May 10, 2014 | Posted in How To & Decorating Tips |
Last time in this series of 3, we gave tips and ideas on how to maximize space in small kitchens . In this final edition of small space living, let’s look at how we entertain in our homes, and how we can make a space feel welcoming to guests as well as yourself!
The living room is the primary living space where we relax, spend some down-time after a hard day’s work, and have fun with friends and family. If you have tight space restrictions, reducing clutter through the use of clever storage is one of the more important ways to maximize your living room area.
Utilizing closet spaces or odd niches in a room can maximize a room to it’s fullest potential. In the photo below, custom Shoji sliding doors conceal an odd-shaped niche that has been transformed into a built-in entertainment center and mini home office.
On the left-hand side sits a flat screen television, with media components hidden below and behind the lower portion of the sliding screens. On the right-hand side concealed behind the screens, sits a computer monitor on top of a Douglas Fir wood slab, leaving open space underneath to pull up a desk chair and work at the computer.
To utilize every square inch, Kimball built hidden shelves inside the column situated directly to the right of the screens. The added shelves provide storage for office supplies and computer accessories for easy access while sitting at the desk.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
Once again, custom-built furniture is the ultimate solution to small-space challenges. Because the screens slide instead of swinging open like a door, circulation through the room is never blocked. Adding built-in or open leaning shelves increase the storage and are great for displaying collectibles, books or art that you want to be more visible.
The glass partition between rooms functions as the balustrade for the stairwell leading to the downstairs bedroom. Instead of installing a sheetrocked wall, the glass partition takes up less depth, still provides the necessary safety, and allows the eye to travel freely throughout the space.
From another vantage point in the living room, the L-shaped sectional sofa fits perfectly from wall to wall to maximize the comfortable seating. By keeping the upholstery color similar to the wall color, the room is kept visually open and airy. The heavy coffee table does triple duty here — functioning as a table, providing storage underneath for remote controls and game consoles, and also serving as additional seating when the party gets crowded.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
You may also notice the wall-mounted speaker system, which frees up surface area while providing the best possible sound for the room. And as mentioned previously in this series, adding floor-to-ceiling windows, french doors, or a skylight can expand your visual horizons in a small space.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this series on utilizing every square inch of your residential spaces. If you have a challenge you’d like to address in your home, let us know via the Contact page!
San Francisco Bay Area interior design firm, Kimball Starr, provides contemporary design in the San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Marin areas. Kimball works to “change lives one room at a time” through designing creative and innovative interiors.
Labels: custom furniture, living room, small space solutions
May 04, 2014 | Posted in How To & Decorating Tips |
Our last post on Small Space Living showed how custom furniture can maximize the useable space in a small residential area. Let’s continue the discussion with a look at the kitchen.
In the photo below, you can see the custom island in the foreground, featuring a shelf at the bottom for oversize pots and appliances, along with other heavy items you wouldn’t want to lift overhead. Cladding the island countertop in butcherblock makes the perfect chopping surface. A pull-out work surface is used as additional seating for guests while you cook and entertain. For mobility, put the island on rolling casters and wheel it wherever you need it to go.
Thanks to the addition of skylights, the space feels and looks light and airy. When remodeling your home, open up small spaces with skylights to bring in natural light. Benefits are twofold by adding to both your mental and physical well-being.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
In the next photo, the island’s deep drawers are great for multi-use storage. Behind that is a mix of open and closed shelving ideal for displaying your china collection, or make the doors opaque and only reveal your better pieces. The shelving on the left makes excellent use of what could have been dead space, keeping your kitchen items readily available. Placing infrequently-used pieces that are also beautiful at the top of your cabinetry is a good way to utilize high shelves and the top surface.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
The kitchen is a place used primarily for cooking, but also sometimes for entertaining. In the next installment, we’ll talk about entertaining in a small living room, and how to make the best use of a smaller space that is essential for both personal use and entertaining.
