Saturday, April 28, 2018

5 Tips When Shopping for New Furniture


New furniture is an excellent way to spruce up your home. A new bed of couch can not only make your home look more contemporary, stylish, or homey, it can also make you feel more comfortable and more at home in your own house. If you make a mistake when furnishing your home, it can end up haunting your for quite some time. Before making any decisions, it is important to do some planning so that you don't do anything that you might regret. Make sure that you know the furniture will fit in your home, that you can really afford it, and that it's the best deal you can get for what you need.

Take Measurements

This really is one of the most important steps. It is also a step that is so obvious that it can be easy to forget. It is not uncommon for somebody to buy a new kitchen table only to discover that it does not fit in their kitchen. Take measurements where you are going to be placing the furniture.

Figure Out Your Budget

Take an honest look at your budget before you even consider shopping. Figure out how much you can spend right now, and how much you can spend on a monthly payment. Do not exceed this amount. Be cautious with your budget as well. You never know when something unexpected might happen.

If you end up falling behind on your payments on a furnishing, you will end up paying more interest. This is especially true if you buy something on a plan that promises no interest payments. If you miss a payment on this type of plan, you will be charged incredibly high interest rates, and you will need to pay them retroactively.

Shop Around

The most important thing to do when you are looking for new furniture is to consider all of the options that are available. You can start by cutting out any options that are outside of your budget. From that point forward, visit several stores.

If you are shopping for bedding or seating, consider more than the looks. Be sure to use the furnishings in order to make sure that they are comfortable. Give them some time as well. It is not uncommon for something to feel comfortable at first, only to discover that it is actually pushing your spine out of alignment over time because it is too soft or too firm. Don't just think about how it feels against your skin, think about how much support it provides you and how it fits your body.

Similarly, it is important to take into account the quality of the materials. Will a table stand up to the test of time, or will it fall apart before you are even done paying for it? Is it build solid all the way through, or is their particle board hiding inside?

In order to fully explore your options, it is a good idea to get a second opinion. The salesmen will tell you everything in their store is perfect for you. Ask friends and acquaintances how satisfied they are with their furniture. Are they comfortable? Do they look nice? Have they stood the test of time? Has the customer service been satisfactory?

Come Prepared

Before you walk into a store, make sure that you are prepared. You must make a commitment to yourself before you enter that you won't buy anything unless you have already made your decision. It is a good idea to come prepared with a "cheat sheet" of everything you need to know, and write it down. Once you have the info, it's time to leave the store and consider your other options. Be sure to understand what your monthly payments will be, what the returns and exchanges policy is, and make sure you see it all in writing before you buy anything.

Sleep on It

Finally, once you think you have made your decision, go home and sleep on it. Your conscious mind may have made up its mind, but oftentimes your subconscious will remind you of something you might have forgotten. If you still feel the same way in the morning, buy the furnishing. You don't want to wake up after buying something only to realize that you may have made a mistake.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Alex_Finch/836388

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Wednesday, April 25, 2018

5 Décor Trends to Get Excited About for 2018


Designer, Shai Deluca-Tamasi, has beautiful pieces for 2018's latest decor trends from tropical to geometric styles!

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Furniture Arrangement Tips


Quick tips on furniture arrangement by Certified Interior Decorator, Colleen Lora Clark.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

How to Make a Bed Like a Hotel - How to House - HGTV


Learn how to replicate a perfectly made hotel bed at home with high-count bed sheets, comfy duvet and lots of pillows.

Monday, April 16, 2018

Interior Design Tips & Tricks | Overhaul


Interior designer Christiane Lemieux shares easy interior design tips & tricks used to remake Rosanna Pansino's new home.

Friday, April 13, 2018

3 Tricks to Instantly Brighten a Dark Room


Don’t get left in the dark with a room that falls short on sunlight. Our three simple solutions for brightening a room will have your space sunnier in no time.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

What Ever Happened To Waterbeds?


For kids and adults alike, waterbeds used to be the coolest—until suddenly they weren’t. After a heyday in the late 1980s in which nearly one out of every four mattresses sold was a waterbed mattress, the industry dried up in the 1990s, leaving behind a sense of unfilled promise and thousands upon thousands of unsold vinyl shells. Today, waterbeds make up only a very small fraction of overall bed and mattress sales. Many home furnishing retailers won’t sell them, and some that do say it’s been years since they last closed a deal.

