Does your home need a “Winter Look”? We are in the thick of the holiday season right now and our homes are filled with pretty decorations, gifts, and lights, but what happens in a few days when the holidays are past?  Have you ever gotten excited about creating a “winter” look for your space? Join our FREE 5-day “Improve your Room Challenge”  for design tips and tricks to try with any project including creating your winter look. Our rooms are welcoming and comforting during the holidays.  But soon, all the pretty accents will return to their permanent storage homes for
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Do you put the same holiday decorations in the same exact place year after year?  When you pull down your bins of accessories, are they sorted by the spot they’ve always been in? Just like our day to day living spaces, our holiday décor needs an occasional “spruce” up.  How do you update your Holiday Home without starting over?  Follow my 5 rules below and each year your holiday look will feel fresh and updated. This year give the gift of Interior Design to someone special on your list and get our Holiday Decorating Style Guide Absolutely Free! In the
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With the Holidays right around the corner, it’s not too early to start thinking about decorating your home.  This week, I’m going to give you a way to create a “designer look” with your holiday décor. If you’d rather get specifics and easy copiable ideas for all areas of your home, click here to purchase our Holiday Decorating Style Guide. Like any design project, your holiday home is a composition.   And building a composition relies on implementing the principles of design to create a unified look. There are five basic principles of Interior Design.  Here they are listed with how
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Bookshelves were once the sturdy storage spot where we kept our reading collection – not only great entertainment, but those hard cover investments became beautiful accessories in any home.  Flash forward to today where we download books and read them on a kindle, a great convenience and just one more advantage technology has given us.  But does that mean that our bookcase is obsolete?  Absolutely not!  Today, I’m going to give you some tips for your own bookcase while we walk through an example with photos. What can you put in a bookcase? Books I know – obvious right?  You’re
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Start your Room Redo for the Holidays NOW! It’s September – after Labor Day – and time to start your room redo to be ready for the holidays. Do you really need to start now? With the kiddos back in school and the weather starting to cool off, many of us are heading back indoors and starting to think about freshening up our interior spaces for the holidays.  You might be wondering how much time you will really need to complete your project and be stress free for the holidays?  If you take one thing away from this post it
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In the spirit of our upcoming “5 Day Improve your Room Challenge” this blog post will feature a case study of a beautiful project we recently completed.  I’m going to walk you through the first two important steps of any project – Defining the functional requirements and the color palette for the space. We’ve been busy here at New Perspective Design, working behind the scenes on some new product and service offerings coming soon!  We are looking to launch our FREE 5-day Room Challenge next month so keep an eye out for the opt-in in a future blog post as
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This week we’re going to focus on pet proofing tips for your home design featuring our four-legged New Perspective Design Team. We may be biased, but here are nine of the cutest furry family members each featuring an innovative suggestion for pet-proofing your home. Years back a vet told me pets and pretty things don’t mix – but I’m here to tell you that these days they most certainly do! Take a peek at my best recommendations for decorating homes with pets and keep them in mind as you approach your next project. Sydney is super friendly so she’s going
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Continuing in our series on bathroom renovations, today we are going to focus on how to maximize storage options.  I think we can all agree on the idea that you can never have too much storage in a bathroom.    A renovation project is the perfect time to take a look at the options you have to maximize your storage.  In this article, we are going to look at changes you can make without changing the footprint of the room (e.g. working with the space you have). 1. Recessed Mirrored Medicine Cabinet This is the tip that tops my list of
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Once you have the budget determined for your bathroom renovation, its time to outline all the tasks that need to be done and in what order to help you manage the timeline of your project. In this article we will walk you through who you need to hire and what responsibilities each tradesman has to complete your job. A quick rundown on insurance before we start – Make sure whomever you hire carries the correct insurance.  Each trade or the GC you hire should carry General Liability insurance usually in the amount of at least 1 million dollars.  This protects
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Bathroom renovation costs can vary significantly depending on the plumbing fixtures/requirements, tile selections, storage considerations, etc.  In this article, I want to give you a walk through of the costs of a standard 5’x8’ bathroom.  Think hall bath where the door opens and there is a single sink vanity, toilet, and shower/bathtub combo lined up against the wall opposite the door.  I’m choosing this bathroom for our example because it is a common layout and one of the less complicated renovations.  It’s also one of the less costly bathroom renovation projects that we work on. We’re located northwest of Chicago
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