San Francisco interior design firm, Kimball Starr, provides kitchen design for homes throughout the San Francisco, San Jose, and Marin areas. Kimball works to “change lives one room at a time” through designing creative and innovative interiors individually suited for each homeowner.
Labels: island, kitchen, shelving
Apr 26, 2014 | Posted in How To & Decorating Tips |
Many of us are trying to do more with less these days. That’s even more true in urban homes, where our spaces must often perform double-duty. In a series of blogs over the next few weeks, we are going to show you how to get more out of your residential small spaces.
In this example, the clients’ entire townhome is just 596 sq. ft, so maximizing every area is important. Custom furniture can often be the solution to what may seem like insurmountable challenges.
In the photo below, the custom coffee table is adjustable in height, doubling as a dining table while also serving their entryway as a place to put down bags and keys. The shape of the glass table was specially designed to ensure safe and comfortable access in a tight space. The table’s hydraulic lift makes changing it from coffee table to dining table and back again a breeze.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
Notice how the floor-to-ceiling windows really open up the space. If you have the budget to remodel a small, dark room, adding full-height windows is a great way to bring in more light and a feeling of expansion.
Below, the custom banquette is curved to fit the non-90-degree walls, maximizing every inch in a way that a store-bought design would not, plus the seats come off to reveal additional storage. Indoor-outdoor fabric was used for UV and stain resistance, and the color ties in with the outdoor greenery making the banquette area feel like an extension of the garden. The tiny wooden shelf behind is integrated with the banquette, a completely customized piece.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
Small teardrop wall vases are great to hold fresh-cut flowers without cluttering surfaces. They provide a pop of color and bring the outside indoors. Selecting clear vases allows the eye to move freely across the space and makes the plants appear to gently float, providing a feeling of airiness. Finally, dress the space with your favorite throw pillows and change up the colors with the seasons or keep the same look year-round.
Kimball Starr Interior Design / Photo by Eric Rorer
As you can see, custom designs really make a space function effectively. We hope you enjoyed the first installment in the Small Space Living Series. Look for the next installment when we’ll talk about ideas for making a small kitchen work for you.
San Francisco interior design firm, Kimball Starr, designs custom furniture for homes throughout San Jose, San Francisco, and Marin areas. Kimball works to “change lives one room at a time” through designing creative and innovative interiors unique to each homeowner.
Labels: contemporary, custom furniture, dining room
Feb 18, 2014 | Posted in Starr Spotlight |
Kimball Starr Interior Design receives “Best of Houzz” for Customer Satisfaction – 2 years in a row!
Many of you may know that Houzz.com is a great online resource for finding and saving inspirational ideas about residential interior design, locating your next designer, and sharing feedback.
The Best Of Houzz Award is given in two categories: Client Satisfaction and Design. Client Satisfaction honors are determined by the number and quality of client reviews a professional received in 2013. Design award winners’ work was the most popular among 16 million monthly Houzz users.
3 residential design photos uploaded to Houzz.com by Kimball Starr Interior Design. Top: Pacific Heights Edwardian. Center & Bottom: Contemporary Hillside Retreat. All photos by Eric Rorer
The top photo shown here of a home office was saved to over 13,000 ideabooks! There are 107 photos uploaded so far, which have been added to a total of 42,212 ideabooks worldwide. That’s a lot of ideas traveling the globe. And what does anyone most want to do when you’ve been traveling for a while? Come home, of course!
I invite you to borrow some of my ideas for your home, by visiting my Houzz.com profile today!
San Francisco interior designer, Kimball Starr, is a commercial design and residential interior design firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kimball works to “change lives one room at a time” through designing creative and innovative interiors across the country.
Labels: Houzz, residential design
Feb 01, 2014 | Posted in Trends |
We’re just starting 2014 and with the new year, new ideas abound for home remodeling projects. For one of the smallest rooms in the home, the bathroom can pack a big design punch. In 2014, some bathroom trends have been around a few years and are still on the rise while others are newer to the scene. So here are the Top 5 Bathroom Trends for 2014 that you can incorporate into your next bathroom remodel project.
