Home & Garden Blog » Designer Spotlight

NYTimes.com article on the Home & Garden section today talked about revolutionary architect Roald Gundersen, who builds structures, furniture, and whole houses with entire branches and trunks of trees. He bends and manipulates the trees to make beautiful organic structures that liven up any home and give it an earthy and fresh quality. Gundersen likes to build with trees because they represent the outdoors and nature, where he would spend all of his time if he could. Instead of living outdoors though, why not bring the trees indoors? And not in a potted planter or desktop tree simulation. Here are some beautiful pieces for you to add to your collection that are built with wood and make your home fresh and lively:

Canopy Swing Stand: On sale from $800 to $590, this beautifully built and organically curved structure will make you feel alive!

3400 Series Wood Chair: $114.99 Brings you back to memories of the old school house with this lovely, basic wood chair.

Shop for discount wooden furniture at Smarter.com.

Jason Miller, the interior designer featured on the NYTimes.com this week, talks about the beauty and simplicity of throwback 70’s style. He recommends three things: Polyester, Pop Art, and Plastic. Think Andy Warhol’s factory meets Hippie global world views. What do you do with all this throwback? A classic part of the 70’s that Miller doesn’t want to recreate is the colors–according to him, the cheap fabrics, carpets and furniture of the 1970’s made for flimsy fabric and flukey, dry colors. He recommends springing a few extra bucks and getting some dark chocolate browns and nicely hued colors instead. I like where he’s taking the modern twist.

So what do you do to recreate the 70’s charm? Take a look at these options I found on Smarter.com. Hope it helps! With Halloween coming up this weekend, why not put your whole house in costume?

Retro Modern Chair: $290.99

Momeni Shag Comfort Rug from Walmart.com: $59.00-819.00

Shop for more vintage style furniture and vintage style rugs.

Home Stager Meridith Baer knows a thing or two about telling a story through household objects. Home staging is a fad technique employed by realtors and homeowners who want to have an edge on a tough housing market. Basically you hire a “home stager” to design a lifestyle that will entice would-be buyers into focusing on the “lifestyle” designed for this home, not just the bare bones and wood. It used to be houses could be sold with the floor barley tiled, but now times and tough and people want to get the complete package when they’re buying a home. Home staging has become the best way to stand out in a tough market–but of course, it comes at a hefty price.

Meridith Baer was featured in a NYTimes.com article in the home & garden section because she knows how to be selective in her designs without shirking her responsibilities to sell the lifestyle of a home.

What does Meridith Baer recommend? Think about the story of the person who you want to buy this house. Is it a young family? A heiress? An older couple who just wants a snug home that can fit a Christmas tree in the door for the grandkids?

She also is a big fan of strong, clean white lines and stone decorative objects to make the home feel filled, but not filled with miscellaneous objects.

Recommendations for how to make your home a fairytale:

LC White Leather Sofa: $740.99

Chic and elegant, this is the perfect base layer for a clean, fashionable home.

Dale Tiffany Marble Vase: $162.00

Stunning piece that captures the light and brightens a room. Imagine it in a dining room or on top of the fireplace–gorgeous!

Shop for affordable sofas and discount vases at Smarter.com.

The NYTimes multimedia slideshow this week gets in touch with Paul Taylor, the founder of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, to discuss home decor and style tips at his house in Long Island. For Paul Taylor, design is all about the idea of the home space, heritage and family heirlooms. Nothing is less “homey” than all store-bought materials, but of course you can’t live solely with inherited furniture. Therefore, modernization is all about striking a balance between the rustic, traditional decor and design and modern necessities.

Let’s take a look at the Paul Taylor shingle-style home decor:

The Staircase: (what we can take from this: Dark wood, dark green accents, picture frames and bright airy windows without a lot of grid)

The Homemaker Image: (what we can take from this: Paul Taylor is an eccentric guy that fits the bill for this house. He likes worn wood and stone fireplaces, benches to sit on and beaded antique lamps. Green, again, is a very important accent color)

How you can recreate your own look:

Rustic Adirondack Log Pole Bench: $59.99

Walnut Bench with Storage: $121.05 (marked down from $225.00!)

