy, to the magical.

The studio of Verreries de Brehat is on a small French island - a non-mainstream solution that you would expect from a company producing knobs so far out of the mainstream! They began life as traditional glassblowers - making ornaments and vases, etc - the things you usually associate with glass blowing. However, the lines of stairway finials and door knobs and handles became so popular that they have focused mostly on that for the last years. They also create tap handles and towel rail finials … it might sound a bit like going overboard, but once you see these products, you will want them everywhere throughout your home!

Most of the products in the Verreries de Brehat range can be purchased in a range of different colors of glass, as well as range of different metal finishes, like the rest of our door knobs and hardware. You’ll find green, fuchsia, yellow and deep blue in standard choices,  as well as an option for white or colourless. Some knobs also feature different colours and textures, like orange streaking or the silvery bubbles of the Spirales range. Metals available for the base include brass, satin nickel, chrome and 24 carat gold.

Check out the entire Verreries de Brehat range by typing VRR into the search box on the main site - and prepare to be amazed ;-)

You roof must be the most important part of your home … there are plenty of dwellings to be found worldwide without walls (though the inhabitants might live some place that is closer to a tropical paradise than your own home!), but a home without a roof is just not a home! Who wants to be rained on while they sleep? Certainly not me … but if that floats your boat, I’ll not comment :)

As such, we are looking at interior decorating of ceilings in this ‘Out with the Old’ feature. There are so many homes that have boring old white ceilings, that you will now find ‘Ceiling white’ paint in every hardware shop that sells paint across the world! There are plenty of different things you can do with a ceiling though - here are our  ideas and guide to implementing them.

The reason that so many ceilings are white is that light colours make an area seem larger - and it can be quite uncomfortable and depressing,  feeling that the roof is pressing down on you if it is painted a deep, dark colour. So, in your adventures with ceiling colour, go for lighter ones. Not ones without personality … just a light sprinkling of personality! You’ll probably also want to look at having the same colour for the ceilings in every room of your house - this is a good way to add consistency and flow to your home … while not making it a boring place to live. So choose a ceiling colour that will match with the different themes you may have throughout your house. If the kids’ rooms are pink and blue, choose a ceiling colour that will either connect or contrast with these colours, as well as being suitable for the cream coloured bathroom and the green feature wall in the master bedroom. (more…)

It is often said that the best ideas are the simplest ones … and this is true of one the simple but marvelous ideas of our new suppliers, Pasini Metals Production. We recently began stocking the PASS/Move into Design range, a range of different and very modern handles createdby Daniela Seminara for Pasini Metals Productions, a company that has been producing brass handles for over 40 years.

The old brass knob or lever certainly gets a new lease of life in the PASS range - the focus of innovation here is not so much the look of the handle, but the function. The French certainly created handles just about as ornate as they could possibly be - there is not much room left for innovation in the area of shaped and decorated brass handles!  But there was definitely room for improvement in the useability of your door handles - and this is where the Plus line comes in.

Your Plus door handles won’t get up to get you a beer from the fridge when you just can’t miss what’s happening on TV … nor will they turn up the heater when you get a bit chilly, and unfortunately they can’t hop off the door and give you a massage after you’ve been breaking your back all day. So what use are they?!!! The new useability of the Plus handles has been integrated simply and sweetly.The Plus-O range features a small hole in the end of the handle, where you can pop a flower, or anything else with a small, thin end - turning your door handles into vases, and instantly brightening your room! All of the handles on a plate feature a hook for hanging things - bags, notes, hats, etc - integrating the use that everyone has found for their doorhandles every now and then, into the base design of the product. The Plus-UP range features a cheekily upwards-curved handle, which meets your hand on its way.

One of the nicest features of the Plus range is that every material, shape and design is interchangeable - you will find handles on a rose, handles on a plate, and accessories available in every different finish, and every different shape. A simple but powerful change!

You can check out the entire PASS range by typing PSA into the search box on the site. Enjoy!

As you would have realised if you are doing a traditional renovation on your home … creating a whole new look for your most significant investment involves a little more than just choosing new doorknobs! (Although, of course, that is the most important part!). The second decision you’ll have to make when doing a traditional renovation, after the lever handles versus door knobs conundrum, is what color scheme you’ll have in your home. Here we look at some general guidelines and some inspiration for period style homes.

One of the first things you need to consider when you are looking at repainting your traditional style home is the colour wheel. This is in use by every interior designer on the planet, and is an essential guide to color schemes - not just colors. It is shown on the right side graph below.

It may not make much sense at the moment, but the heel basically show the position of different colors in relation to each other. The smaller wheels around the sides show different ways to create colour schemes - you can have a complementary, a triadic, a monochromatic, or an analogous theme for your home. Really, you can have anything you like … but if you want it to look good, them’s the breaks! (more…)