Flexibility, versatility in your interior design
Plan for those at the getgo! If your Interior design vision includes the desire for seasonal — or mood — variety, and regular, refreshing change, your Interior designer has many ideas — and preparatory design solutions to offer. Our Interior environments have huge influence over everything from our moods to our self-identity, and there really is no reason our Interior environments should not cooperate with our soft complexities,
Varying the personality of your Interior space can be a simple magic act! Examples are almost too simple for the large, pleasing affects. Soft goods are excellent candidates for variety — colors, textures, rotation of elements and changed placement make easy voodoo. With today’s almost limitless manufacturing techniques, textiles, innovation and skills, you can consider a huge range of variables in your plan. Even the most simplistic examples — such as reversible pillow and cushion coverings — can invite or imply interesting changeovers — warm for those cool months and brights full of energy for Spring and Summer. Zip and unzip and there you have it! Valanced windows with weighty, warm drapes can be opened up in Spring with light and easy blinds for warm weather views, floods of natural light and temperature control! But there can be so much more!
Altering the personality of your Interior spaces can be a simple magic act. For example, beautiful flooring may easily wear a series of interchangeable area rugs, switched in minutes, to accent Autumn and Winter — or removed entirely for the cool beauty of tile to greet Summer heat.
So, what is the key to achieving intentional, functional variety — while also maintaining and protecting the basic overall design development and installation integrity? How does one assure that balance, deliberation, harmony and real transformative distinction and change can be achieved and successfully projected? As with a fine artist’s pallet and canvas, your Interior design expert needs to know what your versatility vision is in order to create the appropriate base and backgrounds where that versatility can be successfully staged.
Once upon a time, slipcovers for furniture, a new coat of paint or new wallpaper constituted a “makeover!” Those good old dependable remedies still work. But better approaches, better basics and better projection planning shows us that single-element-at-a-time isn’t necessarily the smartest, easiest or the most economical way to refresh. Too often, single element solutions can emphasize the absence of integrated design, and the suggestion of hit or miss hodgepodge!
Flexibility/versatility models embody an entirely different paradigm. In a way, it’s about havingyour-cake-and-eating-it— too! You and your Interior designer are designing not one static environmental design, but flexible models that re-invent themselves at your will or whim, against intentionally accommodating staging and backgrounds.
Your Interior design investment should have durability and longevity in mind! About every 2-3 years, it’s a good idea to have your Interior designer do a walk-thru and assess the condition of all your installation elements. Rotation, changeout, and seasonal elements definitely have longer lives than that of constant 24/7, January/December use elements — for the obvious reasons. Considering a flexibility/versatility approach to your Interior design has the additional benefit of extended durability.
For most of us, it is probably not feasible (or affordable) to do a completely new Interior design — for home or business environments —every so often, as our moods or tastes flux. That’s probably a good argument for the flexibility/versatility approach; and, the more one thinks about it, the more ways to implement the concept come to mind. Rotating artwork, re-configuring floor plans, purchasing furniture that can be placed in a variety of arrangements in the same space and re-purposing rooms are all simple possibilities.
The list is as long as your imagination is willing to think in multiple possibilities with a plan that has layers!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@ earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@ BusinessDesignServices. com or visit www. BusinessDesignServices. com or on Facebook at Business Design Services.