Design Connection, Inc. Interior Design

School is out, summer has kicked in and on those days where it’s either raining or too hot I’ll bet many of you are wondering what to do with the kiddos. If you ask me, the answer is simple, let them design! I love incorporating items with a personal touch into my design and there are some very cool, interactive accessories out there that not only look great, but keep the little ones occupied. Design with function, what’s not to love?  Here are a few fun ideas for projects you can undertake with the kids to use throughout your home. The best part is that you’ll get to make memories and a statement with your design style all at the same time.

Chalkboard paint from Rust-Oleum

Art on every wall!
Remember when it was taboo to write on the walls? Indulge your future graffiti artist with chalkboard walls in either classic green or black! The thing I love about this paint is that the walls are not just a frame for your design, they become a living and changing part of it and the kids will have a blast customizing it with their handiwork.

Deep frames from Pottery Barn Kids

You’ve been Framed!
Remember shadowboxes? A perfect rainy-day project for you and the kids to capture a piece of their childhood that you can proudly display on the walls.  All you need is a glue gun, found items like bits of toys and games to make a colorful and whimsical statement in any room of the house. These would be so cute as a grouping!

Train photo frame wall decals from Uncommon Goods

Choo-Choose to frame some photos!
Fun and harmless for the walls- if you have a train aficionado, these wall decals are for you. Spend a few hours choosing the photos you want to display and then get them on the walls with these bright and simple train graphics!

Ty shower curtain from Grain Design

Scrub-a-Dub
There are so many things to love about this shower curtain it’s hard to know where to start. They are made of plastic so they won’t off-gas, plus they come with your choice of color in permanent markers so that you can customize and create your own bathroom masterpiece.  Get the kids involved and let them do their own shower curtain for their bath- with plenty of room to draw, this could be a fantastic family project!

Interactive Rug from JustKidsRugs.com

Fun on the floor
These require little effort other than finding the space in a room (perfect for a playroom!) and the great thing is that you can set the kids up with some toy cars, people and animals and let them have a ball playing in this “town”  There are several rug options out there anymore, from train tracks to cities, and even baseball diamonds or soccer fields.  More fun that you could ever imagine!

Picture hangers from The Land of Nod

No Room on the Fridge?
No sweat- these fun and practical picture hangers will do the trick by giving you another way to decorate your walls with your kid’s artwork. Just make sure you have plenty of paper and crayons on hand!

Bendant light from re-modern

A bright idea
A bit of quick fun here with flat packaged lighting (left) that you bend to form your own idea of a chandelier. Have the kids do the bending and let them make this artistic light fixture their own!

So now that you have a few ideas, go grab the kids and have a little bit of design fun when you’re not in the sun. As always if you need any help with your decor or a bit of interior design inspiration and ideas, feel free to stop by or give me a call. Design Connection offers free in-studio interior design consultations and we love to help our clients find ways to involve the whole family in the design process.  Do you have more ideas that you’d like to share? Feel free to comment on my blog or check us out in our interior design page on Facebook or send us a tweet on Twitter!

Click on the photos to visit the websites of these fine folks: Rust-Oleum, Potery Barn Kids, Uncommon Goods, Grain Design, JustKidsRugs.com, The Land of Nod, re-modern

You say “Tomato” I say “To-mah-to”
It’s not uncommon to have clients who come to us with completely different ideas in regards to the type of design and style they prefer. That was exactly the situation we had recently when we had a fantastic young couple come to Design Connection looking for an interior designer who understood and could finesse the task of merging their two very different tastes, traditional and contemporary.

We love a good challenge and were definitely up to the task of making this couple’s first home together into a place where they both could feel comfortable and enjoy their surroundings.

Before/After pictures of the Hearth Room and the Space Plan. We made sure that the furniture would fit and allow plenty of room to move about.

We painted the walls in variations of the same color of green which really brought out the personality of each room. With the white woodwork and trim, the addition of bold color really made their spaces match the vitality and youth that that we felt personified this couple.