1. Digitally Printed Porcelain Tiles
Wouldn’t you love to have the look of stone or wood in your bathroom? Yet many people are discouraged by the maintenance of stone, and the fragility of wood around water. Now you can have the look of either without the upkeep! Porcelain tiles have seen a huge increase in popularity over the last couple of years, and advances in modern technology are further improving the look and range of digitally-printed porcelain tiles.
Porcelain Tiles. Upper left: Agata Corniola tiles by Fiandre. Upper right: Wood-look tiles used by Kimball Starr Interior Design, photo by Eric Rorer. Bottom: Textured tiles by Powergres, photo by Helen Scott.
The appearance of real stone is enough to fool even the most discerning eye. Would you have guessed that the porcelain wall tile in the top left photo above is not real stone? Neither will your guests!
One of the best features of porcelain tile is the ease of care and maintenance, much simpler than real wood or stone. The amazing porcelain wood flooring above in the upper right photo of this Windsor Terrace bathroom is easy to clean, and the textural appearance of wood graining on these tiles looks like the real deal. Can you tell it’s porcelain rather than wood?
In the bottom image the wall tiles are made to look like weathered metal, which would have no longevity in a wet bathroom. But these porcelain tiles create a unique look normally unattainable. With virtually no maintenance needed, porcelain tiles are easy to keep looking great.
2. Showers Replace Tubs
According to a recent survey of over 7500 homeowners by Houzz.com, 4 in 10 homeowners plan to forgo a bathtub in favor of a larger shower this year – even in the master bathroom!
Left: photo by Scott Hargis. Center: Kimball Starr Interior Design, photo by Eric Rorer. Right: photo by Artistic Tile.
This trend conserves water and energy, and speaks to the preference of a steam versus soaking. Surprisingly, both older and younger homeowners love this idea: Those surveyed ranged in age from under 35 to over 65, and many prefer a shower over a bathtub.
3. Bathroom Tech
The bathroom used to be a place to escape a high-stress, high-tech life. Now you can use technology to help decrease your stress – even in the bathroom! LED showerheads feature lights powered by water pressure so no wiring is involved, and some of them even feature colors that change with the temperature of the water.
Have you ever gotten into the bath and then realized that you wanted to dim the lights? With new technology from Philips, you don’t have to get up, just keep your iPhone within reach. The Hue line has been expanded to include features such as a timer, gradual increase in light to simulate sunrise, or even sampling a color from a favorite photo and using it to light your space. It even has a popular remote feature controllable by an iPhone app. And if you ever forget to turn off your lights, the Hue system knows to turn the lights off when you’ve left the area via your iPhone.
Top left: Air bath by MTI Baths. Top Right: LED showerhead by Amazon. Bottom: Philips Hue Remote Lighting System with iPhone app.
Another tech-trend for the bathroom that’s rising in popularity is air baths, specifically those including chromatherapy. Air baths are better than the old whirlpool-type tubs because they pump air through tubes into your tub, instead of pumping the water itself, which would sit in the pipes and become stale, even growing harmful bacteria.
Air baths can treat painful conditions such as arthritis and rheumatism with ease. Keypads allow you to control the power of the air massage from soft and caressing to more vigorous, or you can select the wave effect that alternates the two, providing a very effective lymphatic massage. Some air bath systems can be outfitted with a complementary aromatherapy system.
Therapeutic use of different colors of light is known as chromatherapy and adding chromatherapy to these healthier air baths is a great way to promote mental and physical health. For centuries, light and color have been known to have an effect on human biorhythms.
