Home & Garden

When people think of home design, the first thing that pops into their minds is generally the interior of the home. However, what many people may not realize is that home design is every element of the home, including your garden. When it comes to your garden, no matter what type it is, whether a flower or vegetable garden, you can decorate it with exquisite tastes that ensures that it is the highlight of your day.

You want to make sure that when you are considering home design, if you have a garden that you do not leave it out of the design factor. Creating a warm and inviting environment outside is crucial to the overall appeal to your home. As a gardener, you likely spend a good deal of time outside within your garden, digging, planting, weeding, watering, and taking general care of your plants. Therefore, why should not your garden be a beautiful and appealing place, since you have to spend so much time within it!

There are many different home design elements that would look perfect out near your planting area. You have choices from decorative elements such as statues, water fountains, walkway materials, and so much more. One great idea, particularly if you have a flower garden is to place a table and a couple of chairs either within the area or on the outskirts. This can serve as a great place for you to get away or even entertain visitors. What could be better than sitting next to or in your beautiful flower garden while having a great conversation with a close friend or neighbor?

Many people choose home design ideas that mean something to them personally. For example, there are many garden stones that have creative and inspirational saying etched upon them. These might be perfect out in your planting area. On the other hand, you may like the idea of statues within your garden. Statues come in many different sizes, shapes, and designs.

Many people choose to use a trellis. These are absolutely beautiful in almost any outdoor settings and come in a variety of styles as well. Depending on your home design tastes, you can find trellis in several different varieties, such as metal, wood, or plastic. At the same time, they can be simple and plain, or boast intricate and beautiful designs. What is more, a trellis can come in or be created in almost any design or color that you choose.

Other home design garden decor might include a bench, which is perfect for just taking a moment to relax and enjoy the scenery. You might also want to consider a water fountain of some sort. These too come in a variety of different styles, designs, and sizes.

The good news is that when it comes to home design and your garden you are only limited by your own imagination. You can purchase a variety of elements to create the perfect setting or even create your own.

I use sweethome 3d but it’s only okay, I was wondering if anyone knew of a good free download for some home design software… Sweethome 3d does not do landscape design, I would like one that does both, but I don’t really want to pay for it.

Good house design takes its form in part from the forces that act on it.  Climate and weather are two of the strongest form-makers (there are no igloos in the tropics) since houses must be designed and built to repel the damaging effects of the world we live in.  Mother Nature is always trying to tear our buildings down.

Climate and weather also affect the comfort of our homes, and cause us to seek out ways to maintain the temperature and humidity of our homes within tolerable levels.  A great deal of design effort is devoted to keeping the heat in or keeping the heat out, depending on the climate and season.

This Old House

At times throughout American history, the forms of our homes have reflected – to greater or lesser extents – our ingenuity in making our homes’ internal climates more comfortable.

Settlers in the Deep South built deep porches around their low-slung homes to shade them from the harsh sun and to create a reservoir of cooler air that could be drawn into the house.

New Englanders built compact homes with small windows to shield them from winter winds and to hold in as much heat as possible.  And prairie homes, often built of stacked sod, were half-buried in the earth to even out the temperature swings and to protect them from the frequent violent storms that sweep the plains each summer.

Simple and effective strategies like these were necessary because fuel for heating homes was limited.  We created houses that conserved resources; we didn’t know how not to.

That changed with the era of cheap and plentiful electricity and natural gas for home heating, and with the introduction of the first air conditioners for private homes in 1928.  Suddenly, houses didn’t need to respond to their environment; any home could easily be kept as warm or as cool as desired using mechanical means regardless of the weather outside.  Little thought was given to energy conservation strategies until the early 1970s, when the cheap energy we’d taken for granted became suddenly very expensive, and the climate-ignorant houses we’d built for decades became expensive to heat and cool.

That 70’s Show

But then a very cool thing happened.  Architects and builders across the country began to revive the “lost art” of designing homes that responded to climate and weather.  Ancient ideas like earth-sheltering and thermal massing were used again.  New passive-cooling strategies and unique ideas like the Trombe wall were invented.

