Design 101 - Denise Bates Enos on Designing for Small Spaces

Joanna MoorhouseWe recently sat down with lifestyle writer and magazine editor Denise Bates Enos to get her input on this week’s topic of designing a small outdoor living space.

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Design 101 - Guest Blogger Sarah Kinbar on Urban Container Gardens

My first visit to New Orleans—just this fall—was a wake-up call for me on the importance of balcony gardens, which are the heart and soul of the French Quarter. Block after block, my eye was drawn to the balconies decorated with the most useful of garden accessories: glorious planters, alive with trailing ivy and pothos, bright with geraniums and petunias. There’s a reason these plants are standard fare for planters—they’re so easy to care for, they make a bold statement visually and they graciously accept the home of a small planter filled with healthy soil.

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Design 101 - Urban Outdoor Living

Rees Roberts + PartnersFor the urban dweller having a functional outdoor living area has become an important amenity.
And with space at a premium they are seeking imaginative ways to expand outdoors.

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Design 101 - Designing for Outdoor Privacy with Eric King

Rick EckersleyWhen it came time to finding answers to the “How to” questions of creating privacy for your outdoor living space we turned to landscape architect Eric King who has been designing award-winning gardens for homes in Atlanta for decades.

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Design 101 - Holiday Decorating with Empty Planters

Deborah Silver and CO.Just because your annuals have died back in your planters doesn’t mean you have to move them to the garage or basement for the winter.  Keep your beautiful planters outdoors and use them as the base for our gorgeous holiday decorating ideas.

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Design 101 - Allison Lind's Guide to Designing with Outdoor Artificial Foliage

This week we got to bend the ear of former magazine editor and stylist turned interior designer and design writer Allison Lind.  Allison's work as been featured in Ty Pennington at Home, Everyday with Rachel Ray and Woman's Day to name a few so we are thrilled to have her share her design insights with our readers too.

Whether you live in a colder northern climate where pots and flower beds are barren for several months or you live in a warmer southern climate where plants are beat down by the sun and heat for a big portion of the year - it is sometimes hard to keep planters and beds as full of greenery and blooms as you'd like.  We are continuously impressed by the ever improving quality of artificial foliage on the market and we asked Allison the ins and outs of designing with artificial foliage.

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Design 101 - Saxon Henry Part 2 - Florida Modernism

Updated on October 22, 2010 by Home Infatuation

Design and architecture journalist Saxon Henry has just recently released a book, Four Florida Moderns.  The book concentrates on four current masters of Florida modernism and we will look at them in this post.  In Part 1 of our interview with Saxon she started to talk about Florida Modernism by mentioning one of its greatest moments - the Sarasota School era. Before we give you Part 2 of our interview with Saxon we'd like to take a moment to mention the Sarasota School Era.

Rupp-Seibert HouseThis post-war and regional style of architecture is associated with Florida's Central West Coast or more specifically Sarasota, Florida hence it's nickname of "Sarasota Modern". This style is still popular and many great examples still exist today. The Sarasota Architectural Foundation's charter is "to promote preservation and awareness of Sarasota's architecture and design, beginning with the Sarasota School of Architecture and beyond."

For more examples of Sarasota Modernism we found this great virtual tour movie at the PupuluxeBooks Blog

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Design 101 - Saxon Henry Part 1 - The Floridian Style

Decor Fall 2010, Photograph - Michael Partenio, Stylist - Stacy Kuntsel

In between her travels to Decorex we got the chance to talk with design and architecture journalist Saxon Henry of Roaming by Design about the Florida design style.  Saxon's has just written a book called Four Florida Moderns (which we'll talk about tomorrow in part 2 of this post) and she's spent a lot of time immersed in the world of Floridian design.

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Design 101 - The Midwest's Restrained Exuberance for Outdoor Living

Kansas City Home and Garden

Home Infatuation is a Midwest based business run by a proud family of Illinoisans.  When I suggested that we write a post about the Midwestern design style we didn't think twice, because...we're from the Midwest and we know Midwestern design.  Right?  Wrong!  Once we started pulling resources together for this post we realized how little we knew about our outdoor style.  It was refreshing to see our outdoor selves through fresh eyes.  After much deliberation we settled on the description of restrained exuberance for our Midwestern outdoor design vernacular.

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Design 101 - Visual Interest for your Dormant Outdoor Space

Great outdoor spaces retain their visual interest as summer plantings fade.

As fall transitions into winter, brilliant foliage that dominated summertime outdoor spaces disappears. Exceptional outdoor spaces always unveil a new layer of visual interest as the seasons change.

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