In addition the contemporary light fixtures – especially in the entryway- added a bit of style and whimsy the minute you walked into the house!

The right color and furniture can make all the difference. Now our happy homeowners can dine in stylish bliss with their new furniture and accessories from Design Connection!

We had a clean slate to work with for their lower level  and wow what a difference from the before and after pics!

The husband dislikes clutter and too many accessories, so we opted for neat, crisp and clean design to create a phenomenal space for them to entertain on their lower level.

From painting,  electrical work, and space planning to the furniture and accessories,  we took care of it all and kept everything on schedule for our clients. They were thrilled with the end result! We really had fun with this project and the challenge of combining their styles to enable them (and their individual style preferences) to live in harmony!  I want to give a special thanks to my husband, Ed, for his assistance in helping with the final touches and hanging things on the walls for me.   If you want to give us a challenge to design your space, please feel free to contact us at 913-851-8776 or fill out our Contact Form online and we’ll contact you.  Don’t forget to say hi to us on Facebook and Twitter, we love to hear what you think of our work, the things we talk about on our blog or just design in general because that’s what we love!

What is YOUR favorite Color? You’ve heard the question a hundred times and probably asked it just as many since you learned to talk. It got me to thinking, after our recent blog posts on painting,  why not ask? Find out what colors are on your mind. So we did just that.  On Twitter and Facebook, we posed the question to see what colors people seem to gravitate toward and while the count has my personal favorite, YELLOW in second place, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Green is running high on everyone’s list. Seems fitting with the green movement being so popular these days.  Other colors people mentioned included Purple and Red.

With such vibrant and diverse color preferences on my mind, I couldn’t help but get inspired to go out and find some pictures of some pretty fabulous rooms painted in those colors so that maybe you can be inspired too! Of course all of this ties in to our interactive contest on Facebook to reach out and really get a feel for what inspires you in the world of design, whether it is color, layout, texture or anything in between.  We appreciate the input from everyone and can’t wait to see what other things are on your list of favorites!

In the meantime, check out some truly great photos from a traditional retreat to a rock star’s city pad, we think you will find some rooms and colors to get excited about! If you really want to to immerse yourself in some gloriously creative and inspired rooms (these are really over the top!), you have to take a minute to check out the website for the Hotel Fox in Copenhagen. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Click on ROOMS when you get to the website and prepare to be amazed.

Oh and we want to say a special hello and thank you to Karen S, Karen A, Tierra, Marla, Darryl, Cheryl, Kevin, Kathy, Rachel, Patty, Brian, Kami, Patti, and Keith for taking the time to say hi to us on the Design Connection Facebook and Twitter pages!  Do you have a favorite painted room in your home? We invite you to post pictures on our Facebook page and share. C’mon over, we’ll see you there!

No I’m not talking about the exercise you get from moving the paint roller back and forth or climbing up and down a ladder as you reach near the ceiling! I’m talking about that hot topic these days of non-toxic paint. Commonly known as zero or low VOC paint, the VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds- which is basically the stuff that compels you to open a window after breathing a few too many fumes.

The chemicals in traditional paint have been linked to health conditions such as cancer and asthma by way of emitting toxic chemicals even years after a wall has been painted. With interest in air quality and subjecting our bodies to as few chemicals as possible, environmentally friendly and non-toxic paints have gone mainstream and with good reason. Afterall what could possibly be more important than your health? Personally, I’m a big fan of Benjamin Moore paints and so it’s no surprise to me that they have taken up the green banner and designated a section of their website specifically to explain about environmentally friendly paints, the standards and what it means for you, the consumer.

If you are considering painting, now is the time to learn more about low VOC paints and the impact using them can have not only on your style, but your health.