And most interestingly, the houses using low-energy techniques took on new, exciting forms.  Suddenly there was something else out there beside Old World inspired design.  It was a fun time full of invention and experimentation.

But that era was short-lived.  By the mid-1980s fuel was cheap again and energy-efficient unique home design was all but forgotten.

Back To The Future

So it’s no surprise that we now find ourselves having come full circle, with rising energy prices and a revised interest in home energy efficiency.  It’s a critical concern in a time when some studies show residential buildings consuming up to 21% of the nation’s energy.

Today’s home energy efficient strategies are different than they were 30 years ago, however.  Today the focus is on technology rather than on design.  New materials are techniques have been developed that make otherwise climate-insensitive home designs (and there are plenty) better stewards of the energy they need to maintain human comfort.

Technical solutions can be expensive, however, since they demand that common building materials perform at a higher level.  Windows have “high-tech” glass with low-emissivity coatings, Argon gas-filled spaces, and up to three sheets of glazing.  Heating systems are running at higher efficiencies, and may come equipped with programmable thermostats and insulated ductwork.  Solutions like these do conserve energy and are important components in any home but the technology crutch shouldn’t be leaned on too heavily.  We also need better design.

Designer’s Challenge

What if, instead of spending hundreds of additional dollars on high-tech glazing to keep the sun’s heat out, we more carefully located our windows to avoid direct sunlight in the first place?  What if we used elements of the house itself to shade those windows from heat radiation and UV rays?

Suppose we took better advantage of the ground’s relatively stable temperature to stabilize the temperatures in our houses, rather than exposing every square foot of a home’s exterior surface to the elements?  Instead of constant mechanical air conditioning to remove heat and humidity, why not try opening windows onto shady porches and let the breeze cool the house?

And what if we opened our minds a bit – stopped thinking so much about fashion and resale value – and allowed the forms of our houses to be shaped more by how they respond to the climate and the environment we live in? 

The surprising result might be interesting and beautiful homes that cost very little to heat and cool – just like the old days.

When decorating or making decorating decisions for new homes, it is important to remember that your decisions will be a part if the home for a long time – unless you can afford to re-decorate every few years. Before purchasing any furniture, paint colors or accessories consider your lifestyle and how you plan to live in the home. Also, throw out any pre-disposed notions of your old home; since the new one is structurally different. This is when you need to be open-minded and creative. Take your time and don’t rush and by all means don’t be influenced by friends, family or trends (unless you absolutely love the ideas).

The most important matter of concern when designing or planning interior design for new homes is to build an environment that caters to your specific needs. Creating a space that is accommodating to each person’s lifestyles is the general principle of new home design.

This may seem like very unusual advice concerning interior design for new homes especially coming from someone who is working within the design industry; but there is good explanation for this reasoning. A large, open space without viewing or visualizing any furniture content within that space is quite easy to get a little carried away with while making structural changes.

Try to get an idea of the type of furniture style you will want. If you already have a specific style be sure it will fit in the specific areas of the new home. Some furniture might be too small for large rooms.

Paint color should not be decided until you get all your items (furniture, fabrics accessories, ect.) together and finalized. Painting the wall color before deciding on the furniture could be costly if it does no work with he furniture colors.

Wallpaper is another choice that you might reconsider using while building interior design for new homes. Again, removing wallpaper and resurfacing the surface is often times quite a headache that can be avoided by using other alternatives for creative wall finishing. A great alternative for wallpaper that adds a great texture to the wall surfaces would be a finishing technique such as faux finishing, sponging, or stenciling. These choices offer you a variety of substitutes that are equally appealing and much easier to change then wallpaper. If you absolutely must have wallpaper in any of the rooms, try using a border to achieve the look you’re going for instead of covering the entire wall surface. If you prefer wallpaper be sure to follow the installation instructions fully or hire a professional.

