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Easy Tips for Eco-Friendly Interior Design

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Over the past years, interior design has become an important aspect of putting together the entire appeal of the house. Additionally, it has become an important method of self-expression. The design of the home as well as the furniture and accessories chosen by the homeowner can tell other people a lot about his/her personality and style. Naturally, homeowners want to ensure that their homes reflect their own taste as well as their values.

Interior designing is not merely about improving the aesthetic appeal of a room but it also includes proper usage and selection of furniture, accessories, and materials used to ensure that they are healthy for the residents. For this reason, a lot of homeowners are now aiming for an eco-friendly interior design. If you are thinking of going green, you will be able to achieve a stylish atmosphere in your home, and you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to get the design you want.

Eco-Friendly Interior Design Ideas

Today, more and more people are turning towards sustainable and environmentally friendly products and design. For this reason, the interior design field is supporting wonderful measures to achieve eco-friendly design in homes using sustainable resources. Here are some easy tips to help you obtain a green, healthy, and safe living space.

Re-Use And Recycle

If you want to achieve an eco-friendly interior design, you have to be creative and think outside the box. You have to think about recycling, reducing, and re-using the things you already have. Whether you want to slightly redecorate a room, or remodel the entire house, you must first think about the items that you can put back into the space. Are there any items which you can re-use?

For instance, if you have an armoire that still looks good and can still serve its purpose, there is no need to rip it apart. You can consider refurnishing them by coating it with new paint that will compliment your new interior design theme. Reusing items mean that you have to be creative because you usually need to re-purpose the items for other uses.

Use Natural Light If Possible

Another tip to achieve an environmentally friendly design is to let as much sunlight in as possible, and to maximize daylight. To do so, you can consider using skylights or open shades. You can also design your house so that the windows are facing south as this will allow enough sunlight to get inside your house. In doing so, you will not only save on electrical bills, but you are also preventing pollutants from being emitted inside your house. Additionally, you can also change the light bulbs used in your house, and use compact florescent lights (CFLs) or LED lights instead, since this alternative lighting can help you save on energy costs in the long run. When you look for proper lighting, you have to consider the label and choose those with energy efficient rating.

Non-Toxic Paints

There are some paints that have harmful chemicals known as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). These compounds release toxic chemicals into the air in your home which will negatively affect your air quality. Additionally, these compounds are harmful for your health and for all the people living in your home. For this reason, you have to choose paint with low-VOC or no-VOC, especially when you are painting a child’s room. You must also avoid using wallpaper since the adhesive used to attach them can contain VOCs as well.

Eco-Friendly Flooring

Natural, sustainable, and eco-friendly flooring can make a huge difference in a green home. Most standard flooring options are far from eco-friendly and sustainable, and they also contain harmful chemicals. If you want to have stylish but safe flooring, you can consider using bamboo flooring as a long-lasting option. Bamboo contains a higher fiber rating than most tropical hardwoods, and they feel great under one’s foot. Additionally, it can be recycled once it has reached the end of its life. You can also use eco floor tiles for your kitchen and bathroom. Not only are these tiles sustainable, but they have the additional advantage of providing thermal insulation.

Featured images:
  •  License: Creative Commons – Jeremy Levine Design.”Living Room”. April 29, 2009. Online Image. Flickr. Dec 15, 2012 image source

Kris Lim is an environmentalist who wants to promote green living by encouraging people to use eco-friendly, sustainable, and safe materials. For this reason, she offers tips and advice on how to achieve an environmentally friendly interior design in your home. She also regularly contributes to interior design websites, such as susan-hopkins.com.

Wouldn’t You Love A Space Lift?

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Is your space looking tired and drab?


Do you ever pass by the rooms in your home, tired of looking at the same old and tired-looking drabby space? Wouldn’t you love to replace your furniture or add art and accessories to your space, if only you knew what to place in the space? These reasons and more are why you need the help of an interior designer . Many believe that hiring an interior designer is only for those who have large-scale home projects in their minds. However, it’s possible to schedule a consultation with an interior designer, so that you can transform small spaces, or one room space at a time.

