story by Janice Henshaw | photos by www.nuttycake.com –
The nights are still long, the days short and grey. Snowbirds are Facebooking and emailing stories of the good life that include sun and surf. What can we stay-at-homers do to give our spirits a lift? Well, we can design and decorate! Now is the time to take a good look at our homes and pick a project or two to tackle before spring arrives. Once they are done, we can plan a dinner party and enjoy accolades from our friends. But where to start?
2017 Design Trends
I asked Interior Designer Cydney Hellier of Cydney Hellier Gray Design to share some of her thoughts on trends to expect for 2017. Her response:
We are continuing to see lots of white – layers of white mixed with bold colour. Rich tones. Subtleties of gold.
Reclaimed materials are still popular and are often mixed with polished items, like marble. We want to balance luxurious materials and textures.
Good design is always about classic lines and balance with added excitement. We are always fine-tuning our aesthetic and what we present to the world.
It’s time to tone down all the grey we’ve had. (Grey is challenging to use in this part of the world.) It might also be the year to lose all the blush and soft pink−and throw out those written art pieces!
Small Projects and a Touch of Luxury That Won’t Break the Bank. Cydney also has some small project ideas, ranging from the luxurious to the practical that we can tackle between February and March that will help lift our spirits, and that won’t break the bank.
It’s always time to streamline our homes. The beginning of the year creates a natural urge to purge. Think of your day-to-day functioning. Plan to streamline. Create a place for everything, a docking station, hidden storage.
Treat yourself to some luxury: great art, inspirational cooking pieces, coffee table books, soothing music streaming through your rooms.
Why not create an exercise-to-go area, where your bags are pre-packed, ready for you to grab and go to the gym, yoga studio or hike the trails.
Cydney concludes that we can find inspiration from anything, including art, travel, photography, pottery, funky cafes, graphic design and fashion. Websites can also provide great new ideas; Cydney is a fan of Dwell, Pinterest, Design-Milk, and all the “rabbit holes one goes down from these.”
Paint Colours of the Year. The Benjamin Moore Colour and Design Team has chosen “Shadow” for its colour of the year for 2017. Ellen O’Neill, Benjamin Moore Creative Director, describes it as a rich, royal amethyst that can “fade into the soft lilac-grey of distant mountains or morph into lustrous coal. Indulge your mysterious side.” The Pantone Color Institute has chosen “Greenery” for its colour of the year. They describe it as a “fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring when nature’s greens revive, restore and renew.”
Does this mean that taupe has had its day? Not so fast, according to the website of Sherwin-Williams, which reports that they don’t usually like to play colour favourites, “but in this case, we can’t resist. The color we anticipate defining 2017 is Poised Taupe.” This colour “creates a cozy lifestyle and brings a sense of sanctuary into our homes. It diffuses the stresses of the world outside our doors – so much so that we feel restored and in balance when we walk across our threshold.”
As a first step in choosing colours, it’s easy and time-saving to check out intriguing paint combinations online to see how they affect our mood and perception of a room. All three paint companies allow us to “paint” their sample scenes or upload photos to see colour on our walls. It’s fun, inspiring, and sure beats realizing you’ve picked the wrong colour after painting!
Instead of Paint, How About Wallpaper? “Wallpapering a room is a small project that has a big impact,” says Lana of Lana Lounsbury Interiors, a full-service interior design firm specializing in renovation and decoration. Lana passionately believes that interior design is an “essential, transformative tool to reinvent oneself throughout life.” She says: “Wallpaper isn’t just for feature walls anymore! We wrap powder rooms, ceilings, entry halls, dining rooms and bedrooms with pattern, texture, and colour.”
Jewels of Any Room. Creating and installing blinds is, luckily, not something we have to do ourselves! Sidney’s Paula Grypma of Outlooks Design specializes in window coverings and soft furnishings. She says they are the “jewels of any room. Get them right, and your room will feel and look complete.”
Paula likes to start with an in-home consultation to see the space and discuss with the homeowner what is needed. It may be new blinds for privacy, an innovative drape for an awkward window, retractable screens, or fresh upholstery for an old heirloom.
Paula predicts that this year, “We will see a greater use of bold colours, especially in green palettes for window coverings, furniture and paint. Mixing prints is big, including florals and geometrics. Panel tracks, shutters and other roller fabric design window coverings such as the Silhouette manufactured by Hunter Douglas are some styles which provide fresh solutions.”
A Real Estate Perspective
Even if we are not planning to sell our home, it’s always a good idea to consider a real estate perspective before taking on the expense and time of renovations, large or small. Marilyn Ball and Ian Heath of JONESco Real Estate Inc. suggest that we think of preparing our home as if we are having a dinner party. “Clean exceptionally well, wash windows, organize closets and edit clutter to magazine standards without being sterile. The key words are ‘let in the light,’ either with candles, or bright sunny rooms.”
Marilyn and Ian note that when purchasing a new home, people are buying a lifestyle, and so sometimes “it’s the almost imperceptible, the whole sum of the effects that wins the most gains, not always the huge, expensive renovation that typically centers on kitchen and baths.”
Small Touches Mean a Lot!
Additional suggestions from Marilyn and Ian include fresh paint, towels, linens, and flowers – inside and out. “A big plus is a tidy yard and landscape, with neatly trimmed borders, edging, and pruned bushes. Potted outdoor plants can add instant colour, and punch! It’s incredibly potent to get that first impression right.”
It’s encouraging to hear from the experts that we don’t have to plan major renovations to give our home and ourselves a lovely winter lift. And please remember: our homes reflect our personalities, they are our personal palette on which to invoke creativity. So stretch out and enjoy your inspiring choices, whether it’s new paint, window coverings, fabrics, or a simple, elegant vase of flowers.