So what happened? Although they were most popular in that decade of boomboxes and acid-washed jeans, waterbeds had been gaining steam since the late 1960s, and in retrospect seem to have more substance to them than other notorious fads. How did our enthusiasm for sleeping atop gallons and gallons of all-natural H2O drain away so quickly?

By some accounts, waterbeds date all the way back to 3600 BCE, when Persians filled goat-skin mattresses with water warmed by the sun. In the early 1800s, Dr. Neil Arnott, a Scottish physician, created a “hydrostatic bed” for hospital patients with bedsores. This was essentially a warm bath covered with a thin layer of rubber and then sealed up with varnish. In 1853, Dr. William Hooper of Portsmouth, England patented a therapeutic rubber mattress that could be filled with water. It, too, was for hospital patients suffering from poor circulation and bedsores. In the mid 20th century, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein—inspired by the months he spent bedridden with tuberculosis in the 1930s—described waterbeds in great detail in three of his novels. The beds he envisioned had a sturdy frame, were temperature-controlled, and contained pumps that allowed patients to control the water level inside the mattress. There were also compartments for drinks and snacks, which sounds really convenient. It was, according to Heinlein, “an attempt to design the perfect hospital bed by one who had spent too damn much time in hospital beds.”

The inventor of the modern day waterbed was an industrial design student named Charles Hall, who in 1968 submitted a waterbed prototype (made with a vinyl mattress rather than a rubber one) for his masters thesis project. Hall wanted to rethink furniture design, and was taken with the idea of fluid-filled interiors. Before settling on the waterbed, he had tried filling a chair with 300 pounds of cornstarch gel, which quickly rotted. He also tried using JELL-O as a filling, with similarly disastrous results. The introduction of water fulfilled his vision without the ick factor. During the graduating class’s thesis workshop, Hall told The Atlantic, students ignored other projects and ended up hanging out on his waterbed.

Hall established his own company, Innerspace Environments, and began manufacturing waterbeds for sale throughout California. Early customers included the band Jefferson Airplane, as well as the Smothers Brothers. Eventually Hall’s bed, which he named “The Pleasure Pit,” made its way into 32 retail locations throughout the state. Success was short-lived, however, as cheap imitators quickly flooded the market. By the early 1970s, dozens of different companies were manufacturing waterbeds, feeding the growing demand for a groovy new way to … sleep.

Although many associate waterbeds with strait-laced suburban living, back in the ‘70s they were a symbol of the free-flowing counterculture movement—more likely to be sold with incense and Doors albums than with fluffy pillows and high thread count sheets. “That fluid fixture of 1970s crash pads” was how a New York Times story from 1986 described them. The names of manufacturers and distributors reflected this: Wet Dream, Joyapeutic Aqua Beds, and Aquarius Products were a few that rolled with the times.

“Two things are better on a waterbed,” an Aquarius ad stated. “One of them is sleep.” Another ad proclaimed, “She’ll admire you for your car, she’ll respect you for your position, and she’ll love you for your waterbed.” Hippies and hip bachelors alike were the target market for the bed that promised the motion of the ocean. Hall even got in on the act, offering a $2800 “Pleasure Island” setup, complete with contour pillows, color television, directional lighting, and a bar. Hugh Hefner loved the craze, of course—Hall made him one covered in green velvet, and Hef had another that he outfitted in Tasmanian possum hair.

By the '80s, waterbeds had moved from the hazy fringe to the commercial mainstream. “It has followed the path of granola and Jane Fonda,” the Times noted. Indeed, waterbeds were available in a variety of styles, from four-post Colonials to Victorian beds with carved headboards to simple, sturdy box frames. Allergy sufferers liked having a dust-free mattress, while back pain sufferers were drawn to the beds’ free-floating quality. Advertisements by sellers like Big Sur Waterbeds played up the health benefits with shirtless, beefy dudes like this one:


People were also eager to try a new spin on something as boring as a bed. Kids, especially, loved the squishy, gurgling weirdness of a waterbed. If you were a child of the '80s, it arguably was as close to a status symbol as you could get. Manufacturers, meanwhile, fed the demand with novelty frames, bunk beds, circular love nest beds, and even waterbeds for dogs. They also improved the experience with innovations like “baffles” that cut down on the wave motion many beds created, thereby addressing the one-of-a-kind problem of people getting seasick in their own bedrooms. As waterbed mania swept the nation, specialty outlets like Waterbed Plaza, Waterbed Emporium, and the Waterbed Store opened up shop, and wave after wave of cheesy local television ads followed.

