New Design Trends for Home and Office 2017

Based on the latest information from the Realtor.com Home Improvement column, there are a few sharp turns ahead for interior design trends this year. And, while we’ve already shared some of the expected hot new design trends for this winter into spring (here and here), ideas are as numerous as the stars and, though they may not be as bright, we can only hope they illuminate and inspire.

While innovation and an eye for style may be the most valuable tools you possess as an interior designer, there comes a time for all for us when we get a bit stale. It’s human nature to repeat what has worked in the past yet, if you hope to keep your edge, it’s often a good idea to see how others have met a design challenge. Seeing the creative solutions that other designers have developed will frequently spark innovation.

Geometric Patterns are Calculated to Catch the Eye

Whether bold or subtle, whether as accents or focus point, the geometric designs that became fashionable last year will persist and expand into home and offices this year.

Cole & Son “Deco Palm” geometric wallpaper design

Lonny.com Geometric throw pillows

Tropical Designs can make a Room Temperate or Sweltering

Has your green thumb fallen off? Replace live (or dead) flora with leafy greens or tropical fauna for a balmy and sultry feeling in virtually any space.

Realtor.com, shares a photo by Kohler

Flamingos wallpaper design by Cole & Son

Black Stainless Appliances offer a Sleek, Modern Look

While brushed stainless appliances have had their day, black stainless remains easy to care for and maintain, while making a statement the neighbors have yet to consider.

Black Stainless Steel Appliances by Kitchen Aid

Bold Entries that lead to Beautiful Encounters

As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression and bold front doors and entries are a great tool for letting visitors know there are no shrinking violets behind them.

Adding curb appeal to the front doors, from HouseBeautiful.com

Looking for more new design trends, tips, and ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

3 Marketing Ideas for Interior Designers

It’s human nature to want to spend your time doing what you're best at doing and, for an interior designer, that is all about reimaging spaces for your clients and implementing the changes they ask for. But, if your business is not large enough to enable you to hire a marketing team, and your goal is to grow your design business, you would do well to check out these three marketing ideas for interior designers.

So, if marketing your business is not at the top of your list of fun things to do, think of it this way: your first job as an interior designer is to market your business, and then to prove what a fabulous interior designer you are.

After all, if you don’t do the former, you’ll never have the clients you need to prove the latter.

The First 3 Marketing Steps You Must Take

1. Who are you? Creating an identity within your niche will be critical to your success. Where can you establish yourself as an expert? Where do your interests and talents naturally lead you? How can you use that knowledge to create your identity – and brand? The best way to define yourself to others is first to do it for yourself, then present that image and identity in your marketing.
2. Have real conversations with real people. Pick up the phone or get on Skype and have a chat with people who would be your dream clients. If you don't have any, look for people who may be interested in working with you and talk to them for 30 minutes. Then you want to listen carefully, take notes and figure out what is the emotional reason they hired you. Write down their words (like they feel overwhelmed, depressed, hopeless when it comes to pulling a room together) and use them in your marketing.
3. Create more than one Opt-in Freebie. Building your list is an important step for the long-term growth of your design business. To do this, you need to keep in mind that different people will have different needs. A single opt-in freebie will rarely address more than one need – and shouldn’t. Instead, create several freebies that address a variety of issues and – always provide solutions.

By defining yourself and your ideal client, then creating content that will help them overcome their pain points, you can quickly become a master at marketing your interior design business.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

2017 Interior Design Trends for the Home

According to the online design magazine Houzz.com, here are some of the hottest interior design trends we will see in the New Year.

First, on the fun side of things, voice-activated assistants are making a huge impact. Leading the way is Amazon Alexa, with Google Home making a recent addition to the marketplace. These devices act as a voice-activated interface for virtually all of the digital devices and appliances in your home or office. Simply speak the activation phrase, and the near-dormant device fires up and awaits your command. You can ask it to give you the weather, play a song from Spotify, dim or brighten your lights or power up the hot tub.

Click here to read a review and comparison of Google Home vs. Amazon Echo/Alexa: Cnet.com.

Amazon Echo uses Alexa as your interface.

Generally seen as the most used room in the house, the kitchen can always use more storage. Now, many homeowners and designers are doing away with expanses of upper cabinets and pushing all that storage onto a single hardworking wall. This one-stop hub frees up the rest of the space to create an open, breezy look.

Kitchen Storage Walls instead of Cabinets

Making a good first impression has value and the entry to your home, like a bathroom or vanity, is a compact space where you can have fun with innovation and design – without blowing a budget.

Innovative Entry Design

Certain rooms, such as kitchens, provide little opportunity to make a statement due to a lack of wall space. In these spaces, graphic floor tiles can be used to dress, and impress, such a space.

