Design that Reveals
Design that Reveals
Creativity is my love, interior design is my focus. Whether it be full service interior design, re-decoration or even online design through Design in a Box, I am passionate about all things creative. Here, I will share insights into projects, inspirations and what's going on in the world of design from Calgary and beyond. Would love to have you follow along.
my bedroom reveal May 10, 2011
publications: my home in avenue magazine Jun 14, 2012
exciting news! Jul 13, 2011
My clients have recently moved to, and renovated a house in the country. We are at the finishing stage, although there is still lots to do. I’m heading out of town tomorrow to do a site visit (as well as participate in a cooking class by sharing tips on quick and easy decorating ideas for entertaining during the holidays). A number of months ago I created a living room inspiration board which has since come together quite nicely. The coffee table seems to be our biggest hold up right now but I think we’re making progress.
We seem to have many irons in the fire right now with remaining furniture pieces, media unit being built as well as window coverings required for several windows, including the ensuite. Below are the materials we used in the master bathroom. I’m thinking something soft and airy, possibly a linen sheer with a slight pattern to it.
The cabinetry is painted in Benjamin Moore Duxbury Gray (that’s the grey/green colour of the two), with backsplash in the white glass/marble mosiac. I’m contemplating a silver framed mirror accented with a very small gold edge detail to add an unexpected element and shimmer. It will be really subtle but often those details are what add impact and make a difference in a room. Keep ya’ posted on that one…
That’s all for now!
Nyla Free Designs is a full service Calgary Interior Design studio. Our goal is to bring your home to life by revealing your style and infusing unexpected elements of design and detail. If we can help with your project please let us know! See the contact page to get in touch.
Nyla Free Designs also offers an online design service through Design in a Box.
If you read my Halloween post last year, you’ll recognize this space. Don’t you find that each year it’s becoming more and more popular with stores, decorations and expectations of goulish delight increasing? Our girls were invited to a halloween party this past weekend so my oldest really wanted to have a scary(er) costume this year. Here she is in her ‘little miss monstrous’ costume we found via Martha Stewart Living, while sitting at our stylishly scary entrance. Can you tell she has the attitude to go along with it?! What are your kids dressing up as? Or maybe the question should be what are you dressing up as? My five year old thinks I should be a ‘Mummy’ :)
Hope you have a safe and fun Halloween!
Nyla Free Designs is a full service Calgary Interior Design studio. Our goal is to bring your home to life by revealing your style and infusing unexpected elements of design and detail. If we can help with your project please let us know! See the contact page to get in touch.
Nyla Free Designs also offers an online design service through Design in a Box.
I’m sharing a glimpse of fabrics and finishing details from a bedroom design that is near completion. Actually the house is almost complete and ready to be photographed. I’ve already shown a sneak peak of the living room fabrics as well as the competed study with the before & after, but that’s all I’m going to show you for now. Sorry!
This room is all about texture and warmth. It’s pretty dramatic, not to mention the beautiful view my clients have out their bedroom windows. We also have a play on patterns, a few of which you don’t see here. The bedding and daybed are missing elements in this collage of materials and as you can imagine important to the overall scheme. But alas, they will have to remain undercover for now.
Featured fabrics: Kravet, Donghia, Zoffany Paint: Pratt & Lambert
Nyla Free Designs is a full service Calgary Interior Design studio. Our goal is to bring your home to life by revealing your style and infusing unexpected elements of design and detail. If we can help with your project please let us know! See the contact page to get in touch.
Nyla Free Designs also offers an online design service through Design in a Box.
This issue’s Dabble Mag Reality Check column is all about custom area carpets. As you can image we take several photos, hundreds sometimes, to capture the ideal shots to show off the room. Once they go to Dabble, Victoria works her magic but there are many that don’t make the magazine. I thought I would show you a few more of my favorite images and ones that will now be in my portfolio.
Interiors by Nyla Free Designs, Contractor: Foothills Renovations, Photography by Lori Andrews
Nyla Free Designs is a full service Calgary Interior Design studio. Our goal is to bring your home to life by revealing your style and infusing unexpected elements of design and detail. If we can help with your project please let us know! See the contact page to get in touch.
Nyla Free Designs also offers an online design service through Design in a Box.
The design process is often organic. Try as you might to have a completed room it can seem like there’s just one. more. thing. to add in an effort to finish it off. For this particular client we have been keeping our eyes open for the perfect floor lamp. This client is patient and she waits to find a piece that she loves. This can take a long time and believe me we have been looking for years.
