Category Archive

Sometimes an open floor plan is a little too open. It might work perfectly when your kids are young and you need to keep your eye on them, for instance, but when they’re boisterous teenagers, you might not want to look at (or hear) them quite as much. In a big area, you may want to break things up a…

Sometimes an open floor plan is a little too open. It might work perfectly when your kids are young and you need to keep your eye on them, for instance, but when they’re boisterous teenagers, you might not want to look at (or hear) them quite as much. In a big area, you may want to break things up a…

If I’ve learned anything during the 15 years I’ve spent designing houses for other people, it’s this: What you need and what you think you want are not the same thing.
Before you can even begin to design your own home (or design anything for that matter), you need to establish a clear brief for…

Incorporating a carefully chosen mirror into your kitchen injects a touch of glamour and brings other benefits. The reflective surface bounces light back across a room, boosting brightness and adding a sense of depth. It’s also a simple but highly effective way to make your space look bigger.…

When a couple of empty-nesters living in Illinois decided to purchase a Naples, Florida, vacation home, they wanted to make sure everyone in the family — from married kids to grandchildren to great-grandparents — felt welcome. So they brought in self-described maximalist interior designer Summer Thornton…

With art projects, fort building, tea parties and bedtime stories, kids are busy all day, every day — and their rooms usually have the clutter to prove it! In this series, we’re approaching each room in the house from the perspective of identifying what sparks…

When I was a kid, my mother would often quip at the sight of large, multistory homes: “Yeah, but who’s going to clean all those windows?” In her mind, she was probably imagining one person painstakingly cleaning each window the way she did around our home. She would mix 1 gallon of water with…

Doing laundry can be boring, mundane and a little stressful. So if there’s a way to make the room in which you do your washing and folding a little more pleasurable, wouldn’t you go for it? Here are 10 ideas from the most popular laundry room photos designers added to Houzz so far year, as measured by…