@home

22 / 72

20 michigan design center @home 2017
What is a creative use for an unused office or library?
What about an unused formal living room?
How do you help your clients
find their design style when they’re
unsure of what they like?
After you’ve finished the inside
of a client’s home, what are ways you help
them extend your design plan outside?
I had a client with a living room
that they were not using, in a
conventional colonial home with
a formal living room and a young family
with children. That formal living room
just didn’t work for them, so I created a
party room with a pool table, and the kids are happy
to have extra room to play.
What we do is have them come to
the studio, then we open up our large
portfolio, then let them explore our
design process and become engaged in their
design project. It’s like a book; you don’t buy a
detective story and end up with a romance
novel. Creating an outline is the designer’s job, but if a client has
important items that they want to keep but may not fit the
design, there is always somewhere we can fit them in;
let’s say the guest room.
An unused office or library could
be turned into a kids’ homework
room, a kids’ playroom, craft
room, or a sewing room. For an unused
formal living room: Turn it into a formal
dining room.
When designing a home, I like to have
a cohesiveness between the inside and
outside. This is accomplished through
landscaping style (formal or unstructured), hardware
styles, and finishes and colors on the paint and
accessories. For example, exterior rugs, furniture,
and cushions should be in a coordinating palette with the interior.
This unifies the visual of the living space as you look
through the windows to the areas beyond.