From the MTI Baths website: “Red energizes and activates blood flow, while yellow stimulates nerve functions and may aid the digestive process. Orange is a mix of red and yellow and carries greater therapeutic characteristics than both of these colors used separately, including the soothing of muscle and joint pain. Green, as the intermediate color of the light spectrum, fosters harmony and has a calming, restorative effect on the mind and body. Blue, a cooler color, is comprised of light rays that are very fine, which allow them to penetrate deep within to promote mental and physical calmness. Magenta is known for its power to inspire creativity as well as relieve irritability and reestablish a peaceful state.”
This trend has been around for millenia; it’s overdue to be appreciated in our bathrooms in 2014!
4. Frameless, Curbless Glass Showers
Not only are people eschewing showers instead of tubs, but they are specifically choosing glass shower enclosures that are frameless and curbless, removing access barriers and visual barriers. Curbless showers are one element of universal design, long known to be a great boon to the elderly and those with physical disabilities or injuries. Now we are recognizing that it makes a beautiful statement, too.
Top left: photo via Houzz. Bottom left: photo via CA Home & Design. Right: Kimball Starr Interior Design, photo by Eric Rorer
5. Powder Rooms with Character
The powder room is often the last place that people think about interior design – after all, it’s extremely small and a single-use space. But this is also a great place to experiment! You can try something adventurous, something that doesn’t necessarily match the theme of the rest of your house or apartment, precisely because it’s not visually connected to the rest of your interior spaces. Not only is the powder room a good place for invention, but you can use uncharacteristic materials here – wood, wallpaper, fabric – that you could not use in a wet room or traditional bath/shower room. The trend in 2014 is for powder rooms that really pack a punch!
Top left: Leather tiles by Blanc Noir. Bottom left: Walnut flooring, photo by Eric Rorer. Right: Gondola Blue wallpaper, photo by David Duncan Livingston.
So now that you know the top 5 bathroom trends for 2014, which ones do you plan to implement this year?
San Francisco Bay Area interior designer, Kimball Starr, provides bathroom design for home remodels throughout San Jose, San Francisco, and Marin Bay areas. Kimball strives to “change lives one room at a time” through designing creative and innovative interiors as unique as the homeowner.
Labels: bathroom, Houzz, porcelain tile, powder room
Nov 01, 2012 | Posted in Starr Spotlight |
Photo by Kimball Starr
We’re proud to share news of the hardcover publication Zen Style Residences, featuring Kimball Starr’s residential design project titled “A Meditative Living Space Inspired By Nature.” Kimball Starr Interior Design is honored to be selected as the sole design firm representing the United States in a book spanning projects across 9 countries.
Photo by Eric Rorer
Globally published and translated in both English and Chinese, the book features projects from 23 designers around the world. Of the highlighted designers, Kimball Starr was selected as the sole representative of United States residential designers, a great honor and testament to her design skills.
Photo by Eric Rorer
Some of the materials used in the project are bamboo poles for the potted sculpture in the living room, and Japanese folded paper sconces for a soft glow in the bedroom, as well as a tall, curving folded paper room divider that can be reformed and reshaped at will. Porcelain tiles with a metallic luster and a bamboo coffee table wrapped in reclaimed black steel complement the urban setting with an industrial edge, while a reclaimed redwood slab dining table and hand-planed Douglas fir fireplace mantel bring in natural elements.
Photo by Eric Rorer
By maintaining the integrity of materials in their natural state, introducing organic forms that mimic nature, and incorporating Oriental antique elements, an air of Zen, peace and tranquility is cultivated for all who enter this city oasis.
Photo by Eric Rorer
If you’d like a copy of Zen Style Residences for your coffee table or library, you can view and purchase the hardcover edition at Phoenix Books or through Asiabooks. You can also read more about the publication in the Press section of this website and on PR Web.
San Francisco Bay Area interior designer, Kimball Starr, provides design, decorating, and remodeling services for homes throughout Northern California and Nevada. As a Zen design expert, Kimball Starr designs Zen residential interiors with organic and minimalist materials that create a home connected to nature and serenity.
Labels: modern design, Zen Design