During a recent trip to New York I visited the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair). My goal was to see new products for inspiration as well as possible pieces for specific clients. Baccarat, known as the jewelers of light has introduced lighting and I was blown away by their booth at the show. This particular fixture took my breath away and I thought maybe, just maybe it was the one.
Baccarat Sfera Floor Lamp design by Michele de Lucchi. Image via: Design Boom
Success! This gorgeous little number will find it’s new home alongside the antique Italian chair and twig end table. Ooooh! I can’t wait to see that crystal lit up in the room.
Photographer: Martin Tessler
Nyla Free Designs is a full service Calgary Interior Design studio. Our goal is to bring your home to life by revealing your style and infusing unexpected elements of design and detail. If we can help with your project please let us know! See the contact page to get in touch.
Nyla Free Designs also offers an online design service through Design in a Box.
A current project that I have fallen in love with is coming to life and almost near completion. One of my favorite rooms in the home is the study, a second floor retreat for my client to read, send notes written or digitally and even watch a little TV. Our goal was to surround the room with books creating floor to ceiling, wall to wall bookshelves housing an eclectic collection of inspiring reading material. The transformation is quite dramatic. Here’s where we started.
Palm tree drapery and bright orange walls. Wow! With those elements removed, fabulous windows, blonde maple floors and a large open space we had the perfect base to bring the room to this…..
The view of the study as you enter the room. Inviting and calm, filled with a passion of reading.
Keeping the floor and millwork the same colour the books become the focus, alongside the traditional area carpet adding colour and texture to the room.
Wall sconces and art hanging directly off the millwork add dimensional elements.
This image reminds me that one of my goals this summer is to read a book. Crazy I know but my ‘extra’ time has been so limited lately that reading has been far removed from my schedule. *sigh*
You can see more of this space in the latest issue of Dabble Mag where you’ll find insights and information on Custom Millwork.
Photography: Lori Andrews. Contractor: Foothills Renovations.
Nyla Free Designs is a full service Calgary Interior Design studio. Our goal is to bring your home to life by revealing your style and infusing unexpected elements of design and detail. If we can help with your project please let us know! See the contact page to get in touch.
Nyla Free Designs also offers an online design service through Design in a Box.
A current bathroom renovation project is well under way so I wanted to share the progress with you. The tile work is coming along nicely and I’m quite pleased with the dramatic results. The black granite tile is going to offset the stylish white tub beautifully and how about that tiled area rug? Gorgeous!
Next on the agenda is cabinetry which will be quarter sawn oak in a natural finish. A quarter sawn oak has a linear grain which will compliment the lines of the limestone shower. You can see the inspirations that we started with over at my bathroom reno: sneak peak post.
We have an early August deadline as there is a wedding in the family. Can’t wait to show you the final result!
I hesitated to post a red and white interior for Canada Day but when I saw this home I really couldn’t resist because it is red and white done right. Julio Jimenez del Corral of Circle Q Architects, has created an classic modern home with the perfect amount of red. It is crisp, but not cold. It is white and bright yet inviting and warm. If you are the least bit hesitant to infuse colour into your home, this is the perfect example of a space that has colourful accents and still maintains a sense of neutrality.
In the spirit of our homeland colours I hope you enjoy this home from Madrid and wish you all a peaceful and relaxing Canada Day weekend.
Images: micasa
Last Tuesday I flew to Kelowna to help a client receive and install furniture at their new (to them) lake house property on Lake Okanagan in British Columbia. I got off to a late start due to a crazy morning illness (NO it’s not what you might think so move on from that notion!)
I had put together a collage of some of the items we will be installing that you can see on my ‘A Day in the Life‘ post.
The delivery truck was late arriving at the house so the timing ended up perfect. Plus I stayed overnight so we had extra time to work on unpacking, placement and putting together all of our fab purchases. When I arrived most of the furniture had been placed with packing still attached. The white glove delivery service was due to arrive within an hour so we got down to business to prepare for more pieces to arrive.
First thing on the agenda… hello beautiful view!
The state of the living room when I arrived.
A pile of pillows waiting for a special place to rest.
Here is the living room when I left Wednesday morning. Our original plan was to place the cane chairs upstairs in the family room. We’ve been looking tirelessly for a pair of danish modern chairs to take their place. With company soon to be arriving, these chairs will add the extra seats needed in the space and the hunt for our modern finds will continue.
We hung a fabulous white starburst over the fireplace with a concave mirror. I thought this was a fun shot of the space from a distorted angle.
Family room with pull out sofa that also acts as a guest room. Because we borrowed the cane chairs for the living room I didn’t capture the end result as it will be evolving over time.