Interior design for new homes can be a tricky process. There is a good possibility that the area pertained in your new home will be slightly larger or smaller then the space in your previous home. It is this reason that planning placement and theme of each space in your new home is so vitally important to successful interior design of new homes. Be sure to measure widths of furniture and doorways before moving day comes in order to avoid hassle while getting the furniture into your new living space. Take careful notice of any moving activity that occurs into and around your new home. Careless moving errors can disfigure floors and walls and create flaws in your new house before you have even begun living there.

Placement of furniture in new homes is one of the key aspects of unique interior design for new homes. If a room is very large you may want to consider making several seating arrangements rather than spacing the pieces out to fit the room. And separated seating groupings can give more privacy for reading and conversation away from the rest of the room activities.

cover furniture with vinyl upholstery

Home Design Plans

It is a fact that a house is never truly a home if devoid of some personal touches applied by the homeowner. It is the choice to design every portion of your house in preparing custom house plans is perhaps the best way to achieve the desired personal touch and really revolutionize your house into a home. With the help of a contractor, you can always tailor every part of your house to suit your needs and reflect your personality. If you are new to house plans and are not sure how to draft them, then hiring an experienced contractor is the key to success. Moreover, even if you feel confident in designing and drawing up the home design plans, the help from a professional will ensure that the progression is standardized and that the results are much more satisfying.

While going in for a home design plan, there are many considerations that require your attention. These considerations are essential to follow if you choose to design your own home. Deciding the budget before you start wit the home design plan is absolutely necessary and can be considered as a first step. Employing an experienced and reputed home design contractor to help you with the design process is also an important step. The process of designing begins with the details of designs and requirements you have in mind. If you are unsure about the designs, you can have a look at house and home books and also a quick search on he Internet will help you to form an aesthetic design. This is the most challenging part of the process as you will have considerable options to choose from. Once you have finalized the designs you can begin to actually outline the house design plans.

It is better to keep in mind that at any time before the plans for your custom home are finalized, you can opt to revise and change them. The changes would get difficult once the building process begins. Thus before you start with the actual building work, make sure that you are absolutely comfortable with the house design plan. Many home design services offer the advantage of pre-designed home plans in a variety of floor plans, and while these can save you money as well as time in the short term by offering the convenience of the ready-made home designs. But the chances are that these may not be exactly what you are looking for and changes may cost a minor fortune. Not all home plans may be appropriate for your available lot, and you may find yourself with home plans which are difficult to adjust. The most satisfying home plans are those that offer enough space for your family’s style of living as well as the potential to grow with your needs. You should also have the ability to plan for additional construction if the need arises. Your outdoor living should also be part of your home plans. Access to you home and its interior should be easy as well as secure.

Home design requires lighting as well as decoration to create comfortable and personalized living space. Home designers in the Houston area frequently partner with lighting and electrical experts like ILD because they know their services will only look better when placed in the best possible light. Home remodeling often requires advanced home electrical systems and circuitry work that only licensed professional electricians can perform. The intricacies and often complex color schemes of interior home design require specialized lighting controls and multiple layers of light to be completely revealed; and home exteriors and landscapes require specification grade home lighting systems and equipment to blend architecture and indigenous vegetation into a harmony of luminance that is both directionally focused and economically cost effective.

Home Remodeling

Houston home design firms often remodel and expand existing homes, creating new interiors and spaces that must be properly wired, grounded, and protected to comply with local electrical regulatory codes. If you are currently having your home remodeled, be sure to contact a certified electrical design firm who can partner with your home design firm to ensure that new home wiring is installed correctly and safely. Any number of steps may end up being taken by our team to safeguard the operability and reliability of your home electrical wiring. These upgrades may include a new circuit panel, new outlets, and dedicated circuits for sophisticated electronics, home theater systems, and major appliances that require an individual source of power to work correctly.

After completion of all necessary electrical panel upgrades, we recommend you take an additional step and invest in one or more protective measures to safeguard your home’s access to uninterrupted power. During Houston area thunderstorms, tropical storms, and hurricanes, lighting can cause voltage to spike in homes throughout entire neighborhoods. This can destroy appliances and circuit panels if a whole house surge suppression system is absent. Investing in a surge suppression system protects your circuit panel, dedicated circuits, and power outlets that feed electricity to your entertainment, communication, and daily living systems. You may need more that this, however, if the power grid itself goes down in your neighborhood. A reasonable investment in an electrical generator will enable you to maintain power to your home so that you may continue to receive vital news and communication services if a major crisis knocks out the power in the city.

