For Fun Friday

Goodness, it has been a busy month! We have installed a new master bedroom for a client and have been working on pulling together a project for a home in Bellaire. I wanted to share a few things with you that we've seen today.

The first is bedding from Lee Wilder & Co (http://www.leewilder.com/.) Many of our clients are requesting machine washable bedding, which is hard to find that will wear well and last - plus look good. We put this bedding in our Master Bedroom Project and our client can not stop RAVING about it. We steamed it before the install and since then it has remained wrinkle free, much to the delight to our client. Lee Wilder is available through the trade, such as yours truly.

We actually only ordered the shams and duvet covers and then did custom accent pillows that focused on blue (there is a blue pin stripe that runs through this pattern). Take a look at the website, the colors are much better there.

An important designer tip: Find good basics and build from there - you do not need the entire suite or collection. The room will be better if you pull from several sources versus one.

Also, for those do-it-yourself style mavens, Macy's is having a really good sale on bedding right now. I picked up a king coverlet from the Hotel Collection for $100, and a queen set of 100% egyptian cotton for $77.00. You just can't beat that!

Have A Great Memorial Day Weekend! I'll be enjoying mine in San Antonio - can't wait to share the trip with you!

The 5th Wall: The Blessings of High Ceilings

Welcome and congratulations! The world is your oyster! Why? Because you have ceilings over 8' in height. Look up - what do your ceilings look like, plain with recessed lighting, maybe a ceiling fan or two? For shame - what a waste of opportunity.

Oh, wait you say there is something interesting up there? Kudos for you. When you have the blessing of higher ceilings, you truly have the blessing of so much more! You have flexiblity to build in architectural interest, you can be playful or serious. Instantly you can give your home character and age, although it maybe new construction.

With the exception of a homes where the ceilings have been wallpapered in palm frawns or banana leaves...(yes it does happen and in a narrow hallway too, I could not help to sing - "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...there they are all standing in a row...") There really few bad choices. Let's look at some great examples:


1. Contemporary Homes: While a plain flat ceiling can be appropriate, so can tounge & grove, or beadboard. Be careful of using a narrow beadboard, this can push the look country, cottage, beach or nautical in nature. This is a great photo from Interiors Magazine.

Look Inside >> February/March 2009

The beadboard effect on the ceiling is very authentic to modern/contemporary homes and extremely versitale in its use.


2. Ethnic/Multi-cultural/Resort. Again from the Interiors Magazine -

Look Inside >> February/March 2009

How do you create this for you? Easy, create the beam effect, either with beams, or trimmed out boxes and use a reed wallpaper to create the look of thatching. You won't have as much depth, as this example, but you will be amazed at the effect.

3. Traditional - A quick an easy way to spice up a ceiling with a traditional flare is through the use of beams. Beaming can be used to create long runs, hopefully with the shortest distance to visually push the room wider, or they can be used to create more intricate patterns. This example is from a Cristall Steel Windows ad (http://www.critallna.com/) published in the November 2002 issue of Architectural Digest (http://www.architecturaldigest.com/). The beam detail is intricate, but beautiful!

4. Ceilings - Faux Finish or wallpapers. Formal Traditional interiors really are defined by this technique. It can be done with restraint or with abandon and through multiple techniques. Although I don't have a picture to share, I worked on a library while with Michael J. Siller Interiors in Houston where we used anagalypta to wallpaper the ceiling and then had the faux finisher finish it like antique leather. The paper itself was very well priced, more of the cost was in the faux finishing. But it created a very unique look.

Brief definition here, there is anaglypta and lincrusta. Lincrusta was created first and is a more rigid material created from lineseed oil & wood pulp. The embossing tends to be deeper and more defined. Anaglypta is a trademark name and was created second, offering more flexibilty because it is composed of wood pulp and cotton. The embossing isn't as detailed and has the ability to collapse.

This example also from the November 2002 issue of Architectural Digest also shows how intricate you can work your ceilings. Of an interesting not, the intricacy of the trellis ceiling with the crown is balanced with the simplicity of the walls and furnishings.

5. Exotic Innovation. I love the veneer work on this ceiling. Again from Interiors Magazine (http://www.interiorsmagazine.us/) this ceiling excudes luxury! While I have no doubt that this ceiling is likely actually real veneer, let's talk about how to recreate. First you could do it through wallpaper. Maya Romanoff (http://www.mayaromanoff.com/) or Phillip Jefferies (http://www.phillipjeffries.com/) Both have veneer wallpapers to choose from.

Another way to create this would be through the use of laminates such as those from Wilson Art (http://www.wilsonart.com/), Formica (http://www.formica.com/) or Tree Frog Veneer(http://www.treefrogveneer.com/) Granted your craftman/woman is going to have to love you or love the idea just as much as you do.

So five quick ideas on things that you can do with higher ceilings, either now or tomorrow. Did you notice how many ceilings were darker? The height and pitch of the ceilings enables the use of a darker ceiling as a way to balance and enhance the architecture. The same effect can be done with paint, but has to be done gingerly.

The 5th Wall: Ceilings

Ok - reposting this one because it filed by the wrong date!

The ceilings of a home can be one of the most neglected parts of the house. While we will refresh our walls, most people ignore the ceilings, or just leave it at "Ceiling White." I'm not even sure that is a true color name. Do you know that there are over 100 whites in the Benjamin Moore Color Library? Why does everyone use ceiling white? With modern construction, newer homes typically have 10' - 12' ceilings on the first floor and somewhere in the 9'-10' range on the second floor. When you have ceiling height, you have so many more choices as to what you can do - but you are more limited when you have an 8' ceiling. So of the easiest techniques can be through application of paint and trim.

There are a couple of concepts that create illusion of a higher ceiling, one is through the use of less contrast;and the other is through the use of a paint technique called "atmospheric perspective". Atmospheric perspective is a technique developed by Leonardo da Vinci to add depth to his masterpieces. It involves using progressively lighter values of a color from foreground to background, ultimately fading to a blue-grey color.

With that in mind, if you feel the need to raise your ceilings, try one of the following:

1. Paint the ceiling a percentage of the wall color - usually no more than 25%, but it will depend on the color of the walls. Because most people do not have direct or indirect light evenly illuminating their ceilings, any color placed on the ceiling is going to appear darker. By stepping it back considerably, you are countering this effect and creating distance at the same time. Painting the same color also lessens the contrast of the walls and ceilings, drawing less attention to them.

Every notice the contrast of dark walls to a ceiling white ceiling? Not that there are not times for it, but it can be stark. This photo shows the use of this concept, except with wall paper. We used a reed wallpaper on the walls and a coordinating rice paper on the ceiling. Having the 'luxury' of being under a staircase, this poor powder bath has 7' ceilings. The end affect raises the ceiling.

2. Paint the ceiling a grey or blue-grey based white. This creates a "haze" affect and is similar to the atmospheric perspective I mentioned earlier.

3. Paint out the trim to the wall color. This is not one of my favorite techniques, it seems to me to cancel out the architectural benefit of crown, but it is effective.

4. Utilize crown moulding creatively. One of my favorite techniques is to use Cove (upper portion) & Cradle (lower portion) moulding. The cove virtually lifts the ceiling. The cove portion can come in different heights, so make sure to choose the correct one for your room.

5. Create a "frieze" area on the ceiling. This has the effect of a tray ceiling, especially if you apply some of the techniques we mentioned above to paint the main section of ceiling. The trim piece applied to the ceiling does not need to be very large and should have a flat back, similar to that of the cradle. There are other things that can be done from a furnishings perspective to create height, but we will save those for another day.

Next time, fun with higher ceilings.