This project won Chameleon Design a SoCal Award this past weekend! The space that we had to work with was very small, but was done so well that it shows much bolder and stronger than the budget of $18 per square foot. Check out the photos and we’re sure you’ll agree:
Entry
Kitchen & Dining Room
Master Bedroom
Office
Nursery
A perfect location for seniors deciding where their “new” home is going to be, 740 S. Olive Street is a historic building that’s been updated. This 13-story building provides affordable senior living in the heart of Los Angeles and Chameleon Design put a little glitz and glam into its art deco bones.
All of the interiors were redone to include: the lobbies, recreation room, exercise room, theater room, offices and hallway interior specifications, while maintaining the art deco historical features. See the ceiling detail in the lobby, the gold leaf mural in the lobby seating area and the glass block wall in multi-purpose room.
Resident Reverend Hannah couldn’t believe how beautiful it looked after the remodel and said: “I can’t believe this is my home. I am so happy I live here!”
Entrance
Lobby Seating
Main Lobby
Multi-Purpose Room
Rooftop
Every home has those rooms or areas that get left out of the design and décor mix- often because people don’t know what to do with them. Follow our blog in the coming weeks for series of “Creative Roadblocks” that we’ll help you out with. First up- the laundry room!
The Laundry Room:
The laundry room is often a room that homeowners don’t think about. Yet there are simple things that you can do to make it much more functional and maybe even show-worthy! One very helpful addition is to hang a dry bar for those items that have a tendency to shrink and delicates that need to be air-dried. A drying rack only holds a few shirts at most and can look sloppy, but a closet rod mounted on the underside of a laundry-room shelf makes a good spot for a row of shirts on hangers. The rod can also be helpful when you’re ironing to hang pressed shirts as you work. You can see an example of this, and other features, in the photos below from various Brookfield Homes laundry rooms. They are one of our favorite clients to work for and one of the most creative developers of new homes out there.
Speaking of ironing, the laundry room is a logical place for the ironing board to be stored, but many don’t have closets. Consider having a pullout ironing board built into the wall and you just might find yourself looking forward to the chore.
So now you’re organized and tidy, but if your laundry room feels a bit dreary, add a brighter paint to the walls such as yellow, green or turquoise. You could also consider a textured vinyl wallpaper to give you a nice, tonal texture in the room. If you do go with color on the walls, keep trim, counters and the backspash looking clean with a color like white. Laundry rooms are busy enough with clothes everywhere, so keep your design simple. I like Caesarstone counter tops instead of granite because it creates a more uniform look. Also make sure you have adequate lighting.
Brookfield Homes builds great functional features and clean design into their laundry rooms. Check out the rest of the homes in their Colony Park Anaheim development: www.livecolonypark.com. And, as always, if you need help with your laundry room you know that we’re here for you at Chameleon Design!
School has started back up, it’s beginning to get dark a bit later and temperatures have begun to drop by the slightest bit. Fall is on everyone’s mind! I’m sharing some helpful hints on how to get your home nice and cozy for the season ahead.
Fall Cleaning?
Though spring-cleaning typically gets all the attention, fall should not be ignored! It may not be on the top of any Southern California residents’ to-do lists, but it’s a great way to prepare a home for the cooler winter months where much more time is spent indoors. Before the temperatures start to drop, tackle all the loose ends that build up over the year. We talked about organizing the closets a couple weeks ago, but don’t forget about the kitchen pantry, turning rugs to avoid ware, removing summer slipcovers on furniture, changing bed linens and so on. While vacationing with my family this summer in the Caribbean, I was catching up on my favorite magazines and came across some incredible cleaning checklists from homemaking maven Martha Stewart. I thought these were excellent tips to share with you, and you can check them out here: www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/fall-homekeeping-tips
Changing Seasons, Changing Wall Color:
The leaves are changing color, the weather is changing, so why not transform a room in the home with a wall color change? Painting is the quickest and most inexpensive way to give any room a new look and feel. You can even do it yourself! Over at Chameleon Design, we find ourselves getting sucked into that late-night infomercial just like the rest of you. One of our latest faves is the “Paint Zoom” paint gun www.paintzoom.com. This can turn anyone into a pro, and make transforming a room with a color change a low-cost breeze that anyone can do.