Interior Lighting

If you have hired an interior decorator in the past, you have already invested considerably in exquisite home design and beautification. Without the proper lighting, however, the full magnitude of your investment can be diminished by shadows or glare. Finding the balance between light and darkness is critical to showcase many of your home’s unique designs and points of differentiation such as vaulted ceilings, trusses, coves, custom kitchens, dens, and guest bathrooms. Homeworks lighting controls installed make fine tuning your home’s interior lighting design as simple as tuning a stereo dial or pushing a television remote. As a vendor of Lutron, AMX, and Vantage lighting controls and software, we can both program automated lighting sequences into various rooms of your home to correspond with specific activities, and we can give you one touch manual control over any luminaire or multiple layers of lighting within a room.

Consider the value that proprietary, hidden display and fine art lighting fixtures can add to your interior home design in places like private libraries, ornamental displays, gun racks, and antique cases. Knowing where to install these fixtures and how to precisely adjust them requires a blend of science and art. Using advanced photometric analysis software, our home lighting designers can render your interior home design in three dimensions and both calculate and illustrate the outcome of multiple lighting systems we can install upon your approval.

House Lighting

Make it a point as well to work with a lighting design firm that understands the disciplines of architecture and knows how to illuminate the exterior design of your home as an aesthetic unto itself. Without light, the beauty of your house remains hidden at night. Companies like Illuminations Lighting and Design know how to bring this hidden beauty to the forefront in a manner that will impress the entire neighborhood without annoying it. Only specification grade, US-manufactured lights are used in exterior home design lighting, and all of these fixtures now are being made with light pollution controls and reflectors that keep the light focused only on your house so your neighbors will be impressed-but never annoyed-by its presentation.

This can also be done very cost effectively in keeping with the principles of “Green Energy.” Most house lighting fixtures we use are low voltage and will keep power costs down and still put your home in the best light. Furthermore, because we take a less-is-more approach to equipment, we utilize photometric calculations and optimal angles to spread out more light with fewer physical luminaires.

Landscape Lighting

Landscape lighting unifies the illumination of your exterior home design with the geometry of Nature Herself. Low voltage, energy efficient fixtures will keep your power costs down and create safer environments for children and pets. If you work with a firm such as ILD who partners on a regular basis with reputable Houston landscapers such as Dawson Estes Landscaping, you can actually receive turnkey landscaping services that transform the landscape and the lighting all at the same time. Proprietary methods of environmentally friendly outdoor tree lighting and innovative path, garden, and patio lighting can make your home both a sanctuary for private times and a hotspot for weekend entertainment should you wish to throw an outdoor party. Even more importantly, landscape lighting systems can be automated to work on timers or turn themselves on or off according to exterior lighting conditions.

Best of all, if your home is protected by a home security lighting system, you can can have your outdoor lights linked to your alarm controls so that any intruder will be blinded by immediate, unexpected light at the same time the system signals the police.

During the development of your custom home design, there are numerous floor plan features that should be considered.  Maximizing the enjoyment of your custom home can be accomplished by devoting ample thought to key areas of the overall floor plan.  Areas of consideration for your custom home design should include and open layout concept, ceiling heights, traffic flow, recreational areas, sight lines and exterior views.

Becoming a key feature of almost every custom home design, an open floor plan concept allows better flow between spaces.  A good custom home design floor plan will maximize the useful square footage of the custom home while also creating a sense of special separation.  One way to achieve this effect is implementing half walls as a design element between rooms.  Maximizing the open concept for your custom home design can also be done by separating each space with a change in floor treatments.  The open concept can also have some influence on how the ceiling heights affect the whole design.

