Take on the Trends

By Resident Expert

by Kara Battinelli

Does the soft real estate market mean that rather than selling you'll wind up staying in your home in 2008? Not all is lost: staying put gives you the license to update, renovate, and create an interior that's more comfortable and will show better once the market improves.

One way to do that is to gently interpret major trends so that redecorating projects enhance your investment. Adopting elements of the latest design trends can change feeling stuck in your home into feeling inspired by it. Here are five to consider:

1. Go green. Political forces may be putting the environment into the headlines, but design pros are quite successfully putting it into the home. Americans continue to show more and more interest in using natural materials, especially in kitchens and bathrooms, especially now that new varnishes and recent technologies have made treated wood virtually impervious to water spillage and steam.

2. Color chic. U.S. fabric importers say the hot color out of Italy (and yes, anything Italian—as in the 1960s—is hip again) are yellows and blues (and more blues!), especially in fabric and wallpaper, as well as blues mixed with warm sands and camels. Once again, ecological motivations have a role in popularizing nature’s shades, such as greens and warm browns. Mary Gilliatt, international design author and exclusive design advisor to Decor&You in the U.S., thinks of color trends as more useful for retailers than homeowners, because nothing dates as quickly as last year’s hues. To be momentarily fashionable where you live, however, Gilliatt advises focusing trendy color in accessories such as pillows, throws, or even lamp bases, which can easily (and comparatively inexpensively) be replaced when the trends change again next year.

3. Simple with style. The pendulum of design predictably has swung from simple to more detailed and then to even more elaborate still before returning to simple styles. We’ve seen this again and again over the centuries, from the Greek orders on (remember learning about those simple Doric columns being replaced by those elegantly refined Ionic columns, and then by the rather fussy Corinthian variety?). Minimalism is slowly evolving to a more decorative—as opposed to decorated—look, so that very often even the most rigorously contemporary rooms have at least one decorative piece of furniture or fanciful accessory.

4. Wow wallcoverings. Wallpapers began a renaissance in 2007, and this year they’re back in force. But this isn’t your grandmother’s wallpaper; it’s way more refined. New textured papers satisfy like a Venetian plaster or sandwash and, properly installed, they’re kinder on sheetrock. More Westchester homes are having fun with patterned papers in bathrooms and laundry rooms. One White Plains couple carried the serene palette of a beige-and-white bedroom into the master bath, but stacked on personality with a glass block-patterned wallpaper. Another client who’s notably dedicated to contemporary looks recently called to ask for wallpaper in her bedroom; and we knew the floodgates were opening.

5. Go retro. Almost all current 'new' furniture looks are based on retro designs with endless variations on the Modern Movement that first saw the light of day at the end of the 19th century. In October, Gillatt toured the ‘Moderne’ Design Exhibition at the Park Lane Armory in New York City, which featured many famous originals dating from the 1860s to the 1980s. She noted that the glossy lacquered French designs of the 1940s and ’50s are sure to surge back during the next few years, along with a continuation of the Art Deco designs she says were "so rudely interrupted by World War II."

Wallcoverings with the added luxe of metallic sheen take a simple room to a stylish one.

Wallpaper is a back in a big way, especially when done in materials with an eco-friendly feel.

Blues are hot for 2008.

Kara Battinelli is a professional interior decorator with the Baldwin Place-based studio of Decor&You, a national interior-decorating franchise that offers personalized service with a complete line of custom furniture, window and wall coverings, art, and accessories for all budgets. During the past six years, Battinelli, who teaches business and decorating classes at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, and her team of seven interior decorators have worked with hundreds of area homeowners and businesses in the Lower Hudson Valley. For more information, call (914) 302-2083.

Photographs by Gardner Loop Photography