How Green Is Your Home? Time to Make an Eco Effort!

 

It used to be a rarified few who were interested in green principles for their homes. Now, it's commonplace, and it's common for interior design clients to expect their designers to know about green design. We're talking about low carbon impact, sustainability, using recycled materials, saving energy (in some cases, generating it with wind, solar, passive solar, and geothermal systems), reducing the use and wastage of water, and other means to lessen our homes' impact on the environment. A good designer is able to help a client select building materials, furnishings, and home systems that are eco friendlier. That might mean utilizing  local-made materials that save transportation costs, using natural and sustainable materials, and covering the walls with no-VOC paints. Here's a video tour of a green home in Chicago, IL, showing off various energy-saving features.
 

 

How can you get up to speed on all-things green around the house? Subscribe to EcoHome Magazine - and visit their website for more information on green products and technology that will boost your design awareness and resourcefulness.
 

Interested in learning more about green design, and the field of interior design? 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.

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New Homes Inspired By Nature

Photo: Art GrayThe homes you decorate always start from what we like to call "the bones." These are the architectural features of the house, from the walls and ceilings to the floors, doors, windows, and room shape. One of the first jobs in interior design is to "get the bones right," or to make sure that any weaknesses in the architectural decisions are addressed. It helps when a home is newly made, but even new construction can be a nightmare for decorators, e.g. open-plan spaces need to be better defined by their function and still maintain good flow with the rest of the house. We admired these Andersson-Wise "natural houses," new-construction spaces that celebrate nature through the use of beautiful building materials and clean lines. The natural homes in this video are what we mean by good bones!

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HGTV Dreaming Green

HGTV 2011 green homeThose of you who dream of living in an eco-friendly home and easing your impact on planet earth, HGTV has the perfect house for you. This year's house giveaway is a green home located in Denver, Colorado. The city's vistas of endless blue sky and snow-topped mountains provide a fitting backdrop for the environmentally-conscious new construction. 

Some of the green features is a roof lined with photo-voltaic panels that provide 75% of the house's energy and exterior walls wrapped in recycled-cellulose insulation, preventing heat loss. The surrounding gardens also adopted green practices - using drip-irrigation method of watering the plants - water is targeted at the roots rather than the atmosphere. Sensors also shut off the system during rainy weather. 

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