Have you ever painted a room with a color that looked great on the paint chip you picked up from the store only to find you hated it once it was on your walls? Have no fear, the Kansas City interior design team at Design Connection is here to give you some easy ideas to make choosing color a little less intimidating and a lot more fun!

It doesn’t take much to scare people away from color and running right into the arms of comforting neutrals. Just stand in front of a display at a home improvement store…if the incremental shades of color start to blur into one another as your pulse begins to race, RELAX. There’s no need to run screaming into the parking lot with a can of standard eggshell paint to ease your troubled walls, instead start grabbing some color chips and head home to contemplate!

A BRIGHT IDEA…
The lighting in most home improvement stores is usually fluorescent and lends a cool hue to the chips- effectively altering your perception of the color. Better to take the sample paint chips home and stick them to the wall of the room you want to paint and see how it looks in natural light. No time for that? Then walk outside and look at the colors, chances are you’ll notice a difference in the warmth of the hues and any subtle color undertones simply because you are now viewing the color in a more natural light.  The lighting in your home and type of bulbs you use can also affect how a color looks. Also if you wear tinted contacts or glasses, that can  affect how you perceive the color (in which case you might want a second opinion from someone you trust or an experienced interior designer).

If you are still undecided, we’ve noticed a trend in most major home improvement stores where they are selling sample size containers of many paint colors. These are perfect for you to test the color on your walls BEFORE you commit precious time and energy to painting the entire room. As an added bonus this will enable you to truly see how the color looks in daylight, nighttime and everything in between.

A QUICK HOW-TO…
If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, one of the most important tools (besides a good dropcloth) for painting a room is a really good trim brush. Often the most difficult task when painting a room is getting the trim right. You can tape it off with green or blue low tack painter’s masking tape (time consuming but effective if you wait for the paint to dry and carefully score a line along the edge before you peel it off) or you can be brave and paint it freehand or utilize a paint guard that you slide along the wall as you paint.  The most invaluable tool I’ve found for painting trim is a really good angled trim brush. That is the one thing I spare no expense on when I tackle painting a room myself. Personally, I’m a fan of the short trim brushes with the rubber handle that can fit easily in the palm of your hand.  It makes the job of painting so much easier for me.

WHAT COLOR SHOULD I PICK?
Ahhh that’s the million dollar question and one we’ll visit in a future post.  In the interim, you can check out some great tools from industry leaders Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore. At the Sherwin Williams site, they have a fun Color Visualizer tool that lets you upload pictures of your room and experiment with color that’s pretty nifty.  Benjamin Moore takes it further with a free iphone app called Ben that you can use to find a color palette based on a snapshot or use their Paint Calculator that lets you determine how much you need to paint your space.  Lots of resources out there to make painting less tedious and a lot more fun. Let Design Connection help you with your color choices if you need a hand, we do color consultations and help you bring it all together with the latest styles, colors and accessories!

I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine. Reader, meet Neutral. Neutral, meet Reader. Yes, you read that right, I consider Neutrals to be my friend. Now, before you go picturing a boring room done up completely in beige, I beg you to reconsider. Neutrals (like Wallpaper) seem to get a bum rap and with the variety of colors, materials and textures out there it’s easy to overlook what is typically considered a safe and oftentimes boring choice. I beg to differ because Neutrals are always in style precisely because they are neutral!  They go with ANYTHING.  So when I have a client who is hesitant to choose or commit on color, I introduce them to Neutrals.

Textures like wool and silk look wonderful in neutrals and compliment a variety of woods and metals. You can have a classic and sophisticated array of neutral furniture that you can dress up with colorful walls, rugs and

accessories like pillows art, and plants. A bright orange couch might go out of style fast, but a neutral one? Never! Just paint a wall, change the rug, get some colorful new accessories and you’ll have a new look.  Now that you’ve gotten to know neutral a little better, I’ll bet you’ll be fast friends too!

