House Beautiful - Is 3D Design the Way of the Future? →

Thank you House Beautiful and Kelly Allen for including us in this 3D design feature using All3D: a company that creates shockingly realistic renderings. To put their tech to the test, we asked five interior designers—Serena Dugan, Heather Peterson, Kiyonda Powell, Nadia Watts, and Anita Yokota—to reimagine the same bedroom in different ways.

See all five designers here!

Image by All3D

House Beautiful: What inspired your design?

Nadia Watts: Flora and fauna! Biophilia was top of mind for this project as I was in the midst of joining the committee for Luncheon By Design in Denver, featuring this amazing biophilia exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. I live in Colorado and nature has always been an inspiration. The idea of being intertwined with the natural world speaks to me. It’s the perfect starting point for design inspiration.

HB: Which pattern did you start with?

NW: The Porter Teleo wallcovering and the window coverings in The Gem Collection, which I created with Kravet, are where it all began. I fell in love with the large-scale pattern on the paper and then went with contrasting stripes on the ceiling by Sanderson and zig-zags on the draperies by Kravet. The biophilia shines in the paper. The geometric stripes and zig-zags perfectly complement the nature-inspired wallcovering.

HB: Describe the room you designed in three words.

NW: Whimsical, comfortable, and unique.

HB: What do you like most about the pattern-on-pattern trend?

NW: Pattern-on pattern forces you out of your comfort zone, and the results are always unique. It’s such an active and curious way to design a room. The “let’s try it and see” approach is so much fun. The pattern-on-pattern trend opens up so many possibilities. It broadens the creative process, which is always a treat.

HB: Can you share any tips for designing around this trend and choosing complementary patterns/colors?

NW: This trend thrives under an analogous color scheme. Choosing colors from the same family will help your patterns feel purposeful and curated. So choose a palette and stick to it. Your room will thank you for it. I like to use a mix of natural, free-flowing patterns with more structured geometric patterns. Also, keep scale in mind. You want to vary your scale with an assortment of small, medium, and large-scale prints.

HB: What role do you think technology like this will play in the future of design?

NW: This has been a huge year for technology in the design world. Having a tool that allows you to show your design concepts in such a tangible way is a game changer. Technology is making design more accessible for people, allowing them to see a space as the creative vision comes together.

Simple = Sophisticated

This new home needed a fresh look for the master bedroom, and we selected a few beautiful elements to make the space feel grown-up and inviting.

We started with the furniture plan. In this case, we were lucky: There was clearly a wall meant for the bed. Then, to make the scale of the room feel more intimate, we chose a gray-brown for the walls. 

My clients had the side tables, which we covered in tone on tone seersucker. We topped the tables with my favorite small gourd lamps from Visual Comfort.

Simple white linen curtains soften the look of the windows and shutters--perfect for a bedroom. And we added a pop of color with the great rug at the foot of the bed. 

We're working on adding a few more accessories and a throw. I have a few ideas. What would you choose? 

BEFORE:


AFTER:

 

How to Remodel Your Master Bedroom

I loved this project because we touched every inch of the house, and the master bedroom is one of my favorite spaces. We started with a blank slate, which is always a lot of fun. Here are a few tips from this project you can use to refresh your own bedroom.

Open up the doorways. We increased the width of the opening to the left of the bed because it was a very narrow space going into the now sun room.

Plan your space. When we changed the opening, we also claimed some of the space from a secondary bedroom for a sitting area and master bathroom. The space for the sitting room was originally a sleeping porch when the house was built. It was then converted into a closet, which covered the windows. Our change exposed the windows again. Cheers for natural light!

Build on one thing you love. Our inspiration was the window treatment fabric from Brunschwig & Fils. Pulling a very subtle color from a leaf in the pattern, we decided on the wall color: Benjamin Moore's Woodland White. Then we found this gorgeous Scalamandre geometric pattern in a red-cut velvet for the side chair--so divine!

Layer your bed. We used a light-aqua gingham from Schumacher on the ruffled bed skirt and an upholstery-weight Kravet fabric on the headboard, with contrast welt in the gingham. Bed linens are from Restoration Hardware. I love starting with a fabric with multiple colors so we can pull colors from it to find the next fabric or paint color.

Check back in a few weeks to see new lamps for the bedside tables! I am looking for either a dark blue or a crisp ivory glazed base.


 BEFORE

AFTER: Ahhh...

Get Cozy: Master Bedroom Redo

People often ask designers where to start when they're remodeling or redesigning a room. Sometimes I use a piece of art or a fabric that a client loves, but in the case of this master bedroom, we started with the soft powder blue walls. Blue tends to be a calming color, so a bedroom is the perfect place to use it!

With the help of a local upholsterer, we selected a classic shape for the headboard and then had it covered in two fabrics from Calvin, one for the main body and one for the contrast piping. (TIP: Contrast piping is a great way to add a little interest and tailoring to an upholstered piece. I love it!) 

Custom pieces are the perfect way to get exactly what you want (and they're not as expensive as you might assume). But the challenge is that you and your designer have to decide all of the details. In this case, we thought long and hard about how high to make the headboard. We had plenty of ceiling height and could do just about anything we wanted. The headboard is 66 inches from the floor, a little higher than I normally do them, to move your eye up the bed and be a little more dramatic!

We found great-looking sidetables from Restoration Hardware that followed the classic look, and polished it off with clean ivory-glazed lamps from Visual Comfort. The clients found the rug on a trip to Santa Fe--it was the perfect piece to the design puzzle!


BEFORE: BOR-ing!

 

AFTER!!!