Varying ceiling heights or changing the design elements of the ceiling can also create an open feeling throughout the custom home.  Tall ceilings and vaulted ceilings are popular trends used to create the open concept of the custom home design floor plan.  It is common to see ceilings in great rooms achieving heights of 20 feet either by vaulting or 2-story space.  Additionally you will find ceiling heights of 9 to 10 feet in kitchens, dining rooms and bedrooms of new custom homes.

Particularly in an open concept custom home design, the floor plan must cater to the overall traffic flow throughout the home.  Single story custom homes typically have bedrooms adjacent to a family room or media room.  When designing these areas, Design Alternatives also makes sure too much traffic flow doesn’t cross over one another since the kitchen is usually located in proximity of the family room as well.  Although the importance of traffic flow is often neglected in custom home design, experienced designers will also give much consideration to the location of stairways in the overall traffic flow scheme.

Home technology and home theaters have also increased the necessity and importance of recreational areas as a key aspect of custom home design.  Adequate thought must be given to not only identify where the television screen will be located, but also how the furniture will lay out around the home theater speakers and components.  If the recreational area is not attached to the kitchen, consideration must also be given to including a wet bar as part of this floor plan concept.

As previously mentioned the open concept has become an increasingly important feature of new custom home design.  By creating an open floor plan, it opens up sight lines between spaces and to the outside.  A quality custom home design incorporates wall openings and doorway locations to utilize critical sight lines.  Limiting sight lines not only creates a mundane space, but will also make the whole house feel smaller due to the visual obstructions.  These sight lines should open up all the way to the exterior surroundings as well.

Locating the house on the building site is just as important as the custom home design itself.  Care should be given in considering how the sun will enhance the natural lighting throughout the home.  If there are certain views that should be maintained, window type and positioning are also critical features which need to be planned out.  Design Alternatives Custom Home Design incorporates all these important aspects when designing each and every floor plan.  Your dream home is a big investment, so your custom home design should be completed by a designer who knows how to maximize all these important features.

There are many factors in feng shui home design that ought to impact somebody’s decision to purchase a house. When you go house hunting, it’s vital that you have some basic knowledge of feng shui principles to help with the decision making process. There are a number of things to look out for, all of which will help you establish whether or not the house has good ‘qi’ or energy linked to it. If there are too many problem areas, it’s a sign that you’ll be negatively impacted if you choose to live there.

Once inside the house, you will need to carefully observe the structure and entire floor plan of the house. Things to look out for include slanted ceilings, exposed ceiling beams, missing doors and corners. Other important structural features such as the position of doors in relation to windows, the location of stairs in relation to the front door and others are all factors to take into consideration. Problem areas will very likely create bad feng shui, but keep in mind that there are cures for these problems. These cures are usually very effective and they are accomplished by utilizing simple tools including crystal balls, wind chimes, water fountains and mirrors. The one reason to completely reject a house is if there are way too many problem areas.

There can also be a number of outside influences that you need to bear in mind . The surrounding community is just as important as the house itself. Go around the neighborhood to get an idea of some of the other things which can impact your life. Avoid buying a home that is found near cemeteries, police stations, hospitals, waste management facilities or any other sites that may adversely affect your home. Landscaping in the front of the house should be inviting for the ‘qi’ to flow right into your home. Make sure that the lawn and shrubs are fresh and never wilting, and in addition check for trees blocking the main entrance.

Remember to keep these pointers in mind when you are on the hunt for a new house. Another cool tip that should never be overlooked is to get to know the current homeowners. Find out the reason they may be selling, this can be a very good indicator of how feng shui will ultimately affect you if you select to live there. It’s an excellent sign if the current homeowners are leaving to move onto bigger and better things. When you already live in a home that you purchased, it is not too late to put these tips to use either. Learn more about the structure of your house along with the environment around you, then use your findings to determine the correct remedies to apply as a quick fix.

A 3D Living Room model Courtesy of Confidential Records Art & Multimedia (CRAM) Designs. A snippet: Use the pause button and the slider to see the multiple views. For 3D Digital Designs and quotes, contact Sean Pollard at pollardpower@gmail.com