Jubilee Green Lamp: $404.80 (you save 12%)

New York Times online home and garden section features interior designer Grant K. Gibson this week in their On Location article. Gibson, a San Francisco inhabitant with his own design firm titled, creatively, Grant K. Gibson Interior Design, loves an element of luxury with a taste for thrifty design. He often shops at online stores such as 1stdibs.com to get the best luxury antiques from around the world. 1stdibs.com is designed for the elite, as you even have to subscribe to the website just to see the prices on the beautiful furniture, lighting, and decorative designs.

What to take away from Grant K. Gibson: Luxury, antiques, brass, cool white and gold lighting and light fixtures, and sumptuous carpets and walls. Here’s how to get a start on luxury:

Glass Candle Sleeve: $12.00-$16.00

Buffalo China Dinnerware Set: $30.00-$60.00

Robert D. Henry, a New York-based architect, was interviewed by the NYTimes for an article in the home and garden section of NYTimes.com for his expertise in what he calls “Emotional Architecture”. Henry specializes mostly in designing spas, because “water and fire are so primal”, said by Henry, “they have such a calming effect.”

Henry suggests thinking about the five senses when you are designing a home, so that it is emotionally comfortable and stimulating. He suggests lavender candles for smell and fireplaces for warm and touch, and a little loose tea with necessary equipment for a soothing taste.

Top picks by Robert Henry to make all your soothing dreams come true:

Lavender Candle set from Sabbonnyc.com: $18.00

Tea Stick Infuser from Momastore.org: $24.00

Here are some products from Smarter.com that compliment some of Mr. Henry’s suggestions!

Teapot from Wasserstrom.com: $39.90

Waterfall Showerhead in Chrome: $119.02

Shop for more home decor at Smarter.com.

Today’s Nytimes.com home and garden site showcases a shopping spree with India Hicks, the designer of a series of home and body products for Crabtree & Evelyn. While I am not a huge fan of the chalky, floral usual wares of Crabtree & Evelyn, India Hick’s inspiration comes from more tropical towns and products. Hicks picks out products with an organic feel and earthy touch, but bright colors and tropical designs. With such products as a pufferfish-etched dinner platter and a metal chandelier from Anthropologie, India has a style unto herself that we can only try to emulate.

Here’s how!

By using Smarter.com’s comparison shopping engine, I was able to find similar products to India Hick’s designs that are more affordable! Check out some of them here:

Muse Metal Chandelier: $565.00

Michael Kors Bali Queen Comforter: $299.99 (the price has been nearly cut in half!)

Young America by Stanley Surfer’s Chase Cloakroom Bookcase in Natural Cherry: $799.00

House tours welcome everyone to covet their neighbor’s upper middle class sprawling estate. It’s a groveling yet necessary part of society, and springing up at the end of summer is a whole host of House Openings in the New England and East Coast area for you to enjoy. Let’s take a look at some of the top up and coming designs in the east coast, and see what we can glean as the best home decorating tips for the 2009-2010 season!

My favorite place for house touring: Cape May, New Jersey!

Offered by the Cape May Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts , the tour boasts numerous renovated Victorians and modern functionality to broaden your mind and options of house decorating for your own home! This year’s Designer Show House is the newly renovated Carpenter Cottage on 511 Franklin Street. Open until January 3, 2010, this is a showcase you don’t want to miss, with package deals on top restaurants and luncheons available through the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts website.

Once the home of lighthouse keepers, the Carpenter Cottage has been renovated with decor and household designs to look fresh, summery and clean, with simple lines and designs.

Tips and tricks to make your house into a Cottage oasis:

1. White accents, but not a White main course. Basically to make everything fresh, you want to pick a primary color ( a nice blue or red) and then accent it with tons of white. White chandeliers, white candlesticks, white curtains, white bed skirt, white white white. Don’t try to compliment a color with another color, even a more subdued one. Make it fresh and classic.