A fantastic neutral room that I love that was done by J. Robert Scott, click the image to view more pics on their wonderful website

Design Connection Inc. was recently honored with two ASID awards (American Society of Interior Design). We are proud that we can deliver high quality results. Below is a description of the project and how we approached the design.

The client hired us, after viewing our work and realizing his style meshed with our style of design. The client a bachelor wanted a turnkey project which the designer could act independently of the client. He lived out of town and wanted a residence in Kansas City where his children lived. We furnished everything from paint colors and wallpaper, to a complete kitchen which included dishes, pots and pans.

This residence was a condo space that had many angles interesting architectural features, but left you feeling cold. So, Warm tones and neutrals were selected to create an inviting space and to help support the custom art work in making a fresh, bold statement.  The linen drapery panels were hung using a satin nickel drapery rod to create a masculine feel; across the room the client’s desk is topped with granite and flanked with file drawers.  A wonderfully soft fabric was used to upholster the sectional sofa, where the client enjoys relaxing and entertaining.

The furniture floating in this area reflects the angles and the ten foot ceilings allow the space to feel ample.  The walls and ceilings are painted the same neutral khaki and the base boards are an even darker khaki.  When walking into this room the view is fabulous, with no furniture obstructing the line of vision.  Our client loves to spend time enjoying television, using his computer, and just hanging out!

If you like this look, click on the links to view the websites of  Stanley Furniture  C.R. Laine and Z Gallerie

To see the full project visit our website portfolio

Children’s bedrooms are great fun to design. Kids want a space to express their personality. In our featured project the daughter had a beautiful collection of Barbie dolls that we showcased. And accented her walls with paisley shapes with strong bright colors. 

My advice is to pick a theme or color that will tie the whole look together. Then start with the furniture, replacing the big pieces first. Click here to get started with Young America for ideas and direction. Make sure to measure your room, you want the furniture to fit well, and not overwhelm the space.

DesignTipsKC: A room with lots of shelves and cubbies can help a child organize their belongings. A couple of shelves can be dedicated to displaying their crafts and trophies.

 We always have a lot of fun designing children’s spaces. If you want help with your space contact us! http://www.designconnectioninc.com/

Have you thought about adding some new fall colors to your home now that you are going to start spending more time indoors?  I found an intriguing I-Phone application that actually helps you select paint colors.  See attached link to Benjamin Moore for a high tech way to get paint color recommendations for your home.  As “cool” as this sounds if you feel more comfortable discussing paint with an experienced interior designer who has actually seen many paint color options applied to various settings and lighting conditions, please give me a call and “ask Arlene” about paint for your home.

www.DesignConnectionInc.com

We now have a new President and with that the country has new hope and enthusiasm. I believe that if we all work together we will again have the United States of America that was once the envy of the world.

I lived in Europe in the ’90s for 7 years. I was happy to be an American, but realized that we, as a country, and consumers, behaved very differently than the Europeans. They were proud to be French and loved their own culture as well as did the Italians, Swiss and the Germans. The Europeans have sales in all their stores 2 times a year and nothing in between. They may not purchase a lot, but what they buy is good quality and will last a long time. “Less quantity, more quality”. They find value in having less.

I believe we as a country are now headed in that way too. We now value more what we purchase and are buying less. In making purchases for your home, it is when I returned from living in Europe that I had the philosophy that it is often best to have a smaller home that you could afford and have it nicely furnished with quality pieces, good appliances and carpeting that would last. This was not the popular philosophy at that time. I believe that is where we are headed as a country and I am excited to see the change.

Design tip:

To cut down a paint color instead of having the formula cut down by the paint store, you make take a cream colored paint and cut the mixture in half or three quarter yourself. You then take the mixture you have created to the paint store and have it custom matched to this color. It works great.

visit www.designconnectioninc.com

Arlene Ladegaard IIDA

Allied Member ASID

Certified Interior Designer

Design Connection, Inc.

www.designconnectioninc.com

Office  913 851 8776

Mobile 913 593 6919