The base is the key to durability and longevity
One of the keys to durability and longevity for your interior design project is the base. Your professional design team - like a good building contractor — knows that the base, the foundation of a construction must be sound.
When it comes to the balance between your beginning decisions and your end vision, it is important to respect your designer's advice. You may encounter tactful insistence for careful future considerations before early decisions are made or actions taken.
Envisioning the end results in their final form and harmony has important bearing on what choices are favored for your base materials, textures and colors. Unless you are comfortably prepared to “redecorate” “refurbish” or “remodel” frequently, if your preferences change with trends, it is smart to build in flexibility at the start.
With guidance from your design team, a wisely strategized base can serve you indefinitely. Some elements have more flexibility and harmonize with a greater variety of components than others. Refreshing changes can be made without disturbing your base.
Consider the concept of “neutrality.” Some materials, textures and colors seem to go with everything! Those are great friends of designers and clients alike.
Red! It's everywhere! Have you ever noticed how it just seems to fit? Whether it is an accent or the main feature, red and a few other “neutrals” just seem to work in a myriad of choices and compatible situations.
Your base is the key, and when that base is developed in combination with certain flexible materials, colors, and texture choices, it becomes simpler to create new, secondary design concepts. In the future, your tastes, likes and preferences may shift. A complete round of component changes and styles can happen more easily and economically when the base is flexible.
Some elements are more easily replaceable than others, and lend themselves to simple, lowcost changes in keeping with trends. Accessories and small furnishings are at the top of that list. Developing alternative color features within a pre-established, flexible, base can make an interior environment appear and feel entirely renovated.
Sometimes, the process happens in reverse. When a client cannot or does not want to change furnishings and accessories, but wants to change something about the basic “character” of their environment, it is the base itself that your designer will consider.
The recommendations may be changes in wall and ceiling colors or texture; or, perhaps changing floor covering. A carpeted environment that is replaced with tile (or the reverse) makes a radical difference. Floor covering greatly affects sound and light. Even subtle impacts have the power to breathe new excitement into your existing furnishings, and the overall environment.
If you are one of many who wish you could just change the feeling of your interior environment, why
not have a conversation with the professional of your choice, and explore some simple solutions? There are probably several ways to make some modest changes that could make an important difference for you.
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 Face Book and Instagram at Business Design Services.