Modern Archives - Page 11 of 12 - Kelley Astore Interiors

Closet Design – Tips & Ideas

Having a beautifully designed and smartly organized closet is key to stress-free mornings. There is nothing worse than your closet being full of dirty and disorganized laundry when you need to get ready quickly or you have a busy day ahead. You should be able to walk into your closet and know exactly where everything is. That’s why customizing your closet to be organized in a way that makes sense for you is so important! Keep reading for 6 tips and ideas for your closet design and organization.

Decide how you would like to organize your clothes

There are many ways to organize clothing and accessories so it’s important to look at different options and settle on one that makes the most sense for your lifestyle. Some people like to organize their closet based on clothing items. For instance, all the pants are in one section, all the tops are in another sorted by sleeve length, etc. Others may have a variety of clothes for different occasions and may find that separating their clothes based on what they’re used for works the best for them. For instance, you may choose to categorize your closet into work clothes, activewear, casual clothes, and pajamas. Some people prefer to have one section with their most worn items and the rest of the clothes separated into categories. Some like to organize their clothing by color for a beautiful and satisfying look.

There’s a good chance that combining a few of these techniques will work best for you. The next time you get ready, pay attention to what would make that process easier and go from there to find a method that works for you.

Add a chair or seating area

When I remodel and design closets, I love adding a chair or seating area if space allows it. It feels luxurious to be able to get ready slowly and enjoy the process. It also means that if you want help deciding what to wear, someone would be able to sit comfortably in the closet with you to help. I always recommend adding a chair/seating area for people with children or with a busy lifestyle. It gives them their own kid-free space to unwind and relax. Having a space in the house that is yours massively helps reduce stress. For a lot of parents and busy professionals, getting ready is the one time of day that they get to themselves. Might as well go all out and allocate some space for this to happen in your closet!

Use an assortment of storage types

Get creative with what type of storage you use and use a variety to accommodate your specific needs. For instance, if you wear a lot of suits or dresses, prioritize space for hangers. If you own a lot of shoes or bags, be sure to have plenty of shelves. Get different-sized drawers for different items. For instance, we remodeled a small closet for a client who had a massive earring collection. We built her a set of custom drawers, including three smaller drawers lined with velvet to store her earrings. Another type of storage that people often forget about utilizing in the closet are cabinets! Cabinets are a great way to add in shelving without having too many items directly on display. For the same client, we built individual glass compartments in a cabinet style to house her shoes, which can be seen on the right side of the image.

Add Decor

This is the time to get creative! When decorating a house, people often forget about their closets! I like to think of decor in the closet as a gift to yourself. Chances are not many of your guests will be venturing in your closet, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a beautiful space for you to be in. Your closet is a great space to add decor that doesn’t fit with the rest of your house’s design or that has a lot of sentimental value.

One idea is getting artwork that features a quote that motivates you personally. That way, while you’re getting ready in the morning there is a little message there to get you feeling confident for the day!

Consult a Professional

If your closet is disorganized and you’re feeling a little overwhelmed at the prospect of tackling it yourself, we completely understand. It takes a long time and if you don’t already have proper storage in place, it becomes a massive project. But that’s where a professional designer or organizer can help you out. At Kelley Astore Interiors, we work with our clients to create customized designs to suit their needs. We specialize in bespoke cabinetry and built-in units so will be able to create the perfect space for you, whether you have a lot of shoes, a lot of earrings, or not a lot of space at all!

Our goal is to take all the stress out of the design process for our clients. Whatever the nature and scope of your redesign, we take full responsibility for seeing that the entire project is finished on time and on budget and that all work is of the highest quality. Head to our services page to book a free consultation today!

Renovate Your Kitchen – 4 Reasons Why You Should

The kitchen is a crucially important part of your living spaces Food is a delicate form of love, making the kitchen the heart of the home. Having a beautiful large space to prepare and enjoy food supports a healthy relationship between cooking and eating. If you have children, raising them to appreciate cooking equips them with essential tools for when they step out on their own. If you’re able to renovate one thing in your house, do not neglect the kitchen. It makes all the difference. Keep reading to learn the 4 reasons why you should start renovating your kitchen today!

1. Renovation Gives You Creative Control

Gutting your current kitchen and starting from scratch allows you to build the kitchen you’ve always dreamed of. Renovation always gives you the most creative control in a design process, because it gives you a blank canvas to work on. Your imagination becomes your starting point and you can ensure that it looks and functions in a way that’s perfect for you and your family. Everyone has different needs and priorities, so customization is key. I worked with a client who wanted to do a full kitchen renovation. The original design felt outdated and seemed to suck all the natural light out of the room. As soon as I saw it, I knew there was a more clever way to use the space in a way that would brighten the whole space while providing everything the client wanted and needed from their kitchen.

2. It Makes Mealtimes Easier

Having a smart layout with a lot of storage space and counter space will make mealtimes much easier for everyone involved, especially if you’re a busy parent. Having a kitchen island large enough to have bar stools is one of the best ways to tackle this. It gives you plenty of space to prepare meals and allows your or your children to eat under supervision or while you clean. Custom-made kitchen islands are designed to your needs including size and whether you’d like it to have a sink, a dishwasher, internal storage, a stove, etc. The large amounts of additional counter space will allow the kids or your friends to get involved in cooking without the kitchen becoming too cluttered or chaotic.

For this client, we opted for a bespoke kitchen island with a beautiful marble top, built-in shelves, and amenities including a small sink, as well as four high chairs for casual mealtimes.