2. Modernize the bathroom! Make sure the appliances are nice and curious. You want clean lines and simplicity, but also some modern twists: maybe an interesting pewter faucet? A column-styled stand-alone sink? An antique mirror? Give it class.

3. Artwork on the wall is an absolute must. But don’t go for modernist paintings or your children’s artwork (though that is always a nice family touch). Think about rustic farm images or weather-beaten wood frames. You want the house to look timeless, but also aged. Think about how you can recreate that with art. The potential is limitless!

Manhattan designers Russell Groves and Neal Beckstedt have outdone themselves again–their collaborative designs for an industrialist East Hampton, NY house grace the cover of the NYTimes Home and Garden website page today, and for good reason. What makes a house low-maintenance?

The designs, for the exterior, are clean, compact, and a little bit austere. With metal paneling, the house looks well-insulated, but also a bit too modernist and edgy to fit in the standard suburban landscape. It works for the Hamptons, of course, because anything works in the Hamptons if you have the money for it.

For the interior, you want hardwood floors, tall ceilings and white walls for the canvas. The designs should be sleek and un-ornamented. Think basic wood and metal designs with straight lines, all-white sofas and maybe a leather back chair with wood legs, some sparks of color here and there but mostly in the range of white, dark brown and black with metal accents in the shape of lamps and table tops.

The perfect accents for a modernist house: Modernist paintings and photographs, and tall white candles on glass candlesticks. Both bring a different light and energy to the house, which washes over the more basic and plain sofas, walls and colors described above.

How do you transform your home into a Modernist goddess? Here are some thoughts and suggestions:

Candice Olson “Delray” Floor Lamp - 7461FL: $358.00

Bubble Couch Chair by Kartell: $700.40


Clear/Silver Pillar Glass Candleholder: $25.08

Do you enjoy playing host or hostess, is making the perfect breakfast your life’s passion?  Does gorgeous home decor make you blush, do you take pride in knowing the exact gestation periods and life cycles of your garden plants? Have you ever wondered how you could make all of these passions into a career?  Here’s one for you: Open a bed and breakfast!

Bed and breakfasts are a longstanding tradition.  A more personable and flavorful option than the stark hotel or motel down the street, bed and breakfasts have been successful businesses for years in any town, city, or beachside resort where there is a guarantee of visitors every year.  Think creatively:  your town may be the perfect place to open a bed and breakfast.  I grew up in a very small suburban town that did not seem like a tourist hotspot, but it does have one bed and breakfast that has been around for decades, and is in the prime location:  right between a church and a funeral home.  In this case, the bed and breakfast actually had a monopoly on any large groups of visitors coming to town (namely, for weddings or funerals).

My family’s vacation town is full of bed and breakfasts, and though you are always “on duty”, the job seems more like a lifestyle than a chore.  Here is a “starter kit” and some basic rules for a bed and breakfast.

1.  HUGE dining room table!!  I recommend getting several which can be easily pushed against the walls of the dining room if not needed, or pushed together to create more dining seats.  The amish hand crafted wood dining tables are beautiful.  I recommend the Abbies Special Table for $959.00, which can be personalized with additional pull-out leaves or “wings” for $100 each.

2. Bed-in-a-Bag Ensembles:  Always put together nicely, these bed-in-a-bag sets are a staple for any bed and breakfast.  It’s important to keep a bunch extra in stock, too, because you never know when one quilt or comforter will get ruined, and sometimes with the quick turnover you won’t have time to run out and shop for a new one in between guests that are using the room.  Check out the great selection of Macy’s bed in a bag ensembles, including my favorite the Hallmart Collectibles Selina 7-Piece Comforter Set for $59.99.  Originally $240.00, this delightful comforter is cheerful and homey.  Sure to please any guest or family member!

Find at Smarter.com:  Shop for dinning tables and bed-in-a-bag sets.