{window treatment wednesday: window treatments from the artisan home tour 2016}

Stonewood, LLC.

We love to track design trends, and few places are better than the annual Artisan Homes Tour. It’s one thing to see a trend mentioned online or in a magazine, but the Artisan Homes Tour by Parade of Homes gives us a chance to see how they look — up close, and in person — and also see what interior finishes Minnesota and Wisconsin interior designers are using.

We shared an overview of the entire tour earlier this month, but this blog will focus on window treatment trends as seen by Cora and Judy from Hirshfield’s Shop At Home.

“Standout for me was the use of pattern in the drapery panels,” said Judy Ciacura, Hirshfield’s Shop at Home designer. Some of her favorites included: “Neutral background with navy or gray design, and the Moroccan pattern still seems to dominate.”

“A few things that stood out for me were the amount of woven woods featured in the homes,” said Hirshfield’s designer Cora Asp. “There were a couple of homes that had shutters in the bathrooms,” Cora noted,” and we saw lots of side panels as well.”

Hendel Homes 2016 Artisan Home

{window treatment wednesday: hunter douglas premieres event}

What’s new in Window Treatments? To help us appreciate their exciting new innovations and product enhancements, Hunter Douglas puts on their Premieres event each year for dealers around the country.

Hirshfield’s sent key window treatment personnel to this year’s regional get-together for special training classes along with an up-close look at the latest product updates, upgrades, and enhancements, including new fabrics, hardware, and operating systems.  Here are some of our designers’ favorites:

Silhouette® Duolite Window Shadings

Silhouette® Duolite

Cindy  from Maple Grove and Becky from Design Resource singled out the Silhouette® Duolite. The all-in-one window shade/room-darkening roller shade looks like a Silhouette during the day, with a room-darkening shade for sleeping. The Silhouette® Duolite was actually named the 2015 Product of the Year by the Window Covering Manufacturing Association, but it was just released to showrooms for the Spring of 2016.

{beautiful silhouettes: students’ unique design wows the runway crowd}

Interior design and fashion design are continually overlapping — specially on the day Pantone announces its Color of the Year, then we all leap to attention. But we are excited to tell you about the time we recently helped two young design students steal the show at a runway fashion competition.

UW-Stout interior design students Emily Gross and Madi Goodrich entered the IIDA Northland‘s 10th annual Fusion+Fashion show at the Muse Event Center in Minneapolis. Much like Project Runway‘s non-traditional materials challenges, this event is a friendly competition among members of the local design industry that challenges interior designers to create garments out of materials typically used in interior design — like mosaic tiles, upholstery, and paint chip samples.

{window treatment wednesday: powerview earns interior design’s technolology award}

We’ve been raving about the PowerView Motorization System ever since Hunter Douglas unveiled the system last July. And a major design magazine agrees. PowerView recently earned Interior Design’s Best of Year Award for Technology.

Interior Design’s Best of Year ceremony was held at legendary architect Frank Gehry’s IAC Building in New York, where 975 designers, architects, and manufacturers gathered to learn the winners across 43 project categories, 61 product categories, and 11 materials.

{window treatment wednesday: hunter douglas wins big at WCMA awards}

It’s awards season. The Golden Globes got us started, with the Oscars and Grammys on the way. But no matter how much somebody or some group cleans up at any of those events, it will be hard to match the showing Hunter Douglas made at the 2015 WCMA Product Awards.

Hunter Douglas won an amazing 31 awards at the annual Window Covering Manufacturers Association event, held this past November. All product award winners were recognized this past week in Las Vegas, at the International Window Coverings Expo. Hunter Douglas has received the WCMA Product of the Year award for the 15th time.

Hunter Douglas Silhouette® Duolite™ Shadings

The WCMA Product of the Year, awarded annually to the product that stands out across all categories and judging criteria, is Silhouette® Duolite™ Shadings, designed and engineered by the Silhouette® Product Development Team at Hunter Douglas.