The next time you walk through a room or look at a designated space, look at your space with purpose. Many times, people are so used to looking at a couch or a table or a lamp simply for the purpose that these serve. An interior designer will help you to look at your space with fresh eyes. Not only will you learn how to view your space with intent, but you’ll learn how to view your space the way that your imagination sees the space. Your consultation will allow for you to sit down and actually consider all of the things that you’d like to see within the boundaries of a particular space. Would you like to see the space decorated with a certain color palette?  Would you like to see the space decorated in a certain style? What is your style personality? All of these questions will help your designer to lead you towards the look you’ve been searching for.

Is making your space warm and inviting a challange?

One of the challenges that an interior designer can help home dwellers to overcome, is how to change absolutely drab and uninspiring spaces into spaces that are warm, inviting and innovative. Sometimes a home dweller feels absolutely overwhelmed by the challenge of taking a totally blank space, and turning into a space they can be proud of. This is why the expertise of an interior designer can be very helpful. They can help a space transform from cold and overwhelming, to welcoming and exciting. So, whether a home dweller needs to get rid of old furniture or use furniture covers to reinvigorate old furniture, the interior designer can help. They have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves to help their clients absolutely love their new space lift!

This is a guest post written by Cheap Seo Services Inc., an internet marketing firm that helps others rank up in Google. We are writing this article about the interior designer Miami studios to help and educate others. If you would like Cheap SEO Services Inc. to write articles for you, or help you with other marketing work, please contact us at http://www.cheapseo-services.com/cheap-seo .

How To Create Plans For Your Interior Design

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Interior design is no doubt more an art than a science, but this isn’t to say that you can’t improve your ability by applying a systematic approach and that it doesn’t require some modicum of planning and measuring. For instance it can really help a great deal to create a plan for your rooms before you go about creating them as this way you will be able to better decide in advance what you need, and you will be able to visualize what is going to look good ahead of time to avoid making mistakes. Here we will look at some tips to help you come up with your room designs so that your rooms turn out as well as possible.

What do You Have?

First of all you need to know what you’re working with. Here there are various approaches you can use. For instance you may already have everything you want to include in the room and you may simply be coming up with a good way of organizing those items. Alternatively however you might be open to replacing some items or getting some entirely new ones, and this way you can use your design to find out what other things you might need. Lastly you might want to use this to just draw up your ideal home, and then that way you can go on to find the things that match your vision.

Sketchup

Now you know what you’re working with it’s a good idea to just come up with some ideas. Before you actually draw anything concrete or professional down then, just try sketching some concepts onto the back of a napkin. Draw your room the way you’d ideally like it with the items you are using and keep it vaguely realistic without worrying too much about specific measurements. Come up with an idea you’re happy with and then you can work towards something along those lines.

Measurements

painter's house, isfahan, iran october 2007

Now you are going to want to draw your actual floor plan. Of course if you’re redecorating your room on your own you might choose to skip this stage and instead just try moving things into place to see if they’ll fit, but if you’re working with a designer or contractor or you want to save yourself time, then you will want to come up with something accurate. In this case then use a tape measure to measure the size of your room, and then the dimensions of the individual pieces of furniture. Now sticking to those measurements try drawing the elements where you want them using a ruler to see if they’ll fit.

Software

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If you want to make this even more accurate and be able to manipulate the items more easily without using a rubber then you can always try using software such as 3D modelling software to create your floor plan. There are many different types of 3D modelling software you can use to this end such as Rhino 3D or Blender, and these will allow you to draw your elements onto a grid with measurements and then view them from 360 degrees or even create your furniture in 3D if you want to go that far so that you can try moving it around and seeing pretty much what it will look like for real.

Lewis Stew regularly writes blogs related to home improvement ideas. For reading his blogs you can visit the website of Location Lanzarote.

When will the new neighbors move in?

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I think our new neighbors might move in sometime soon. They’ve had possession of the house next door for about two weeks now and they’ve been coming by to clean and paint the house.