By 1984, waterbeds were a $2 billion business. At the height of their popularity, in 1987, 22 percent of all mattress sales in the U.S. were waterbed mattresses.

Here’s the thing about waterbeds, though: They were high maintenance. Installing one meant running a hose into your bedroom and filling the mattress up with hundreds of gallons of H2O—a precarious process that held the potential for a water-soaked bedroom. Waterbeds were also really, really heavy. In addition to the filled mattress, the frame—which had to support all that water weight—could be a back-breaker. When the mattress needed to be drained, an electric pump or some other nifty siphoning tricks were required. Waterbeds could also spring leaks (as Edward Scissorhands showed), which could be patched but, again, added to the cost and hassle.

In the '90s, it became clear that the novelty of waterbeds couldn’t overcome the additional work they required. By that time, competitors like Tempur-Pedic and Select Comfort were also coming out with mattress innovations that offered softness and flexibility without making customers run a garden hose through their second-floor bedroom window.

These days, the waterbed market is still going, albeit on a much, much smaller scale. Mattress models are lighter than the models of decades past, and come with nifty accessories like foam padding and interior fibers that further cut down on the wave effect. They’re also outfitted with tubes or “bladders” that take in water rather than the entire mattress, making the experience less like filling an enormous water balloon. Most models are quite sophisticated, in fact. The Boyd Comfort Supreme mattress has all the technical specs of a household gadget: three-layer lumbar support, four-layer reinforced corners, “thermavinyl” heat resistant bottom layer, five-layer wave reduction system. That’s a lot of layers! There are also airframe waterbeds that stand firm on their own, and sophisticated temperature-control devices that keep sleepers warm. Marty Pojar, owner of The Waterbed Doctor (which takes mainly online and phone orders), told The Orange County Register that most of his orders come from customers in the Midwest and Northeast, where customers want to hop into a warm bed on cold winter nights.

Like those who still play Sega Genesis or prefer a flip phone to an iPhone, waterbed customers are fiercely loyal to their retro trend. But their enthusiasm alone won’t likely bring waterbeds back to the mainstream. Indeed, even the name “waterbed” carries negative connotations, retailers note. Pojar prefers to call them “flotation” beds. A Washington D.C. furniture salesman interviewed by The Atlantic said he oftentimes doesn’t tell customers when they’re lying on a waterbed. "Everybody who tries the ones we have on our floor is very happy with the feel, but some people won't get it just because it's a waterbed," he said. These days, the most promising market for soft, squishy waterbeds may, oddly enough, be cows.

Article Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/71404/what-ever-happened-waterbeds

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Before You Begin Shopping for Your New Home Furnishings, Make a Plan


Whether you are planning to initiate a new look or redo some choices of your home decor, the first thing you need to do is "Make a plan."

You have probably heard the old saying that any job, any project is 90 to 95 percent thinking and planning and 5 to 10 percent of actual execution. So it should be that your beginning action with furnishing or renewing the furnishing of your home is in the planning stage. Make a good plan.

Number one on your list will be to measure and catalog the room you want to begin with so that you will really know dimensions and the space available you want to furnish. If your plan is to add items to a room you will definitely benefit from a detailed layout of all the items already in that room and the space available for anything more.

You might be thinking about the theme for your decor and you may be looking at various furnishing items with the thought that this one or that one would be just what you need in your living room, dining room, bedroom or any room you are planning to furnish.

While those ideas are good to keep in mind, the first you need to know just what space is available before you decide just which item or items will fit your theme/decor ideas.

Let's start a plan with the living room. I would suggest that your first action is to draw a diagram of that room on a plain piece of paper, making the notation of the length of each wall, the locations of windows and door and any other opening to the room such as archways, hallways or openings to another room, etc.