Also, consider painting one accent wall as opposed to a warmed background color on all four walls. An accent wall is traditionally a brightly-colored wall added to a room where the other three walls are white. They draw your eye to a particular part of the room and give you a chance to play around with color in your house in a new way. When deciding what wall to use, look for the natural focal point in the room. If you have a fireplace, you can make the room more dramatic by painting the wall around it a different color. The wall behind a bed’s headboard or an important piece of furniture are also great options. When there is no natural focal point in a room, you can create one. Look around- where do you want the eye to go first? Here are a few examples to illustrate this design technique:
The accent wall in this office brightens up the room and creates a focal point around the desk.
We’re taking you behind the scenes of our studio construction and design in progress!
We’ve acquired a new space for Chameleon Design and we’re working hard on building out and creating our new design offices. Throughout the process, some unexpected design dilemmas have come up and we’ve had to put our heads together to come up with the best ways to address them. Read about how we handled them, as the tips may come in handy in your design adventures as well!
Comfort and Functionality:
When designing a new space, professional designers have to think about functionality before we even begin to consider furniture and decor elements. In our space, which was built with a contemporary feel, the walls between each room and office do not go all the way to the ceiling. This may look cool, but in actuality this is not ideal for offices. The open space can allow sound to travel, as well as make temperatures hard to control. There is nothing more miserable than too much noise or being too hot or cold when you’re trying to get your work done! We came up with a concept to put clear glazing on the upper areas that look almost like windows, and reach to the ceiling. This way the light is still able to travel through, allowing that airy feel to remain, but sound is kept at a low.
For the storage room, we decided to add a door and an air conditioner vent, and make this the home of the computer system. No one wants to see the ugly wires all over the place, so tucking all of this away is a great idea. This was most definitely the best use of the storage closet.
We mainly think of hiring a professional designer to make things look pretty in the home. Though that is definitely important, making sure the space is functional ranks just as high. If you need to re-think the function of any spaces in your home, Chameleon Design can help you do it.
Stay tuned through the coming weeks for more updates on the progress of this project!
While many people see Labor Day weekend as the last chance to squeeze in a mini-vacation before the fall, some are up to their ears transitioning their closets from summer to fall and getting organized and prepared for back to school. So for those who have opted to stay home, we thought we would offer some tips to organizing your closet in style.
Take an inventory:
In order to assess what’s in your closet, start by taking every single thing out. You’ll be surprised by what’s been hiding in the far corners and on hard to reach shelves. Once you can get a clear picture of everything you’ve got, be choosy about what you put back in. If there are items you haven’t worn in two plus years, it’s time to get rid of them. Donate to a charity and make room for new pieces. We love Working Wardrobes: www.workingwardrobes.org. If you have a ton of outgrown kids clothes, make some extra cash by taking them to a children’s consignment store such as PrettyDotz in Corona del Mar. Once you get things cleared out, stay organized year-round by spending 10-15 minutes each morning making sure things get put back where they belong.
Create a Hideaway:
Consider storing off-season clothing such as bathing suits and sundresses elsewhere. These items don’t deserve prime closet real estate and can easily be tucked away until the summer weather rolls around again next year. An attic, garage or extra closet in another room is a great place to store boxes. Also consider creating mud room area in your garage with wall hooks and a bench. By leaving items such as coats and shoes just outside the door, you’re saving much-needed closet space.
