Hot Home Trend: Double-Pocket Doors That Make a Statement

By Melissa Dittmann Tracey, REALTOR(R) Magazine

Pocket doors are not only getting a chic makeover in recent years, but they really can be key to solving some design challenges in small spaces too. And for the “wow” factor, try a double-pocket door.

Pocket doors are those that slide right into the wall when opened. It’s like they were never there. You don’t have to account for a door swing like a normal door, which is a bonus in areas tight on space.

Pocket doors are hardly new. They’ve been around for ages. But they did once suffer from an image of looking flimsy and cheap.

That’s not today’s pocket door. The double-pocket pocket door has doors that slide open from either side, tucking into their corresponding wall.

There are many styles to choose from. For example, an all-white French door one with glass window panes allow more brightness and can dress up the doorway even when you want to close off a space.  Or, there also are some double-pocket doors that can stretch all the way to the ceiling for some added drama.

Pocket doors can be a great solution to section off closets, bathrooms, laundry rooms, or a home’s study. They also can add more privacy to a home with an expansive open floorplan. After all, the one growing gripe from homeowners with open floorplans is that their floorplans at time feel too open. The double-pocket door just may be one stylish solution to help solve that problem. And when the doors are tucked into the wall, you may never even known it was there.


Source: National Association of Realtors

Hot Home Trend: Black Is Back

By Melissa Dittmann Tracey, REALTOR® Magazine

Black is getting popular in home design. Black fixtures, appliances, and even black furniture are emerging as one of the hottest trends in the new year.

Black fixtures are replacing brass or rubbed bronze as a trendy home hardware in 2018.

Black makes a great finish because it goes with anything. In matted finishes, it can also be easier to clean than your lighter, polished metals–so that’s definitely an added perk for homeowners too.

Black cabinets in the kitchen are getting trendy too. To offset the darkness, some homeowners are mixing the black cabinets with lighter cabinets. Check out this one from Weston Lodge…

Black stainless appliances are also gradually gaining more momentum in the kitchen. Black stainless was once again being showed in the newest appliance models at CES 2018, the consumer electronics show this year. As  more smudge proof, black stainless is proving itself as a trendy alternative to traditional stainless.

Photo credit: Samsung

Photo credit: Samsung


Source: National Association of Realtors

Design Trends That Make People say … ‘No!’

HOME letters on a blue, white and gray distressed fence.

By Justin M. Riordan, Spade and Archer Design Agency

Design trends are just that: trendy. They change from day to day, year to year, and decade to decade. The ones that are popular now won’t be soon. The ones that were popular years ago aren’t now and the ones that were popular decades ago are already back again.

Interior design trends tend to follow fashion trends about three years later. As colors gain popularity in fashion, they follow shortly thereafter in interior design.  The trick is being able to see what are trends and what is classic.  The difference is that classic will never go out of style, whereas trends always eventually go out of style.

Here are some major trends from our recent past that are turning people away from houses:

 1.   Carpet in the master bathroom. The 1990’s brought us so many fine trends, carpet in bathrooms was one of them. The thought was that cold tile on your bare feet was unpleasant. You know what else is unpleasant? Mold in your carpet pad.

2.   Plantation shutters. They are expensive, I know. Every single one of my clients who has them tells me over and over how expensive they are. Plantation shutters were designed for plantations. Hot, muggy places. The shutters were designed to block light and still allow a breeze to come into the house. The issue today is that they still block light, over 50 percent of the light that would have come through a window is blocked by plantation shutters. The fact of the matter is that nobody wants to buy a dark house. If the shutters aren’t there, they won’t miss them.

3.   Curtains over closets. The odds of the next buyer having the same taste in curtains as you is slim. Curtains over closets scream “YOU HAVE WORK TO DO” to your potential buyers.  Do yourself and the buyer a favor, take the curtains down and put the doors back up.

4.   Family, Friendship, Love, Laugh, Dance… BARF! Word art inevitably tells a story of the seller’s life and is distracting to the buyer.  Nobody cares how deep your family roots run, or that this is Emma’s crib. Take it down.

5.  Accent walls. The term “accent walls” is a misnomer, they should instead be called focal walls as they tend to provide a focus point for the room. Unfortunately, as the focal point of a room, they tend to dictate how a room should be set up and what the color scheme should be for the room. If you have a purple accent wall and all of your buyer’s furniture is red, they are going to have to work to remove that paint or more than likely just buy some other house.

6.   “Faux” is french for fake. No matter what language you translate it to faux paint is fake and is as out of style as pleats on men’s dress pants. The overwhelming commonality of all of cultural trends is truth — people want real food made by real people in real time. The time of fake and fast is over. Faux painting will send your buyer away faster than you can say “marbleized”!

