Design Archives - Page 20 of 22 - Kelley Astore Interiors

Five Unmissable Paint Trends of 2021

2021 is already going by quickly and now is the time to nail down any New Year trends before this year gets ahead of us. The color of a room is one of the most key parts of interior design and will make or break a room. Every year new colors start to trend, and all of the paint trends of this year have one thing in common. They’re all an attempt to bounce back and heal from the tumultuous 2020. Many of them pay homage to the home we all share: Earth. Very little is as grounding and calming as being in nature, so now we’re bringing those tones into our homes. So get out your paint roller and get ready to get painting with these five unmissable paint trends!

Restorative Neutrals

Up first are restorative neutrals. Neutral colored paints will always be in style, but this year sandy-beige tones are taking center stage. Painting your room a neutral color is a great way to create a calming and bright environment without opting for that hospital-like pure white. It creates a beautiful foundation to incorporate colors in other ways.

I recently remodeled a dining room for a client. They originally had a very bright red color that wasn’t right for the space. It made the room seem smaller and darker. As with many of my designs, I started with a beautiful oriental rug that had a lot of green and sandy shades in it. We decided to repaint the walls with Benjamin Moore HC-99 Abingdon Putty, a great neutral tone that blended with the rug beautifully, while still allowing the greens to shine. Just check out the before and after!

Grounded Earthy Tones

As stated above, many of the trends of this year pay homage to nature and grounded earthy tones are at the top of the list. Surrounding yourself and your family with earthy tones will create a calming and comforting atmosphere for everyone to slowly get back on their feet. We painted this entryway with Farrow & Ball’s Elephant’s Breath – a beautiful grounded neutral tone. It’s reminiscent of rocks and mountains, perfect for this gorgeous winding stairwell. It paired beautifully with a brilliant white for the trimming and provided a lovely contrast to the darker woods on the stairs. Once again, this shade creates a bright and serene environment which is just what you want to come home to.

Serene Greens & Olive

Serene Greens and olive tones strike a beautiful balance of color without being too bright. These shades of green are extremely welcoming and calming. Being in a room that’s painted with the right shade of green can make you feel like you’re walking along a forest path, surrounded by animals, plants, and sounds of nature. Serene Greens and Olive tones also make fantastic accent walls. It’s a perfect shade for houseplant-lovers, as the green will complement your plants and help them shine. Opting for a color like Sap Green or Olive from Farrow & Ball is perfect for feeling cozy and safe in this new year. Sap Green is even part of the Color by Nature palette, which was created in collaboration with the UK’s Natural History Museum to, “bring the true colors of nature into your home.”

Warming Reds & Mulberry Tones

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I absolutely love warming reds & mulberry tones. These are such comforting but invigorating colors that are perfect for all year round – not just the holidays! As discussed in our article about picking the perfect paint color for your home office, red can inspire passion and adventure, and evoke a sense of urgency. If there’s one trending color this year that is all about the bounce back, it’s the red tones. However, red has to be used in the correct way to have the right effect. Oftentimes when an entire room is painted red, it can feel overwhelming. I often choose red as an accent color, as seen here where I used a Benjamin Moore Mexicana to paint this built-in bookcase. It’s created such a lovely reading nook, energizing you to get all your reading done in 2021!

Calming & Smooth Blues

Calming and Smooth Blues are perfect for anyone who loves the ocean. Blue is known to stimulate the mind and increase productivity while maintaining a calm effect, which is exactly what a lot of people need in this new year. A shade like UltraMarine by Farrow & Ball is a perfect soothing blue with a slightly romantic and nostalgic edge. It’s also a part of the UK’s National History Museum’s Color by Nature Palette, officially deemed the ultimate ocean color! Once again, blues work as fantastic accent colors. I didn’t design the room below, but I love how they incorporated the gold with the smooth blue accent wall!

Need help choosing?

We want to help! Interior design can be intimidating if you’re just starting out. Let us take that stress away for you. We offer an array of services from painting to full renovations, and we always put our clients at the center of every design we do. Head to our services page to learn how we can help you today.

Want to learn more about paint? Check out our article on picking the perfect paint color, or how to choose the perfect paint for your home office.

5 Reasons to Add a Fireplace to Your Home This Winter

Across the country, many states are being hit with big snowstorms and all-time low temperatures. We’re in the thick of winter and keeping warm seems to be on everyone’s mind. There is nothing more cozy and homely than a freshly lit fireplace to keep you and your family warm. Here are five reasons to install a fireplace or light yours up this winter!

It warms your home…and your spirit!

The most obvious reason to get a fireplace is to keep you physically warm. Before radiators and electric heating were invented, many people would use fireplaces to warm their entire houses. After all, nothing is hotter than fire! With a working fireplace, you’ll likely be able to save on your heating bills. With the fire burning, you won’t need to use your central heating as much. But besides providing actual heat to a room, fireplaces will warm your spirit. Cuddling up by the fire with a cozy blanket, a warm drink, and a book is the best way to unwind on any winter evening. They’re relaxing to look at, hear, and feel. It instantly adds a cozy atmosphere to a room that truly cannot be replicated by anything else.

