Month: October 2020

Fall Design Tips for Interior Designers

As an interior designer working during COVID, all sorts of new challenges have arisen with your client’s needs shifting dramatically throughout this past year. One of the demands interior designers are met with currently, is finding ways to accommodate the changing circumstances of this pandemic within the home. With so many kids remote learning from home and many of your clients working from home themselves, your job is to create functional spaces without the disruption or cost of substantial construction.

Keeping the peace within the home during a time when communal spaces are being used more than ever, and homeschooling shapes our workday, these design challenges must be met with ingenuity and with your client’s daily schedules in mind. With regard to home life, there are at least three main necessities that have been born out of the pandemic.

Finding space where it doesn’t exist
Creating a sanctuary
Maintaining a healthy balance

Your task as a designer is to address these necessities and give your clients the gift of a well-designed space. Here are some (very) helpful spatial solutions for those challenges you’ve been met with.

Finding space where it otherwise doesn’t exist

Now more than ever, it’s so important to analyze every nook and cranny of the home to determine what works and what doesn’t work for space. With more family members (or roommates) using shared spaces, these rooms can quickly become inundated with people’s belongings, school and work tools, toys, clothing, projects, and just general clutter. Organizers and well-functioning closets are a great place to start. Consider installing sliding closet doors to replace front-opening swing doors in order to save more floor space and modernize the home’s aesthetic. The key is easy access to everything inside! Labeled bins and baskets keep individual belongings tidy and easy to find. Bring in a standing organizer drawer system for the kid’s school supplies. These will act as cubbies where they can put away their work, technology, and art supplies at the end of each activity to keep the communal space decluttered, organized, and open to everyone. When kids have free rein of a room or a space, it can quickly go from a family area to a kid zone, pushing the parents to their bedroom or other areas of the home. Some great organizational systems never hurt!

Creating a sanctuary within the home

Most parents are still working from home, meaning their daily distractions and lack of personal space to focus on work has dwindled significantly. Help your clients out by installing large-scale spatial dividers in common spaces to afford them that extra privacy they need to get through these turbulent times. Sliding glass wall dividers offer flexibility for the modern family, separating working parents from kids in one easy solution. Simply slide the Glass Wall Partitions to one side to reopen the space when needed! These require no major construction and come in a plethora of sizes, glass opacities, and individualized accessories to choose from. Simple, affordable, and quick-to-install spatial dividers are a homerun for the working parent.

Maintaining a healthy balance between work life and home life.

Most parents (aka your clients) are forgetting to address their own mental and physical health while trying to hold it all together during the COVID crisis. Without their own home sanctuary or office away from home, it can be tricky to create a home/work/health balance. Parents need a lot of R&R these days, so it’s up to you to provide the interior inspiration for them to relax in. Integrate a calming color palette into the home, keeping it homogenous with the wall paint, textiles, and decor throughout each room. This will help keep the interiors calm, and un-chaotic. Consider also bringing in plants and increasing the amount of available light in the home. Mirrors are great reflectors of light and can be placed strategically throughout darker spaces to bounce light around the room. Especially now as we head into the colder months and shorter days, being stuck indoors can become depressive. Plants are great at clearing the air, restoring the tranquility of an indoor environment, and providing the indoor/outdoor experience we naturally crave.

Give your clients the gift of peace and tranquility this fall with awesome space optimizing solutions offered at the sliding door Company. Hop online and check out our viewing catalog of sliding glass closet doors, Pocket Doors For Bathrooms, and stunning sliding barn doors, among others! Schedule a free initial consultation with one of our knowledgeable experts to get started on your exciting project today. With home delivery and online ordering, it’s never been easier to create a space out of nothing for your wonderful clients.

Commercial Residential Building: Outfitting Your Projects with the Best Materials

When managing a large multi-unit residential real estate projects, some of your best allies might not look like what you’d expect. Of course, the builders and suppliers are an integral facet of the project. But the hidden heroes of a successful build, without a doubt, are quality materials and great design. Sourcing the right textiles, integrating spatial solutions, and optimizing square footage to provide the most flexibility for potential buyers will help you craft masterful new homes worthy of top dollar.

Quality Materials

Sourcing high-quality materials is one of the best things you can do to ensure your commercial real estate in Los Angeles is competitive, eco-friendly, and long-lasting. The truth is, built-to-break homes are a dying trend and one we are happy to see fall. Most homeowners today are making conscious purchases and are genuinely interested in joining the green movement, reducing their overall impact on the natural world, and generating a higher ROI down the road. By sourcing sustainable materials, using regenerative resources, and installing long-lasting appliances and technologies, you can ensure a home’s longevity and durability for generations to come. For example, Sliding glass doors that utilize a sleek track and wheel locking system while exuding effortless modernism, help to elevate the home aesthetically and will literally last your clients a lifetime. These decisions will ultimately dictate the home’s value and raise the bar for your interested clientele.