I’m not sure what they’re doing as far as renovating or repair the house goes. I’ve heard a lot of hammering and banging, but it doesn’t seem like they are doing a lot of new work. unlike us when we got our house – we were at our house every day for three weeks tearing down walls, refinishing floors, plastering and painting before we finally moved in … whereas our new neighbors have only visited their new home about four times since they got the key.

Anyway, since it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a lot of work to the house I expect that they must be almost done cleaning and painting so maybe they’ll move in this weekend. If not perhaps the following weekend. It can’t be much longer.

One thing that I liked about moving to our house when we got it was that it was a chance to get new furniture. LOL I loved preparing the rooms and then picking out new contemporary furniture that would look great in each room. As it turned out we didn’t have to buy a lot of new furniture as we had quite a bit in our apartment, but I did get to get all new master bedroom furniture and a year later we got new living room furniture.

We haven’t talked to the new neighbors very much, but they seem nice enough. That’s all I’m hoping for anyway … I mean, we have to share a tiny driveway and our houses are very close to each other so it’s important that we’re at least on friendly terms with our neighbors. Hey … they’ve got to be better than the awful renter neighbors that we’ve had to deal with for the last year.

Bedroom Lighting Guidelines

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Good bedroom lighting considers a careful mixture of practical and psychological factors. The average bedroom has so many different uses – relaxation, intimacy, study, morning preparation – that covering them all can be tricky.

We associate the bedroom with, among other things, sleep. That usually means no lights at all. This says that turning them off should not be a difficult thing to do. If you’ve been lying in bed reading it can be inconvenient to turn them off, especially if you’ve grown sleepy. A main control switch within reach is a great thing here.

That nighttime reading can be a hurtful on the eyes, causing fatigue and headaches. Banish the problem by installing lights in the proper places with the correct color.

Color? Does that mean you should get pink or blue light bulbs? No. Color, here, means ‘color temperature’. Good reading lights are designed to emulate the range of wavelengths given off by natural sunlight, which is determined in part by the temperature of the sun’s surface. Humans’ eyes evolved to be sharpest under those conditions. Getting bulbs and lamps labeled as close to that will provide comfortable reading conditions.

But sometimes, you just want a pleasant ambiance, not a practical light. That, too, should be thought about when coming up with the lighting scheme for the bedroom.

To provide a cheery atmosphere that also provides needed light to tie shoes, connect a tricky clasp, brush hair or do any other common task, place lamps appropriately. Here again keep the light above the eyes, but let it shine directly down. In a home with modern furniture its also important to make sure the light style matches the modern seating selected. Raising it too high creates deep shadows that can hinder makeup application, make clothing color judgment more difficult and so on. Too low and it gets in your eyes, making those chores harder. Choose a pleasing middle level.

Select and place lamps about a foot higher than where your eyes are, and allow them to reflect light off surfaces. That provides the well-known indirect light effect that gives a subdued atmosphere. Whether for romance or just a quiet time away from distractions, that produces a calming effect that is just right in the bedroom.

Morning time is when most people, both kids and adults, will be up and preparing to meet the day. But, depending on the time of the day and season of the year, the sun doesn’t always cooperate to provide the illumination needed. The way the house is oriented makes a big difference, too, so do any wall hangings, curtains or overhangs.

For overall illumination – for entering the room, vacuuming and a hundred other common tasks – a broad ambient lighting scheme is needed. A house with contemporary furniture can really benefit from a creative lighting style.  A central fixture with a strong lamp and a diffusing cover is often just the thing. For additional bedroom deisngs additional lighting pieces will be needed. There are often many corners, nooks and other places in a bedroom where deep shadows can hide.

For all of the above applications a dimmer switch, or at least multi-level bulbs, can allow for finer control of light and shadow. They can also allow for some small electricity savings if the light stays on for extended periods. A 300-watt halogen bulb can contribute a chunk to the monthly bill. Dimming it when lower illumination is enough slices that down.

Consider all the ways you use your bedroom and light accordingly.

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