{friday finds: window treatment project keeps kids safe}

A special project completed during National Window Covering Safety Month will have a lasting impact for children in Anoka.

The stock vinyl mini-blinds at the Little Blessings of Anoka Early Childhood Learning Center were a safety hazard, so the non-profit, Awareness of Blind Cord Safety (ABC’s), organized a project to fix it.

Old Mini-Blinds at Little Blessings of Anoka had Hazardous Cords and Needed to be Replaced

Hunter Douglas, Hirshfield’s, and Blind Installation & Repair worked together to bring the safe, new window treatments to the learning center.

Hunter Douglas contributed Applause® honeycomb shades with a LiteRise® operating system for every classroom, while Blind Installation & Repair took down the old blinds and handled the reinstallation.

Out with the old, in with the new.

The final installation of the shades was celebrated at a grand re-opening event during National Window Covering Safety Month in October. Window covering safety packages were also distributed to all of the families at the unveiling event.

New Look: Applause® Honeycomb Shades with a LiteRise® Operating System

The Hunter Douglas product line features the widest selection of child safety products that eliminate lift cords or substantially reduce access to them. The Window Covering Safety Council sponsors National Window Covering Safety Month every October to increase awareness of the potential dangers associated with corded window coverings.

The Window Covering Safety Council encourages parents and caregivers move all furniture, cribs, beds and climbable surfaces away from windows, and follow these basic cord-safety precautions:

• Keep all window cords well out of the reach of children.
• Install only cordless window coverings in homes with young children.
• Make sure tasseled pull cords are as short as possible. Continuous-loop pull cords on draperies and vertical blinds should be pulled tight and anchored to the floor or wall.
• Be sure cord stops are properly installed and adjusted to limit inner-cord movement.

The Window Covering Safety Council offers free retrofit kits if you prefer to keep your older window treatments.

Hunter Douglas has plenty of great cordless options, including PowerView Motorization System and Pebble Remote Control.

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

{design helper: the hunter douglas product recommender}

Shopping for window treatments can be a lot of fun. The right styles, fabrics and colors can really bring a room to life. And the most energy-efficient models can even save you a lot of money — if you know what to look for. But what if you don’t? That’s where a new online offering from Hunter Douglas steps in.

The slick, new Product Recommender on the Hunter Douglas home page not only helps you pick your window treatments— it provides an online window treatment education to help you make the best choices.

{window treatment wednesday: tips for window covering safety month}

They make our homes and windows beautiful, but window coverings can be dangerous for small children and pets. That’s why the Window Covering Safety Council (WCSC) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) hold National Window Covering Safety Month every October.

It’s a chance to urge caregivers to check their window coverings for exposed or dangling cords, which pose a strangulation hazard to infants and young children, and to replace them as soon as possible with safer blinds and shades. WCSC and CPSC strongly recommend that only cordless window coverings or those with inaccessible cords be used in homes with young children.

 

{new shades for summer: hunter douglas premieres vignette and parkland wood}

Window Treatment Wednesday:  Hunter Douglas Premieres

Besides introducing the new PowerView Motorization System and Pebble Remote Controls that we raved about last week, Hunter Douglas also shared some other great new products with our window treatment designers at their recent Premieres Event.

{hunter douglas premieres the new pebble remote}

Our window treatment designers returned from the recent Hunter Douglas Premieres Event, acting like they’d just been to a Hollywood premiere.

“The Pebble is AMAZING!” said Beth from the Woodbury Hirshfield’s. “It’s the first artfully inspired remote control I’ve ever seen.  It’s ergonomic, fits comfortably and beautifully in your hand.  It will look great sitting on a table top.”

Introducing the Pebble Remote

They were raving about the new PowerView Motorization System that automatically moves your shades to your favorite settings throughout the day, and the sleek, stylish PowerView Pebble Remote that controls it.