Cutting Edge Design

Today, it’s all about offering flexibility. With a face-paced lifestyle becoming the new norm, the modern family has overlapping schedules, meetings, and a busy daily calendar. The nuclear family of the past has been replaced by the modern busy family involved in personal growth and a plethora of commitments. Now, families enjoy all sorts of engaging extracurriculars, sports, dinner out, etc that homes need to work with that ever-changing schedule and offer the flexibility demanded by our modern lives. That’s why offering flexible, malleable spaces within the home is so crucial. Open floor plans that include unobstructed space between kitchen to dining room to living room are increasingly normalized. Of course, this model is wonderful at encouraging togetherness, a healthy family dynamic, and is widely inclusive. However, when these rooms need to be separated for specific events or functions, how can you provide that extra barrier? Integrate floor-to-ceiling sliding room dividers and glass wall partitions that glide effortlessly on a moving track and afford all the flexibility the modern family craves. If mom is cooking, and another family member is enjoying a virtual yoga class from the living room, they need the space and privacy to get into the moment. Sliding dividers allow space to be opened or closed easily to meet the modern lifestyle.

Space Optimizers

We’re entering a new design era in which square footage has risen considerably, at the expense of yard space. Most modern architecture now designs conservative yards juxtaposed against generous floor plans that create a completely new way of building and existing within space. Thousands of families each year are making the transition into cities to enjoy the metropolitan lifestyle and work opportunities all while hoping to retain the square footage that country living affords. In order to do this, architects are building up, rather than out, and designing uncompromised homes that bring the outside in. Second-story balconies and floor to ceiling glass windows have replaced light-blocking walls of the past. And while these unprecedented floorplans offer more room to play with, it’s all made possible through the deliberate integration of well positioned interior space optimizers. Solutions such as sliding pocket doors, flexible sliding glass wall partitions, spiral staircases, and floating lofts can help to increase usable space in an artistic way. By installing space optimizers, you instantly elevate your home and create space in unexpected areas such as bathrooms, bedrooms and even family room and pocket door.

In life, it’s all about creating space and utilizing the available solutions to evolve yourself and your life into a well-functioning, harmonious balance. Home is no different. By transitioning your interiors into a cocoon that actually serves and inspires you, you can begin to fulfill your dreams, aspirations and enhance your overall enjoyment (not to mention, regaining some of your sanity in the process). For more inspiration and spatial solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best space-optimizing sliding glass doors, sliding closet doors, and sliding room dividers offered at The Sliding Door Company. Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today at slidingdoorco.com!

Hottest Summer Trends: The Interior Design Must-Haves

Summer is officially here. And while it doesn’t much feel like the typical summer we had all planned and hoped for, things are starting to look up. As we emerge from this global pandemic, we look to the things we can control and improve within our lives. For many of us, that means our surrounding environment, and more specifically, our interiors.

Though we have had an unusual amount of time to ponder our relative spaces, some of us still haven’t bitten off that project, restoration, DIY project, or interior upgrade just yet. Perhaps we’re still struggling with decision making or having a hard time finding the inspiration. Luckily, we’ve got a few of the summer’s hottest interior must-haves fresh from the design gurus across the U.S. For that summer project inspiration you’ve been craving, look no further.

Natural Luxury

Natural Luxury is a timeless interior design theme, one we see recirculate in big waves every few decades. Luckily, it’s back- and this time, it looks like it’s here to stay. This design blend pairs our beloved creature comforts (the luxury) with striking elemental motifs that come from the great outdoors (the natural). This juxtaposition offers a duality of indoor/outdoor we naturally crave as humans. This concept is one that goes undervalued more often than not, especially for those living in urban cities with less access to wide-sweeping nature. So, what does Natural Luxury look like? For starters, it looks like taking a trip to your local plant shop and spending some serious coin on a plethora of plant varieties. From trendy leafy figs to stunning snake plants, from charming cottage cheese plants to the tall, beautiful Dracaenas, plant shops truly have it all. Succulents, cacti, and birds of paradise are all plants that do exceptionally well indoors and require little maintenance. Integrating plants throughout your home helps to freshen the indoor air quality, add nature into an otherwise lifeless environment, and offers a pleasing aesthetic that’s nearly impossible to replicate.

Sleek Views

Piggybacking on the Natural Luxury theme, “bringing the outdoors in” has more meanings than one. When you aim to literally Bring the Outside In, consider replacing your drab windows, pointless Interior Wall Partitions, or old sliding doors with fresh, modern sliding glass doors that offer enhanced spatial flexibility and a contemporary feel to any space. Sit back, relax, and take in your new view, afforded through expansive visibility and overflowing natural light. Integrating floor to ceiling wall partitions is another breezy way to increase your home’s available square footage as if by magic! By increasing visibility and natural light, you expand your space rather than box it in with walls and pointless divide. Your day-to-day spatial needs could be made available by allowing your communal interiors the flexibility they need to flourish.

Two-Toned Kitchens

If you become immediately confused reading “two-toned kitchen” trust me, you’re not alone. Two-tone refers to the chic simplicity of pairing a bright neutral (such as a white, cream, or taupe) with a stark contrast color. That could be anything from elegant sage green, to salmon, royal blue, to something even bolder, like black. Having a sharp contrast is the necessary ingredient involved in creating the ideal two-tone kitchen. Next, pair your considered palette with a sleek countertop, a few evocative wooden accent bar stools, a couple of color pops here and there, et voila! You have yourself a supreme two-tone kitchen, à la mode.