You will need to know the measurements when you begin to plan your furnishings. For instance, you would not want to purchase an overstuffed couch and ottoman that might be something you love to look at and would love to snuggle into if it would impede the flow in and out of the room. Sometimes the furnishings you really crave are the ones you need to avoid and find a substitute that will more efficiently and graciously fit into the size and character of your room.

So your next action is to find the sizes and types of furnishings you would like to include in this room. If you have some home furnishings magazines you might take one of them and look for an item that is similar to the one you are interested in adding to the room. If your magazine is old you might cut out a picture or two that is like that item of furniture you have been considering. Don't forget you will need to make a notation of the true size of any item or items you are considering.

Once you have found an item and want to see how it will fit in the diagram you created of your living room you need only to place it where you think it would be perfect. You will be able to tell in an instant if it is the right size for the wall behind it, or if it would look better in another location. You would also be able to know if it is really the right piece of furniture for your room.

Even if you do not find a picture of a furnishing item in a catalog, you could try online, or just take paper and cut the dimensions and label it with "Couch" "Chair" or whatever you are considering.

You may think this is time-consuming and perhaps you will consider it boring, but the time you spend making sure the furnishings items you would like to place in this room and will allow your room to look and feel the way you want it to, will save you so much grief.

If you skip this step and just decide to make a purchase of something you like that may be the wrong size or character for your desired theme or challenges the limits of the use of your room you will struggle to find a way to make it work, and you will be disappointed in the result. So take the time to make an outline of the room, check what furnishings will fit and eliminate those that are just not right and you will be glad the more time you take with this "plan".

Once you have placed the various furnishings around and found just the right spot for each then you can begin to consider the colors of your chairs and/or futons or couches, you can also consider the accent pieces you will want to incorporate into your design theme to create that ambiance you desire.

There are endless possibilities with furniture choices and accent pieces, those choices will be the fun part, but they will take planning also so that each piece will complement the surroundings and not clash with your other furnishings and you will want any new additions to compliment the other pieces in the room.

Begin with the plan, an outline of the room and then enjoy finding and choosing the actual furnishing you would like to add to create your design theme.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Marvela_Smith/2519392

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Sunday, April 1, 2018

Four Tips to Keep Your Bedroom Furniture From Looking Bland


Often, people spend their time at home relaxing in shared spaces like the living room and kitchen. Many homeowners put an emphasis on keeping these areas stylish, upgrading components and furniture to make their homes feel elegant and give them a sense of relaxation and peace. Upgrading a private area like the master suite can easily make a well-lived-in home feel new again. When upgrading to new bedroom furniture, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Consider the Size

Bedroom furniture comes in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and styles and certain pieces simply won't work in certain rooms. Before going to the furniture store, take the measurements of your room. This will ensure that only furniture that fits is considered. As a general rule of thumb, avoid using large statement pieces in small spaces.

Get Creative with Lampshades

If a room needs nothing more than a few new accent pieces to enhance the existing decor's style, don't be afraid to mix and match colours and themes. Sometimes, a new lamp is all that's needed to completely transform the look and feel, and playing fast and loose with existing styles can make a design look even trendier than otherwise possible. There's no need to settle on plain colours; patterns and vibrant complementary colours can transform the space into a new, relaxing paradise.

Mix and Match Furniture Pieces

While a matching bedroom set can create a cohesive theme in a room, adding pieces from multiple styles or brands can create a unique appearance that expresses an individual's style. Don't be afraid to combine different finishes, colours, and styles to create a unique theme. For example, use light-coloured throw rugs to add brightness with a large, dark wood statement piece. Add soft classic accents to complement a sleek contemporary bed set.

Don't Neglect Storage Options

Clutter can make even the largest rooms feel small, but not all bedrooms feature adequate storage space or solutions. Consider adding bookshelves to add more vertical storage to the space. If storage is at an absolute premium, look for a bed set with built-in drawers or a headboard with shelves to create more storage space. Rather than storing everything on the top of a dresser, invest in a nightstand that provides adequate storage for an alarm clock, books, or any other necessities best kept close at hand.

Bedroom furniture should be both practical and stylish, and upgrading a few key items in a bedroom can dramatically change the look of the space. Don't settle on the same bland look; follow these tips and create a unique space that fosters both a sense of relaxation and comfort.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Andrew_Stratton/83489

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