Graphic Floor Tiles make an Impression

Most homeowners strive for a calm and cozy bedroom by sticking with walls painted in soothing blues, grays or yellows. But according to a recent Houzz survey, intimate or romantic is the third-most desired atmosphere for a master bedroom after calm and cozy. To achieve this mood, look to colors like raspberry pink, deep ruby red, caramel and even black.

Romantic Colors for the Bedroom

Of course, the list of 2017 interior design trends is far longer than those we’ve shared here. To learn more, click her to read the article, 28 Design Ideas Coming to Homes Near You in 2017, by Mitchell Parker.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Farmhouse Design Ideas

From retro design to “modern,” there is a strong trend toward farmhouse design ideas in homes across the country. The reasons for this trend are as varied as the personalities involved: from those seeking a more “homey” feeling that brings back memories of times gone by, to those who find the look “kitschy” and cool.

Whatever your client’s reasons may be, being able to offer a farmhouse feeling to them may make the difference in closing a sale for your design services.

From the exterior to the interior, the farmhouse feel of a home can make a powerful statement of what the owner values. Even location makes a statement. In other words, your client does not have to live in the country to enjoy the farmhouse look in their home. This home is an adaptation of a traditional farmhouse in their open, rural settings, place within the denser urban context of a small town.(RobertBaumann.com)

Urban Farmhouse Design Ideas

Of course, if your client does choose to live in the country, the look and feel of living in a farmhouse does not preclude the installation and use of modern amenities and contemporary design ideas. In fact, innovation may be the most important area of the design challenge you accept when your client is looking to live in a modern farmhouse. (DesignNW.com)

Modern Farmhouse Design IdeasIt’s hard to argue with the results of this farmhouse kitchen look. The slate gray paint, alder cabinets, and stressed oak make this kitchen look as if it had been renovated in stages, while the open shelving offers a practical, at-your-fingertips feel. (Houzz.com)Beautiful Farmhouse Kitchen is also PracticalFor a truly innovative farmhouse design, taking them out to the woodshed at first makes one’s head spin (a bit). However, “the project is conceptually inspired by the vernacular woodshed, a familiar and iconic element in the Vermont landscape.” And, while the look may be the very definition of rustic, there is no doubt that comfort and modern amenities were at the forefront of this design. (BirdseyeVT.com)Dual Woodshed Home DesignLooking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Mobile Interior Design Apps

As tools to make your professional life as an interior designer a bit easier, the recent upsurge in interior design apps is a blessing for virtually everyone in our industry. With the capacity to view potential changes to virtually any space instantly on your smartphone or tablet, and to modify them in a heartbeat to present to a potential client, not only are such tools long overdue in our digital age – at least one of them should also be at your fingertips – now!

While many of these applications are designed for the home owner to use, improved functionality and universal availability make them appealing to professional designers as well. Plus, since most of them are freely available for both Android and iOS systems, downloading and using them now is quickly becoming mandatory for a cutting-edge designer.

While the list of available interior design apps as far too long to present here, there are multiple online locations that have evaluated and reviewed many of the most popular among them. These sites include: 1stdibs.com, BestProducts.com and DigitalTrends.com (for flat fee, pay-to-play apps).

Popular Digital, Mobile Interior Design Apps

With that in mind, and knowing that newer and better apps may be right around the corner, we offer a few of the most popular, most helpful interior design apps on the market at the moment:

• Houzz Design App – Arguably, the best of the bunch (CNN once called it the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design”) the Houzz App database contains more than 5 million high-res home images tagged and organized according to style, room, and location. Browse, search, and save favorites to your smartphone or tablet, which both stores your ideas and gives the app’s real-life, professional design consultants an idea of what you’re into. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• ColorSnap Design App – Sherman-Williams has solved your desire to splash an entire palette of colors onto any interior (or exterior, for that matter). The app can analyze the colors of any photo on your smartphone and let you know which shade of Sherman-Williams paint it matches. Peruse the contents of its 1,500-shade inventory and apply it to virtual sample rooms. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• Autodesk® Homestyler® Design App – Enabling you to make smarter home design choices faster than ever before, you can watch your design ideas come to life within a photograph of your client’s space, simply by experimenting with high quality 3D models of real design products. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• MagicPlan Design App – When it comes to saving you time and effort, the MagicPlan app transforms the painstaking ordeal of taking measurements and drawing up floor plans into an effortless process. The app computes distances within a space simply by analyzing a snapshot. Simply add objects, annotations, photos and attributes to generate reports or complete estimates. (Free for Android or iOS.)
• Home Design 3D Gold - This architectural app lets you import floorplans and change the space itself; visualize new openings, raise ceilings, or take out entire walls, then add in the furniture and other amenities of your choice. See the results of your designs in either 2-D or 3-D, and share projects with collaborators who can make modifications with you in real time. (Cost is $9.99 for either Android or iOS.)