Small bedrooms for the kids will accommodate two twin beds. We opted for low profile beds as to not obstruct the windows. I must say the girls room has the most incredible view.
White glove service building the kids beds. These guys were nothing short of amazing going above and beyond the call of duty and so incredibly nice to boot.
I adored how the girls rooms were coming together. We decided to hang the round mango wood mirrors (shown in the family room image above) on the wall across from the beds to capture the view. That way the girls will have a view of the lake from almost every angle.
The main eating area in the house is not yet complete. We have an ‘L’ shaped built-in banquette to be installed against the wall with a wide striped sunbrella fabric for the seat cushion and several fabulous pillows we ordered from Etsy that were lost in the abyss of the Canada Post strike. I was so hoping we would have had more to show you here!
A collage of kids artwork will hang over the banquette and as you can see we planned the placement of the art with kraft paper for ease of hanging after I left.
As the sun was setting on our day I quickly grabbed a shot of the outdoor deck. Such a spectacular view of the Cascade Mountain Range.
Working together with my client on achieving the perfect summer getaway for their family has been so incredibly fun. It’s what really makes me love what I do.
There is still lots to do here at the Lake House however I’m so pleased with how everything has come together, especially considering this is the first time I have been in the home. So much can be done from a distance yet it’s very gratifying to be able see it all come together in person.
I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peak into one of my projects. And as always thanks for stopping by!
Nyla
A while back I blogged about embarking on the design of our bedroom. It was high time we had a grown up space to call our own. No more books and lamps on the floor, no more bedding that will ‘do for now’, and for Pete’s sake my windows were desperate for some attention.
So where did I begin? Well first I gave myself a deadline. This deadline was a little more serious than others as I decided to include it in one of my Reality Check columns for Dabble Mag. Better get a move on!
I originally started with images that I thought closely resembled what I wanted the room to look and feel like. This is a very important process that I encourage clients to do. If you’d like to see the images I chose you can pop over to my ‘new bedroom‘ post.
The wallpaper was the jumping off point. I have to admit I did start this process full steam ahead a few years ago and then stalled out completely. Shuffling beds around the house meant we needed a new one and we decided on king size. A king bed resulted in the need for all new bedding, and this is where I came to a full stop.
After giving myself a deadline it seemed as though the decisions came easy after that, although my husband may beg to differ. I would say that my creative juices started flowing after the purchase of my vintage spaghetti, spun fiberglass swag lamps from Wonders on Wonderland antique shop in Nashville TN. They are the jewels of the room.
Drapery and bedside tables were high on the priority list. I wanted to fill the wall so I opted for tables that were larger than most. With hanging lamps this afforded me the full surface of the tables for functional display. Our wall of windows is over 12′ long so drapery is a key element in the room. To create impact with subtlety I chose a muted mauve textured fabric in a floor to ceiling ripple fold treatment.
Lastly, yet arguably most important was the bedding. With the floral wallpaper as my focal point I chose simple bedding in a dark, charcoal cotton sateen. Patterned sheets were a must for me and I accented with a rich plum velvet in the euro shams and patterned accent cushion.
We have a large bedroom and ample room was left at the foot of the bed begging for more furniture. I originally thought of a sofa, however after spotting these corner chairs I knew they were perfect. I adore the stitched paisley fabric and how well they mix with the other patterns and textures.
If you’ve read the current issue of Dabble Mag this may be familiar to you already…..
What’s a photo shoot without a little drama? Electricians were installing the light fixtures about a 1/2 hour before the photo shoot began. I’m sure you didn’t stop by to see images of men at work and an installation in progress now did you?
So here you go…the reveal of my bedroom. Finally, a grown up space!
Our bedroom is very different than what I originally set out to achieve, but I’m so pleased with the end result. Who knew I would ever own swag lamps?? With a sophisticated, relaxed elegance, this is just the right mix of colour, pattern and texture for our bedroom. We’ve since added a piece of art on the right hand wall and we are still on the lookout for a dresser/storage unit.
To learn more about choosing bedding, please head on over to the May/June issue of Dabble Mag and flip to page 65. You can also watch the bedding video on the Dabble website.
Sources:
Wallpaper: Designers Guild, Bed: Crate and Barrel, Bedside Tables: Elte, Bedding: Cushy Life, Chairs: Domaine, Drapery: through Nyla Free Designs, Area Carpet: through Nyla Free Designs, Throw: Pottery Barn, Her shoes: Cole Haan, His shoes: Nike, Man Bag: Vintage :)
Photography by the talented Lori Andrews.
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