{painting or staining: best options for interior millwork}

You can paint the walls, hang the curtains, arrange the furniture, but a room just isn’t complete until you’ve addressed that one final touch, the component that will tie the whole look of the room (and house) together  – the millwork.

Millwork refers to your home’s interior doors, window casings, baseboards, mantels and crown molding. Choosing the right look for your home’s millwork is an important decision, as it not only impacts the look and feel of each individual room, but in many cases it impacts the look and feel of your entire home. And even though you only have two options when it comes to finishing millwork – paint or stain – there is a lot of careful consideration that should go into your final decision. So to get some professional insight on the matter, I spoke with Brandi Hagen, Principal Designer of Eminent Interior Design in Minneapolis.

In about 85% of remodeled or new construction homes Brandi visits, homeowners are opting for painted millwork.

“Most homeowners are going with some variation of white for their millwork to contrast with the dark floors and bold wall colors that are so popular right now. It’s all about contrast, so if you’re using dark, bold colors on your walls and floors you need that clean white line to offset it.”
– Brandi Hagen

House Beautiful

Some of Brandi’s favorite paint colors for millwork include Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee (OC-45) for a nice, crisp white and Benjamin Moore Calming Cream (OC-105) for a warm creme color. Benjamin Moore’s Mayonnaise (OC-85) is another of Brandi’s favorites.

You can pick up color swatches of these Benjamin Moore paint colors at your local Hirshfield’s. Hirshfield’s offers “sample size” 16 ounce cans of most paints so you can test the color in your home under various lighting conditions before committing to a large paint purchase.

Although white is a popular color choice for millwork, Brandi says she also likes to use black. She says black isn’t something she usually recommends for an entire house, but for one room that is separated from the rest (such as a bedroom or office), black can really make a statement. Paint the walls a lighter color to pop against the black.

Photo courtesy of Brandi Hagen

Staining is another option for millwork. When looking for a stain color, Brandi recommends going either really light or really dark – medium tones are out. Just like with paint, it’s all about high contrast. So think about the colors you want to use in your house and then pick out your stain.

Examiner Home & Living

If you are staining your millwork, Hirshfield’s recommends trying the stain color on a scrap piece of the actual wood used for the project.  Bring along a piece when you’re shopping for stain colors and Hirshfield’s will be happy to provide a brush-out for you to take home.

But if you just can’t decide whether you want to go with paint or stain, there is no rule against mixing and matching!

“There’s no hard and fast rule when it comes to mixing paint and stain for millwork finishing. Just think about the flow and transition of your rooms. If you have an open-concept floor plan, it might be hard to make a sensible transition between the paint and the stain. But if you have a closed off room you can make it work.”
– Brandi Hagen

So whether you choose paint, stain or both, the most important thing is to pick a color that will work well with your entire home for many years to come.

“Painting and staining millwork is not an easy task. You don’t want to be refinishing all the millwork in your home every couple of years. Pick a color that you like, but that will also work well as your style changes throughout the years.”
- Brandi Hagen

{woven woods}

Hunter Douglas Provenance 

House of Turquoise – Lucy Penfield

House of Turquoise

Cote de’Texas

Palmer Weiss 2010 Showcase Home

Hunter Douglas Provenance

Hunter Douglas Provenance

House of Turquoise – Lucy Penfield

A little texture goes a long way! Improve the view of your room with au courant woven woods.  Made from natural fibers like bamboo, grass, reeds, and woods, they add another layer of color and texture to your room.

Hirshfield’s has a large selection of natural woven shades at price points to suit everyone’s budget. Stop in and work with our window treatment experts.  I love listening to them talk customers through the process of selecting the right treatment for their lifestyle and budget. They know the right questions to ask to make sure you are completely satisfied with your window treatment purchase. I may be biased, but the window treatment professionals at Hirshfield’s really are the best in the business!

{what’s on thibaut’s best sellers list?}

If you’re not familiar with Thibaut, they offer over 50 books in their wallpaper library. Each collection contains a distinct group of designs by themes such as traditional, nautical, stripes or toile. Also, included in the offering are papers, vinyls, natural textures, and lovely fabrics.

Here are the top four patterns from their best-selling book Texture Resource Vol. 3:

Tuscany Leather

{creating a sophisticated kids room}

Ask any parent and they will tell you that kids grow up just too darn fast. So when it comes to decorating their bedroom, you want to make sure you invest your dollars wisely to create a space that can grow with them.

Decorating a nursery
Decorating a nursery for baby is one of those special moments in parenthood. And when you first bring your sweet baby home it it can sometimes be hard to imagine that one day they won’t be needing a changing table, crib or rocking chair. So when planning the decor for your nursery, think about adding pieces that can transition from baby to toddler to tween to teen.

