Win Our New Rooms - Home Makeover Book Contest

It’s that time of the year to give your home that makeover you’ve been fantasizing about. And we’re giving away a book on how to do it!  Sally and Stewart Walton gives us practical decorating and makeover tips in their book: New Rooms – A Practical Home Makeover Guide. 

Learn how to:

• Refresh a kitchen on a low budget
• Create global styles
• Install mood lighting
• Make simple furniture for kids and teen rooms
• Dress up tired old floors
• Create floor cushions, window treatments, etc.
• Reupholster and restyle old chairs
• And more!

Win a Free Copy

To win the book, please leave a comment below describing a makeover project that you want to accomplish in your home and we’ll select a winner at the end of Monday, June 10^th.  We’ll contact the winner via email and announce the New Rooms book winner next week.

Our Crush of the Day: Contemporary Dutch Designers

Atelier NL: Fundamentals of Makkum clay dishes, bowls, cups

My design head is still humming over the contemporary wave of Dutch designers we discovered in a recent trip to Amsterdam. I wanted to showcase the works of several standouts, to give our interior design students inspiration and to also make consumers aware of the high level of creative quality working in the industry right now. My first props are to Atelier NL (Nadine Sterk and Lonny von Ryswyck); their products are savvy and cerebral - like a lamp that knits its own lampshade when turned on! Their clay ceramic work (above) plays with clays dug up at different locations and times of day in order to fire at different colors.

Maarten Baas is brilliant designer. We saw many of his works on display at the Stedelijk Museum, including his Real Time clock (below) - the face is a video that shows Baas from behind the clock face wiping off the hands that show the old time and using marker pen to draw new hands at the updated time. His work is groundbreaking and rule-breaking. 

Maarten Baas: clockface of his Real Time Clock

Maarten Baas: Plain Clay Floorlight

Piet Hein Eek combines a respectful use of waste and recycled materials with clean contemporary lines. His furniture is always sleek and well fabricated, like his Waste Cabinet (below), made of scrapwood that has been highly lacquered.

Piet Hein Eek: close-up of drawer details on his Waste Cabinet

Other Dutch designers you should know about include:

• Bertjan Pot
• Hella Jongerius
• Studio Job
• Chris Kable
• Ineke Hans

If you're interested in learning more about interior design, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

Backyard Escape: a Modern Tree House

Tower House. courtesy of Gluck+ Architect

Did you ever as a child dream of living in the trees among the birds and open sky? The Tower House by Gluck+ Architects is the ultimate grown-up version of that tree house. 

Built in the midst of the beautiful Catskills, the Tower House reflects the trees and the mountain range surrounding it. The architect deliberately created only a small footprint for the first three floors and placed most of the living quarters on the top floor.  To further the illusion of the house melting into its background, he used green enameled walls for the façade. 

Tower House, courtesy of Gluck + Architects

A minimal amount of furniture graced its interior so as not to compete with the outside scenery. Those chosen included mid-century classics with an emphasis on form and flowing lines. 

Interested in learning more about interior design? Take a look at Sheffield School's Complete Course in Interior Design.  At Sheffield, you will learn how to transform a space, create color schemes, and select furniture, lighting, and accessories.

Decorate Your Outdoor Rooms: Hot Tubs

A hot tub on top of your pool: Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich designed the Sci Fi Hot Tub within its own inflatable iceberg

If I could bottle the warm, sunny weather we had over Memorial Day, I would - it was flawless! It got me thinking about how our interior design students and homeowners everywhere should be adding outdoor rooms to your list of must-decorate spaces. The trend in recent years has to bring the outdoors indoors and to also bring the indoors outside with livable extensions of the home. Good home decorating enhances the function of a room, and so too should you consider the function of an outdoor space.

More traditional hot tub, but well designed: Bullfrog Spa 151R SportX

I'll be exploring outdoor room decorating in upcoming posts, but I thought I'd start with hot tubs. Having just come back from a trip to Amsterdam, I made a special side trip to see the Weltevree showroom and check out the Dutchtub, a sensational lightweight, portable hot tub that uses a wood fire to heat your water in what amounts to sitting in a giant colorful teacup! 

Wood-burning, portable, back-to-nature alternative: Weltevree's Dutchtub

Privacy helps with hot tub placement: Weltevree's Dutchtub Loveseat

If you're going to add a hot tub to an outdoor room, make sure it's convenient to other amenities for bathing and pool use. Is there a cabana or changing room handy? (A converted part of your garage might make a good cabana.)

A lightweight, inflatable solution: Oval AiriSpa portable hot tub

Do you want the hot tub to be on a deck, handy to in-and-out traffic from a family room? (Make sure you don't have a wood-burning Dutchtub on a wood deck - for obvious reasons!) Wherever you position the hot tub, make sure the outdoor room has lots of privacy, with plantings, hardscape, and fencing designed to shield bathers from prying eyes. Finally, plan for safe evening lighting to make the passages between hot tub and home accessible; there's nothing worse than groping in the dark or tripping and falling down after spending a relaxing time in a hot tub. 

Evening relaxation with built-in lighting: HotSpring Limelight collection hot tubs

Click on any hot tub photo for more product information, and add a hot tub to an outdoor room for summer entertaining, after-work stress relief, small intimate parties, or close encounters of the romantic kind. 

If you're interested in learning more about interior design, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

Recycling Beloved Vintage Pieces

Airplane and phone lights by Dog Tag Designs

What do you do with those vintage pieces that you love and collected over the years and just can't throw out?  Well, Dog Tag Designs has a practical solution for you. Designer Tyagi Schwartz recycled a toy airplane and mailbox and transformed them to a functional light.  Below he converted a vintage Brownie Hawkeye camera into a light fixture. In the background is a sold Darth Vader mask turned phone. Don't throw out those beloved pieces - have Dog Tag Designs convert them to lights!

Brownie Phone by Dog Tag Designs