7.   Wallpaper. Wallpaper is hard to take down and, again, the chances of them having the same taste as you and having furniture that will go with it is slim.

8.   Curtains.  See item 7. Wallpaper and item 3. Curtains over closets.

9.   Platform beds and other Feng Shui items.  Feng Shui is the Chinese thought system of laws considered to govern spatial arrangement and orientation in relation to the flow of energy, and whose favorable or unfavorable effects are taken into account when siting and designing buildings. It most likely works great in China where most people are acutely aware of the thought system, but in Western culture it just looks like a giant platform bed with a mirror and a stick above it. Your buyer will most likely have no idea why you did it and it will distract from the room.

10. Collections. Using a collection to highlight built-in shelves works well, so long as the collection does not overshadow the shelves themselves. Completely overwhelming a house with a collection or series of collections will overshadow the house and positively or negatively take attention away from the house. Pre-pack these items to proudly display them in your next house.

11. Rounded outside gypsum board corners.  These became popular in the building boom of the 1990’s because they required less time and skill for laborers to mud and tape. This, of course, was a very cost effective way to build homes. However, we quickly realized that rounded corners left us no place to end wall finishes like paint and wallpaper.  Needless to say, the trend faded away and now we have tons of houses with rounded outside corners.

headshot_JustinRiordanABOUT THE AUTHOR: Justin Riordan, LEED AP, is founder of Spade and Archer Design Agency based in Portland, Ore. As the creative energy behind Spade and Archer, Riordan fuses his formal training as an architect with his natural design savvy to create beautiful and authentic spaces for clients. Prior to opening Spade and Archer in 2009, Riordan practiced interior architecture and interior construction for 12 years, bringing an esteemed skillset and diverse background to home staging. Since founding Spade and Archer, he has personally prepared more than 2,100 homes for market.
Source: National Association of Realtors

13 Ways to Give Your Home a Garden-Inspired Look

13 Ways to Give Your Home a Garden-Inspired Look
In her charming book The Secret Garden, author Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote, “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” Homeowners who look at the interiors of their homes this way have had wonderful results. Now that spring has finally arrived, it’s a great time to take inspiration from the garden and liven up your interiors. Landscape materials like brick, slate and river rock make for stunning indoor flooring, while favorite objects like garden gates and urns will add inviting touches to your rooms all year round.

Coming across this room on Houzz is what inspired this ideabook. The wrought iron table, usually seen on a patio or terrace, is simply charming in this home in Spain. Tall plant stands, indoor plants, the tile floor and a grass-green mirror frame bring all the delight of teatime in the garden to this indoor space.

Give an indoor room potting-room touches. Watering cans, fresh flowers and a farmhouse-style cabinet make this entryway feel like a delightful potting shed or flower-arranging room.

Use outdoor pots and urns indoors. These pieces help add wonderful texture from materials like iron, concrete, terra cotta and ceramic. Oversized pieces make a big statement.

Hang garden tools on the wall. I have to admit, I have a collection that includes an antique wooden rake, a green trellis and antique children’s garden tools, and they’ve all graced my walls as art at some point or another. (The trellis is currently hanging in my guest room.) This homeowner brought in a collection of antique farm tools and treated them like art in the breakfast room. Tongue-and-groove planks and exposed rafters add to the comfortable and casual feel.

Bring garden furniture indoors. A garden table topped with branches and blossoms and beautiful floral prints on the throw pillows lend a wonderful garden-like atmosphere to this bedroom sitting area.

Add garden architecture. This contemporary kitchen connects to the outdoors with a horizontally hung trellis and a wall of glossy green behind the range.

Choose a palette with colors plucked from plants. Mixing a range of greens with gray gives this room a modern garden-inspired look.

Go big with plants. Elegant furniture plus large tropical plants plus a few bird cages equals a wonderful mix. It’s chic Parisian apartment meets rainforest.

Add a garden mural. This one covers the walls in a classical sculpture garden. A large topiary and an indoor window box round out the garden inspiration.

Glean inspiration from gates and fence. These wrought iron doors and sink stand recall whimsical garden gates.

Give garden elements an indoor twist. In this office, you’ll find artificial leaves in the mobile, trellis patterns on the fabric and a whimsical indoor-outdoor chair winking toward the view outside.

Use outdoor materials indoors. Brick floors and slate floors like this one work just as well indoors as they do out. They are especially good to use in spaces that transition from indoor to out — those with access to a patio or with large windows like those seen here.

Poach furniture from the patio or porch. The intricate wicker furniture and colorful Chinese garden stools complement the botanical wallcovering in this cozy bedroom.

Choose botanical fabrics. Leafy green upholstery and the footed planter bring the garden into this arboreal dining room.