These interior design apps will soon become ubiquitous, enabling even the smallest design business to offer cutting edge technology to their clients. The interior designer who does not use such high-value tools, does so at their own peril.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Understanding the Millennial Home Buyer [INFOGRAPHIC]

According to an article at MultiBriefs.com, the market of first-time homebuyers was at a near-record low in 2015, accounting for less than one-third of new home purchases. The good news is, this three-year trend has begun to tick upward in 2016, largely driven by the millennial home buyer, making up 35% of new home sales this year.

Critical to understanding this trend is the make-up of the marketplace for new home buyers. Based on a variety of market surveys, millennials were responsible for anywhere from 42% to 61% of the new home buyer market. These are home buyers below the age of 36, who are buying a home for the first time.

This infographic, borrowed from Zillo.com, details much of this home buying trend among millennials, according to their research:

Understanding Millennial Design Clients

“Millennials are shaping the market more than anyone realized. In fact, half of all buyers are under 36 and half of sellers are under 41,” said Zillow Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Wacksman, referring to results from a survey of more than 13,000 homeowners, sellers, buyers and renters that are part of the new Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report.

Beyond these facts, the research shows growing diversity among the millennial home buyer demographic, from racial to cultural differences, even though an increasing number of this youthful group of home buyers seems to be heading for the suburbs – with 47% of millennials choosing to forgo living in the city.

For interior designers looking to build or grow their business, understanding and marketing this increasingly influential and important demographic group is critical to your long-term business plan.

To help you understand the millennial home buyer in more depth, we recommend these earlier posts from the TD Fall Blog:

Marketing to Millennials [INFOGRAPHIC]

Know Your Marketplace – Millennials Influencing Interior Design Trends

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Online Video Marketing is Becoming a Must-do for Designers!

A recent study predicts that 80% of online content will be video-based by 2020.

Depending on who you're reading or talking to, YouTube has grown to become one of the Top Three Social Media sites on the internet, at times eclipsing both Facebook and Twitter. In fact, in the US, YouTube has now outgrown Facebook as Number One!

Beyond this, the trend toward video consumption among online consumers of digital information requires all of us to increase our emphasis on video as a marketing tool.

The study, performed by Cisco, predicts that consumer internet video traffic will dominate other types of traffic by 2020, taking a massive 80% share of the global market. However, when Video-on-Demand, Peer-to-Peer video, and business video are added to the mix, that number may climb as high as 90% of all internet traffic!

Here are a few of the high points from the study:

• By 2020, 80% of global Internet consumption will be video content.
• Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will rise to 66% in 2020.
• It would take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks every single month in 2020.
• Every second, nearly a million minutes of video content will cross I.P. networks by 2020.
• Internet video to TV grew 47% in 2014, will increase fourfold by 2020.
• Consumer Video-on-Demand traffic will nearly double by 2020, to the equivalent to 7 billion DVDs per month.

Of course, in the design business, video can make a massive impression on potential clients, enabling you to share images of stylish, high-quality case goods, luxury upholstered furniture, stunning wall coverings, beautiful area rugs, and other offerings. Video is also the perfect medium for introducing yourself to potential clients by making an impression on them with your knowledge, expertise, and personality; not to mention using video testimonials from satisfied clients!

Whether or not you're currently using online video to promote your design business, the current trend toward online video consumption discussed above should be more than enough to inspire you to begin or expand your use of this invaluable online marketing tool.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Yes, Business Networking is Still a Thing!

As an interior designer, business networking is critical to your long-term success. You will need to develop a circle of dependable contractors and referrals; people who can help you complete your client’s design projects on time and on budget. You’ll also need to work with a variety of suppliers: from draperies to carpeting; from plumbing fixtures to flooring; from lighting to wall coverings; and from furniture to accessories.

And yet, even with all of these people in your list of business contacts, you may be missing a vital resource to help you grow your design business: local realtors.

Design Trends for New Home Buyers

Why should you work with realtors? The best real estate agents work intimately with their clients, sometimes over decades-long periods, and will often have a better idea than builders about what buyers are looking for in a new home. Building relationships and networking with the realtors in your market can easily become mutually beneficial, with each of your providing leads and sharing information on market trends.

