Favorite Things - Drawer Liners

Often times it's not the clearly visible aspects that make a design great, it's the hidden functionality of a piece or the flow of a well design floor plan. And sometimes it's a little something that speaks to other senses. One of my favorite little things are drawer liners by Hammocks and High Tea.  Drawer liners became a  necessity when we added some built in drawers to the master closet. We went with the less expensive option, which left exposed particle board on the inside of each drawer - yuck. After installation, my first thought was "this was a snag waiting to happen".  So I did a little research and found some fabulous drawer liners to protect my clothes. After 6 months, I still love them. In fun prints and lightly scented, they make the simple act of opening drawers a multi-sensory experience and a nice way to start the day.
The drawer liners are currently available in 2 prints and each print is available in multiple scents, including unscented. The scent is light, so not overpowering to your nose or your clothes.

Hammocks and High Tea also carries Sachets in fun Organic Cotton fabrics.  As H&HT says - "use them wherever you need a scent boost".

 Enjoy!

Beautiful Habitat: Interior Design & Decoration www.beautifulhabitat.com

Love it or Leave it - Animal "Inspired" Area Rugs?

Most people already have a strong love or hate opinion when it comes to animal prints and particularly on the large scale of animal print rugs (both real and fabricated).  But what about animal "inspired" designs that look anything like the real thing. Do you love it, or would you leave it?

Jaguar Rugs, available in 3 non-animal colors, designed by Susan Kasler for Safavieh.

Tiger Rugs in Blue & Green and Pink & Blue, are by Carini Lang.

Colorful reptilian designs can be found at Designers Guild in the Bernadini Rugs, available in Moss and Damson.

Beautiful Habitat: Interior Design & Decoration www.beautifulhabitat.com

To Paint Or Not To Paint ...The Ceiling

While we're talking about painting tips and tricks this week, I'd like to share a favorite tip - adding color to your ceiling. I love adding a color to ceilings. It adds dimension and depth to a room. More importantly, however, it softens the harshness of a very white ceiling. Case in point is this music room, where the white ceiling absolutely shouted  and detracted much of the attention from the beautiful and unique room.
Before:

Our solution was to paint both the wall and the ceilings a different color. However, had we wanted to keep the red walls, the ceiling could have been softened with a complementary beige or gray. (If you'd like to know why we changed the color to a golden beige instead of the red, that is a whole other set of tips on paint colors. It's explained in a previous post Before & After: Choosing Wall Color.)
After:

A technique that I use very often is to choose the wall color (read this post on Choosing Paint Color), then have that same color mixed to 50% strength to use on the ceiling. This technique was used in the above photo of the music room and also on the bedroom below. The ceiling slopes upward and the lighter color is used in the center most ceiling section.

 Why a 50% tint? 
First, you know that the colors will work together and you won't have to worry about the undertones and selecting coordinating colors. Also, it is important to paint the ceilings a lighter color than the wall color. First, a lighter ceiling does help a room feel taller. Secondly, colors on a horizontal surface will always appear darker than on a vertical surface, particularly with the way that interior lighting hits walls and ceilings.  Again, looking at the music room, the ceiling paint is a 50% tint to the wall color, but it looks the same as the wall color in this lighting. Had it been a 100% tint, the ceiling would have appeared darker.

The 50% does not work well with very bold colors such as reds or blues, however. A 50% tint will give you pink or a light blue ceiling. In these cases you are better served by finding a neutral beige or gray to compliment the wall color. I'll be looking for more beautiful rooms with painted ceilings to share with you.

Beautiful Habitat: Interior Design & Decoration www.beautifulhabitat.com