BRINGING THE INSIDE OUT
Let's say you have just completed your Interior design project and are very pleased with all the changes, colors, textures and beautiful appointments! Function, convenience and beauty have converged! It happens to be a lovely day, just right for coffee and a Danish on the patio, a good book on the lounger or just puttering among your flowers and shrubs!
So, you step outside, anticipating a really nice interlude. NOT! Something's off, and you can't quite pin it down!
Do you step outside, from your beautiful and satisfying Interior environment, and feel like you have stepped into alien territory? Roughing it is OK to some degree, but gimmie a break! Maybe it's time to bring some of that Interior magic out to your Exterior Environments! Color! Comfort! Function! Beauty! Why not?
There is no denying that your Interiors are very closely connected to your Exteriors. And there are degrees of that Exterior! There is the closest, the progression outward, and the surrounding embrace! All of which are experienced as we head indoors.
Let's start with what is “the closest!” Perhaps, you exit through a sliding glass patio door, from your comfortable and perfectly appointed family room to your closest exterior aspect. You step directly out onto a deck, maybe flagstone or maybe just Mother Earth! (You know, the spaces you have been meaning to get to and “fix up?) Oh, they can serve the purpose with some serviceable outdoor seating and random planters. But is the character any kind of relative to what you just left inside behind those glass doors? That immediate, close Exterior area probably should, and could, become a delightful extension of its immediate Interior!
That next area that I call the “progression outward” is the sort of apron that immediately surrounds what is closest. This potentially lovely area, which is viewed immediately through your glass doors and from the closest Exterior area, is a wonderful opportunity! Those colors and configurations, you so carefully chose to enhance your Interior design, just beg to be reborn in shrub, tree, furniture, flower, contour or garden structure!
Then there is that last consideration, the surrounding embrace! From the streets and property lines, travelling toward your structure, lays the opportunity to both invite and embrace.
With all or current environmental incentives to become as drought tolerant as possible, we still have wonderful choices for the surrounding embrace areas. This area and those environmental disciplines are the perfect juncture where your Interior design team can work with a landscaping professional — for advice and concepts —and possibly installation if you need some green thumb assistance.
Your Interior designer knows how to coordinate cooperatively with landscape professionals regarding planting choices, controlled watering mechanisms and color coordination.
Both Commercial and Residential properties are value enhanced when it is obvious that the whole is in harmony. When your Interior design team and your Exterior surrounding property advisor are well coordinated, not only can it be beautiful, but also there are many more subtle rewards. Commercial operations want their customers, clients and staffs to enjoy their appointments, shopping time or workplace environment. It has been proven beyond doubt, that satisfaction and efficiency are both served.
Interior and Exterior alike should result in the lowest maintenance demands. Needless to say that enhances enjoyment! Just as you chose the best products and elements for your Interior design project plan, choosing low maintenance factors for your Exterior grounds and amenities just makes sense. You will want to spend more time (business or residence) enjoying and using than time maintaining!
Bringing the inside out with the colors, shapes, functions and contours that doubly reflect your tastes and choices, just makes sense!
Ideas? Connections? Help is on the way!
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 at Business Design Services.