With this in mind, we share this information from an article from the folks at BuilderOnline.com, listing the design trends that are currently most in demand among home buyers, according to the realtors they surveyed:

• Open layouts
• Modern design
• Neutral color schemes
• Multigenerational floor plans
• First-floor master suites
• No dining rooms
• White kitchens
• Extra-large garages
• Big closets
• Barn-style sliding doors
• No vinyl floors
• Oversized master bathrooms
• Finished basements with 9-foot-high ceilings

Of course, questions remain: Are these home design trends realistic for a particular client? Are they as trendy in your market? DO home buyers seek these things for their own comfort or to boost eventual re-sale value? And many more.

Expanding your Business Network Expands your Resources

These questions are impossible to answer in a blog post designed for a national audience. However, if you’ve put in some time on business networking, developing a list of sources for goods and services – AND information, you’ll be able to keep your finger on the pulse of your marketplace, and will have the answers to all those questions.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Winter Design Trends 2016 & 2017

From cozy and traditional to open and masculine, winter design trends this season, and heading into 2017, are as individual and diverse as are peoples’ personalities and locations. While this is not exactly surprising, it can certainly make your job as an interior designer more difficult.The good news is that, if you can take a step back and look at the larger picture, seasonal trends to tend to follow some sort of pattern, making them at least a bit more predictable, as well as more functional and practical. This can make following those trends far less challenging for the designer who is watching the marketplace closely.Winter is the Season to Get Cozy

Whether you follow HGTV.com or Decorilla.com, “cozy” is definitely an “in thing” this winter. Of course, how get there varies greatly and, perhaps, should. After all, not two clients are alike, and neither are their living spaces.

While the room in this image may seem more cluttered than cozy to some, a closer examination reveals that every piece had a place and a purpose, allowing the room to feel intimate without being muddled or chaotic.

On the other hand, the cozy feeling in this space is enhanced by textures and, with the increasing popularity of flannel, cashmere, wool, and cotton being used as upholstery, throws or quilts as accents, along with knitted accessories, there is an obvious warmth to this space that may not have existed before.

There are several ways to make a room feel warmer and, without a doubt, creating that feeling with wood is one of the best ways to do so.

Expanding the “Man Cave”

Then again, the use of wood in a living space is a sure way to be consistent with another design trend this winter, creating a more masculine interior for those who wish it. For this extrapolation of the “man cave” to a living area, dark, moody, masculine interiors are the countertrend to all-white interiors, which are also increasingly popular this winter. (HuffingtonPost.com)

Clean and uncluttered rather than stark and austere, the all-white interior is making a comeback this winter. And yes, growing desire for spirituality, peace, and tranquility in contemporary culture is the driver for all-white spaces and color schemes.

And, simply because it exists, this unique, and uniquely powerful and beautiful, treatment of a fireplace absolutely must be shared – as possible inspiration – and in pure appreciation.

Which of these trends have you seen in your market? Are there others that have made an impression on you? Share your thoughts and insights with us below.

Looking for interior design trends and tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Wallpaper is Making a Comeback

From CBS to the Boston Globe, and from Houzz.com to FineHomeBuilding.com, wallpaper is in the news. Why? Because wallpaper is making a comeback!

For more than 20 years now, wallpaper has largely been a thing of the past. With memories of garish designs and patterns from the 60s and 70s wreaking havoc on youthful memories, by the time Baby Boomers became old enough to own their own homes, hanging paper on their walls was frowned upon. Walls of old homes were stripped bare, while new homes received a quick paint job – and that was it.

Wallcovering Trends 2016

Today though, wallpaper is back in style. Reimagined for a modern eye and used with restraint, the latest wallcoverings lend personality and style without being overwhelming. “We all love paint, but sometimes you just need a little bit more. Wallpaper can add dimension, it can add a sparkle, and it creates a really warm, layered feeling,” says Dee Elms of Boston firm Terrat Elms Interior Design.

Wall coverings have once again come into vogue. Leading trends include murals, coverings with an aged elegance or gentle worn look, and especially textured looks. Others are pushing the design envelope, adding all sorts of tactile dimensions. In fact, some cutting edge wall coverings are made of anything but paper.

Subtle organic details in this muted-tone print make for a soft look that won't overpower a room.

Here is an example of the many patterns that evoke an old architectural style without feeling dated.

Depth can be added through shading – no 3D printer required.

Wallpaper for the kids – and the folks, too!

Innovative styling for the kid’s room, which may encourage them to get creative!

A similar style works just as well for mom or dad.

The key to an up-to-date look using wallpaper is in the application. Encourage your clients to view it as an amazing piece of art or a gorgeous accessory. Plus, new formulations make wallpaper less permanent, relieving them of a “lifetime” commitment. Removable adhesive treatments are available in an ever-increasing range of wallpaper designs. How cool is that?

Looking for more wallpaper design tips? Get in touch with TD Fall today.