3. Organization Reduces Stress

Renovating your kitchen allows you to organize it in a way that works for you. Having enough storage available will largely reduce stress in a kitchen. Any successful chef will tell you that keeping a clean workspace is key to cooking delicious meals, and having smart organization makes it easy to keep things tidy. It also makes doing the dishes a lot easier. Additionally, our brains often associate clutter and anxiety together, so organizing your kitchen in a way that hides most of the kitchen clutter away gives a cleaner, more luxurious look that will ease any stress.

This was one of the priorities for this client, so we took extra care with all the built-in cabinetry. We opted for white cabinets to reflect the beautiful natural light in the kitchen, and also opted for the refrigerator and freezer to be built into cabinetry creating a cleaner look. We made sure to include a bunch of different cabinets and drawers of all different sizes to make organizing kitchen tools and crockery easier. A clean and tidy space encourages a clean and tidy mind!

4. A New Kitchen Paves the way to Post-Pandemic Parties

As more and more people get vaccinated, it feels like we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Dinner parties, brunches, game days, and BBQs with all our family and friends are well underway, and we cannot wait! What better way to celebrate the recovery of our world than with a beautiful kitchen to prepare and host parties for your loved ones? If you’re preparing food for a large group of people, you’re going to want plenty of space to do it. Additionally, an old worn-down kitchen is not as welcoming and doesn’t feel as hygienic as a new beautifully renovated kitchen. Impress and surprise your family and friends with a new renovation.

One of the key ways to make this kitchen feel more welcoming was brightening it up. We went with a fairly neutral palette, focusing on white cabinetries, pale gray marble, and silver hardware detailing. We added lights at the top of the built-in cabinets lining the walls, as well as along the backsplash to brighten everything up. We decided to put the main sink directly in front of the window to make doing the dishes more enjoyable. To balance it out, we opted for beautiful dark hardwood floors.

Stop Putting It Off, Book Your Consultation Today!

If there’s anything we learned from this past year and a half, it’s that life is too short to put off the things that bring us joy. We’ve learned the importance of the home feeling and functioning as a safe haven, and we’ve definitely learned much joy socialization really brings. There are too many reasons to renovate your kitchen, that it would be silly to put it off any longer. It may feel like an impossibly big and daunting task, but that’s what we’re here for.

At Kelley Astore Interiors, we oversee and manage the entire renovating and decorating process. We have ongoing relationships with a range of licensed contractors and skilled craftsmen who work under our supervision on all our projects. We take full responsibility for seeing that the entire project is finished on time and on budget and that all work is of the highest quality. We take the worry out of the process for our clients. Visit our services page to get started today!

Bespoke Upholstery for 2021: Living Room Remodel

Your living room is one of the most important rooms in your house. It’s where you unwind, spend valuable time with your family, and welcome guests to relax. The way your living room looks can make or break an entire house design. When working with clients on living room remodels, we always recommend they use bespoke upholstery. Bespoke Upholstery comes with many benefits, from sustainability, creative control, and individuality. Today we’ll be taking you through a living room remodel that used bespoke upholstery to bring the design together.

The Remodel

We started with a pretty blank room. It had a beautiful piano and a wall hanging sitting on the floor. The room had beautiful large windows and the walls were painted in a neutral color with bare wooden floors. The client wanted to continue with a neutral palette, and have gray be the main color. The first step was to install beige-toned carpeting to separate the space from the rest of the floor plan, and to create a more welcoming, cozy, and comfortable living room.

We agreed that bespoke upholstery was the best way to go: it gave us the most control over the design and ensured that the furniture and drapery would be of the highest and longest-lasting quality. Rather than going with a sofa set, we decided to use four armchairs to create a sitting area around a small round table. Armchairs are often cozier than sofas, and using four of them to create a sitting area helped to section the room off. We upholstered the armchairs in a textured gray fabric from Kravet. We made sure to use a textured fabric and add a decorative stud trimming to the armchairs to add dimension and details for the eye.

To match the armchairs, we used heavy gray linen from Kravet for the custom drapery. This room was on the smaller side and didn’t have exceptionally high ceilings, so we made sure to hang the drapes as high as possible and to have them reach all the way down to the floor to create an illusion of taller ceilings and a larger room. The piano stayed in the same general location by one of the windows, so we added black cabinetry on the opposite side to balance out the black of the piano. Two lamps with white shades and gray bases were added on top of the cabinets to provide soft lighting in the evenings. We then added in a small round table that had a grey top with black legs to tie the gray and black together.

The client wanted an ottoman, so we upholstered one in a textured orange fabric from Romo. The final step was to tie the entire design together with details and decor. Every armchair needs a cushion, so we had four throw cushions custom made using a gray and orange patterned fabric from Romo. These cushions were crucial in tying the design together. They had a few tones of gray, dark, and light, which tied the black piano/cabinets together with the gray armchairs and drapes. They also have just a few strips of white and orange running through them that matched perfectly with the ottoman and lamps. We hung some matching wall art of nature and used orange flowers and leaves to decorate the piano and cabinets, completing the nature theme. Lastly, we added a few smaller details such as coasters, a house plant for the coffee table, and a few books.

Overall this was a super successful design, and I’m delighted knowing that my client gets to enjoy this living room with their family for many years to come. Design is making a composition of items that are different but still match and complement each other. Going with bespoke upholstery and custom-made cushions and drapes allowed us to have full creative control. If you are looking to remodel, we highly suggest choosing bespoke upholstery for 2021.

Looking to remodel?

Among interior designers in Northern Virginia, we are nearly unique because virtually all of our cabinets, upholstery, and window treatments are completely custom-designed by Kelley and produced to her precise specifications by craftsmen here in the area. You can be assured that our designs will be expertly tailored for your living environment, and you will not find these elements of your design appearing anywhere but in your home. Head to our services page to get started today!

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