Provides a great place for family fun

Arranging your living room around a fireplace creates a fantastic space for family fun! If you have kids you can gather around the fire and tell stories to each other, read books, or even roast some marshmallows. In this age of screens and TVs, fireplaces provide an important space where the whole family can spend time together without the help of electronic devices. While keeping warm, you can teach your children about fire safety and find new ways to bond as a family!

It ties a room together

The designer in me loves a good fireplace for the simple reason of how it quickly ties a room together. A well-designed fireplace looks amazing and elevates a space from a house to a home. The mantlepiece provides a lovely platform for your favorite decor and the space above the fireplace simply begs for some artwork or family portraits. A plain wall is transformed into a cozy, beautiful area with the simple addition of a fireplace.

Adds Value to your home

A working fireplace is definitely sought after for homebuyers, so installing one is an easy way to add value to your property if you ever decide to move or sell. Not only does it make a room look beautiful, but especially if you live in an area that gets cold in the winter, your fireplace could easily become a selling point for your property. Everyone wants to cozy up next to the fire during winter. Making the investment now will likely pay off in the long run.

There are no excuses!

Getting a fireplace may sound like an intimidating or impossible venture to take on your home design journey. However, they’re easier to install than you might think. Many houses, especially older ones, may already have a chimney and fireplace that was covered up with wallboards. Either way, a team of designers would be able to put in the work for you.

The photos below are of a room that I designed, which involved adding in a custom-made fireplace. It was originally a blank wall before we started, and I decided to design the room around this bespoke fireplace. We started by creating custom made windows on either side and then built the custom-made working fireplace with a chimney. On the adjacent wall, we added custom-made built-in bookcases with a desk in the middle and finished the room off with bespoke club chairs, an ottoman, draperies, and roman shades. I’m very happy with how this room turned out and know that my clients will be enjoying many cozy evenings in this beautiful room!

What are you waiting for?

Adding a fireplace to your home is an investment that will pay itself off in the years to come. It provides heat (saving you money on your heating bills), adds value to your property, warms the family’s spirit, and looks amazing! If you’re looking to get a fireplace installed, head to our services page to see how we can help you.

Designing your home office: Tips, Ideas, & Inspiration

If you work from home, your home office is one of the most important spaces in your house. So today we’re bringing you more tips, ideas, and inspiration for your home-office. I’ll be taking you through a design I did recently for a gentleman’s home-office renovation, so you can see what the process is like from start to finish!

Choosing a Space

The first step in designing your home office will be choosing where to set it up. Home offices are most effective when you’re able to use an entire room. Having a whole room as a dedicated work space will increase your focus and productivity, by creating a physical separation between work and rest. If possible, choose a room with lots of windows so that you can work in natural light. It’s nice to have some extra space to move around during the day. And if you’re the kind of person who likes to walk around while on the phone, having enough space for that in your office will be a big help!

Starting With the Base

When designing any room, I like to start with the base and work my way from there. Choosing one base element to design the rest of the room around makes it easier to coordinate the design. For this gentlemen’s home office, we decided to keep the layout of the room, which meant the focus was on redesigning what was already there. I started with this beautiful rug full of blues, beige, and mocha colors. Starting with this rug meant that I was able to hold the paint samples and other fabric samples directly against it and see that it would all match. For more tips on choosing the perfect paint color for your home office, check out this article.

For the windows, I chose a beautiful valance with three Roman shades under it. Now that the base of the room is all done, we can start turning it into an office!

Furniture & fixings

The most important part of every home office is of course, the desk. Depending on what type of work you do, it’s best to get a desk that’s large enough for you to work without getting too cluttered. For this client, we opted for a large dark-colored desk with beautiful brass details that match the mocha color of the walls and in the rug. This desk was large enough for him to keep his office essentials on the desktop while still having plenty of space to work. They say working in a clutter-free environment helps increase focus and efficiency. We got a matching cabinet for the corner of the office as well, which provides good storage for any documents and office supplies, as well as a place to keep the phone and other bits.

This room already had built-in bookcases, so we left those, but I added a grass cloth behind the bookcase to add color and texture into the room. We also added a window seat cushion upholstered in a textured mocha linen, as well as two throw cushions in a leopard print cut velvet. This added more texture and provided additional seating in the office. We added in a couple of lamps, for those days when work spills over into the evening. All that’s left is the decor!

A Personal Touch

The decor in your home office should motivate you to work, bring you comfort when it gets stressful, and provide an appropriate background for any video-calls, all without becoming too distracting. It’s a delicate balance. We recommend keeping the decor minimal. For this gentlemen’s office, we kept the wall behind his desk simple, with this gorgeous American flag painting. It provides a lovely splash of color and is appropriate to appear in any video calls he may attend.

The bookshelves are filled with books, pictures, certificates, some sporting decor. The baseball bat, balls, and golf clubs are that extra personal touch to inspire my client throughout his workday!

Interested in renovating? Head to our services page to see how we can help you create and design the home office of your dreams!

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