Invest in New Hangers:
You know those wire and plastic hangers from department stores or dry cleaners that somehow always manage to find a home in even the nicest of closets? Well get rid of them! Any dry cleaners will take them back and recycle them for you. Splurge on nice, wooden hangers that will keep the form of your clothes and you won’t regret it. Investing in all matching hangers, which will also allow your clothes to all hang at the same height, is one of the quickest ways to make your closet look and feel more organized. And don’t forget about the kids hangers! As your kids grow, and so do their clothing sizes, make sure to get rid of old hangers that are too small. Involve the kids in any closet organization projects, so they can learn how to do it for themselves as they get older.
Make the Most of the space you have:
Don’t let any space in your closet go to waste. The simple act of adding hooks to the backs of doors gives scarves, purses, belts or long necklaces a tidy place to hang out. If it will work with your closet configuration, install two-tiered hanging rods, allowing you to hang blouses and shirts over your pants. That way, you’ll get twice the amount of clothes in a smaller amount of space. Purchase plastic bins to store knits such as cashmere, that lose their shape if they are hung, and stack on shelves above your clothes racks.
If you don’t have shelving and your closet will allow for it, consider having something built. Chameleon Design can work with you to design a beautiful custom built-in for even the tiniest of spaces in your home. It will leave you feeling not only luxurious, but fresh and organized for the new season!
One of the biggest telltale signs that a home has not had the input of a designer is that it is out of proportion. I see a lot of out-of-scale furniture, underutilized space and awkward floor plans. I was just in a house recently where this was apparent. It was sort of odd how they arranged things and uncomfortable to move from room to room, making it feel un-inviting. But the homeowners didn’t know what they were missing because no one had taken the time to rearrange it and edit it for them!
When putting together a room, it’s really worth to hire a designer for a few hours to help out. They can help you create a floor plan which is useful in many ways. They can also do some drawings to scale so you know what fits size-wise if you are going to buy the furniture yourself. Even if you want to do it one piece at a time, you have that background of information to use for as long as you’re in the home.
This kind of consultation is something just about any designer will do. It can really help you create the kind of space that people will want to be in AND stay in.
Below are some photographs of a media-living room-dining room that was tricky to design. With a little expert planning and design they came together beautifully!
As our kids grow, their tastes change and they literally grow out of their old rooms. Your 12 year old might have hit a growth spurt and has feet dangling off the bed he or she had as a child! Their needs also change. They don’t play with the same “toys” that used to entertain them for hours on end. Once kids are in early elementary to late elementary or middle school, it’s usually time for a transition. People often do a beautiful job from the nursery to the little kid’s room, but changing a room to be tween/teen can take a little bit more thought. They aren’t grown-ups yet, but will be adults by the time high school is over. Such a broad range.
The main idea: you want to think about this as a cool place where they can hang out with their friends— better your home than somewhere where you can’t keep an eye on them! This is going to be their sanctuary where they begin to develop a sense of self and identity. I’ve recently done a few of these rooms and they can be really fun to do.
The case of the unused formal space is pretty common. This is an example of a home I recently did where a family in Cameo Highlands was looking to make better use of their formal living and dining room. They didn’t need the formal space, and it was going unused.
Their objective was to uphold the distinction between the entertaining area and the everyday family room and kitchen, while softening the space so that it became a relaxing place to read a book and take in the view. Truth be told, the husband was the one asking for a place to get away, and with a traditional “man cave” not in the cards, the couple reached a compromise. The designers at Studio Chameleon were able to re-imagine a space that fulfilled both her needs as a hostess, and his desire for a quiet retreat.
Hope you’ve had a great summer! It might seem crazy with the warm weather and grilling, but it’s time to start thinking about holiday decorating and the design projects you want finished in time for guests during the holidays. I highly suggest enlisting the help of a designer. Even if you are just repurposing items from last year and don’t plan any new purchases, a designer can help you lay out your decorations and furniture to make hostessing a breeze.
Here are some things to think about when working with a designer to plan your holiday look.
Studio Chameleon does lots of this work and we’ve already begun helping a few clients prepare. Would love to help you too! Call us today at (949) 650-7979.