In this European-inspired nursery, a neutral wall color offsets the whimsical curtains and furniture. The paint color, Benjamin Moore‘s Caramel Apple, will serve as the perfect neutral backdrop for many years to come. The fabric on the window treatments is playful, yet sophisticated. And the changing tray can be removed from the chest of drawers for an easy transition from nursery to child’s room.

Design Dazzle

Design Dazzle

{friday finds: decorating with books}

Sure e-readers and tablets provide a nice, organized way to keep track of all your books, but when it comes to home decor, nothing beats the real thing. Of course, actually reading the books is optional.

“It’s nice to have books around. They add so much ambiance. I hope we never live to see the day when books are eliminated from the home,” said Minneapolis interior designer, Jim Noble (Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Decor by the books“).

Books add warmth, dimension and visual interest to a space. There’s just something about having books around that make a room feel more important.

{friday finds: silhouettes by ashford house}

Scenic Woodland

Medallion with Scroll

When I hear, “you’re going to love this new book” my heart races for a few seconds. A new wallcovering book always carries the hope of great expectations. The Silhouettes book is a winner in every category!

{best paint colors for accent walls}

An accent wall can define a space, add interest to a room and even highlight an architectural feature of your home. But with endless paint color options to choose from, how do you decide which color is the best for an accent wall in your home? I spoke with Kathy Basil of Hirshfield’s Design Studio in Minneapolis to get her opinion on the subject.

Kathy starts out by emphasizing not all walls are suitable accent walls. There needs to be a reason for an accent wall and it needs to make sense in the overall design plan. A fireplace wall, a headboard wall or a window wall all make good accent wall candidates.

House Beautiful

Martha Stewart

{friday finds: what’s new at the design studio}

The staff at the design studio are very excited to share a sampling of new pieces which are arriving weekly, as a result from their last buying trip to High Point Market. More news from the showroom is they’re adding two new lines into “the mix,” and one line will be exclusive to the Hirshfield’s showroom. More on the new lines when pieces start arriving at the showroom.

Pillows!

Handcrafted from reclaimed wood this one-of-a kind sideboard is the focal point of any room, even if you don’t have convex mirrors and boom wall sculptures to glam it up.

Close-up of sideboard doors

Reclaimed bench just unpacked and waiting for a cushion.

Love the detail of the doors.

Boom sculpture on a table or on the wall.

Love purple? These corbel bookends and throw lend the right amount purple to a room.

Twisted vines

The metal grouping looks like birch trees in the fall.

Laying Lotus flew off the walls before Christmas

Laying Lotus used as a centerpiece

Aren’t these one-of-a-kind pieces absolutely gorgeous? You know they are. The photos don’t do them justice. I guarantee you’ll fall in love when you see them.

Can objets d’art be multi-taskers? The staff at the showroom seems to think so:

• Boom wall sculptures can be hung on the wall or placed on a table
• Glam it up with mirrors like the showroom did, or keep it simple with a few mirrors
• Wooden column capitals turned candle holders, grouped together, or used as a single, chunky statement piece
• Laying Lotus piece used as a wall hanging or centerpiece for a table; this piece mixes cool and warm metallic finish
• The versatility of the pieces provides an opportunity to use them in multiple rooms

It’s like Christmas at the showroom with the new pieces arriving. Look in the near future for an update on the showroom’s new lines.

Also, as evident by the red tags in the photos, there are still sale items available. Custom made, fabricated headboards are $400 and $500, high-end sofas for $900. Leave a comment if you’d like to see photos.

I hope you enjoyed the “what’s new” theme song.

{Hirshfield’s Colour Canvas 2012: Part 2}

We’ve already traveled to Australia, Asia and Europe to visit the forecasted color trends inspired by these regions in the Hirshfield’s Colour Canvas 2012 collection. Now let’s get our passports stamped in South America, North America and Africa!

In South America, design is heavily influenced by Spanish trends, Aztec patterns and the iconic color scheme of deep red orange paired with neutral beige and a calming green.

{Hirshfield’s Colour Canvas 2012: Part 1}

Color is the universal language. Throughout the globe, color is used to convey emotion, personal style, drama and storytelling.

The interesting thing about color is the way it can be mixed and matched to create functional color palettes that compliment larger societal trends.

The Hirshfield’s Colour Canvas 2012 collection features color combinations that harmonize with the greater surrounding colors representative of different regions, along with forecast color trends. Each of the color combinations demonstrates the use of a neutral or off-white mixed with forecast colors and harmonizing hues. In this post, we will take you on a tour of three of the six new collections; the Australian, Asian and European collections.

The colors in the Australian collection represent the area’s rich culture of aboriginal art, the treasured Great Barrier Reef and the simple, clean design  common in Australian homes.