With all of these DIY interior upgrades and ideas for making the most out of your new normal, you’ll sink right into the comforts of home in no time. For more inspiration and space optimizing solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best sliding closet doors, sliding room dividers, and spatial solutions offered at The Sliding Door Company. Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

Interior Design Push For a More Sustainable Future

Interior Design Trends

As we enter into the last quarter of 2020, it feels like we’ve hit a few benchmarks however abstract or concrete they may be. Starting this year out with unprecedented climate protests around the world, it became evident that there is no time left to wait. Climate change is an all-consuming, rapidly affecting issue that we must take action against. As many have found, the transition to a more sustainable lifestyle is not a difficult one. A personal evolution of purchasing behavior and daily consciousness is all it really takes to effect positive change.
So as an interior designer in America, how can you meet the modern demand for more sustainable home goods and decor when curating a client’s home? How can you source eco-friendly products and materials, and incorporate designers that craft sustainably? Research helps. Word of mouth is also great. But research can only take you so far when you know what you’re looking for. That’s why we’ve put together a list of things to look for when researching, sourcing, and communicating about environmentally intelligent home goods and decor. Below, we’ll go over the basics, from Material Sourcing to Relationships with Local Artisans, Relative Cost, and more.

Qubiglass workstations with sliding glass room dividers

Material Sourcing

As a designer, you know that one of the main tasks of your profession is material sourcing. Your insider abilities are essentially your bread and butter. Within a whole world of textiles, materials, furnishings, and art, it’s up to you to make the best sourcing decisions and think for your client’s needs, tastes, and their best interests. More than just knowing where to source your goods from, you must know about the goods themselves. Distinguishing factors such as thread count, bamboo versus cotton, real wood versus synthetic wood, chemical-free or cost-effective? These are everyday considerations you make while material sourcing. Now, with a sustainable lens placed over your work, you have a whole extra set of considerations, worries, and awareness guiding your search. Here is what to look for:

Textiles

When sourcing textiles, try to stay away from plastic-based “synthetic” fibers. Oftentimes, department stores such as Target or Walmart will carry pillows or blankets made with synthetic fibers that are heavily processed and will literally off-gas chemicals into your home and into your body.
“Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage an organism. Whenever we go shopping for our clothes, we don’t know how toxic and harmful that piece of fabric could be for our health. Neither do we think of its origin nor its manufacturing process and the toxic load on our body and on the environment… because of many properties like wrinkle resistance, easy to wash, easy to store but most of them are manufactured with tons of chemicals. These are highly toxic and are increasing the negative effects on our health. These synthetic fabrics also pose a serious threat to ecological balance.” -Sunita Bhalla, Department of Fashion Designing, PCM S.D. College for Women, India
The same is true for furnishing textiles. Synthetic fabrics are used widely in drapes, pillow covers, throw blankets, tablecloths, rugs, and more. Harmful to our physical and mental health, as well as the environment, these chemical textiles are quickly being replaced by safer options. Returning to the basics of material sourcing, choose from natural fibers like wool, cotton, jute, and silk, we can safeguard ourselves against chemical toxification, allergic reactions, and environmental damage.

Processing

Material processing is perhaps the largest contributing factor to water waste in the textile industry. Heavily processed synthetic materials, and even some natural fibers like cotton, require millions of gallons of freshwater each day in order to process these fabrics. Fast growth alternatives like bamboo or hemp not only solve a resource issue, but they also require up to 10x less water during processing.

Lifetime/durability

Most of our cotton or synthetic fabrics don’t last as long as we would hope. Especially in the interior design industry, this is a crucial factor when sourcing materials and furnishings that get high use, or are exposed to harsh weather. Most outdoor furniture today is made with a lot of plastic and synthetic coverings that claim to be water-resistant and durable. Yet these end up lasting only a season or two before the wear starts to show. Hemp and Bamboo are two of the strongest fibers available, while also being regenerative, sustainable, and cost-effective!
Sourcing larger interior goods like sliding doors from American-assembled companies like The Sliding Door Company oftentimes means enhanced durability and longevity. With 17 showrooms scattered all throughout every major U.S. city, it’s no far trek to source your client’s glass wall partitions and sliding room dividers from inside the country. These spatial solutions are beautifully crafted and built to last, while also providing easy-to-install solutions that require no major construction! A win-win for you, your clients, and the planet.

Where Are You Sourcing From?

One of the newest considerations is the location of your wholesaler. Are they local to your area or your client’s area? Supporting local makers and artists is a fast-growing trend that won’t slow anytime soon. By buying local and sourcing your interior art and furnishings, construction materials, and spatial dividers from companies, brands, and individuals in your city, you sustain smaller businesses and don’t require environmentally harmful shipping and handling from outside the U.S.
Check out The Sliding Door Company online today for an assortment of sliding barn doors, accessories, and other customizable options to suit your design needs.

TSDC 1027 – A