Home Improvement – Real Estate

Tour of the spaceslide factory in the west midlands showing the manufacture of bedroom furniture, wardrobes and sliding glass doors

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create breathtaking results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This second article talks about how to create patterns using illuminated materials.

Any perforated textile, when lit from the back or from the inside, will speckle adjacent forms with pattern, from point strips and pirouettes to constellations and dazzling laser specks. The professional interior designer can use the trim of a window covering to create fabulous banding across a shiny floor covering in the London summer. Some interior design firms love to use ornamental metal lanterns to paint fiery asteroids on walls and furniture, while light projected through a sculpted screen can create magnificent abstract outlines in expressive contemporary interior design schemes. A factory-inspired metal stairwell with perforated treads – of the type often reinterpreted for ultra-modern interior design schemes – can throw tiny checkmarks of light onto local furniture when exposed to a bright London sky in springtime. A fabulous option with a wooden staircase would require the interior designer to specify a grit-washed tread, to deliberately throw stunning shadows from the rail onto the adjacent wall. Abstract wire-mesh sculptures by local London artists can engender powerful interior design emotions, with the pattern even becoming more important than the object itself! Interior designers can expressively use perspective to distort the pattern from complete realism, when lit front-on, to Baconesque abstract enchantment when illuminated at an acute angle. The same effect can be created by using mirrors to refocus natural light from bay windows in some of the more luxurious London residences.

Glass is another popular tool for patterns. A frosted glass table can be lit from above with a halogen downlighter to cast intricate outlines of reflected light onto the ceiling, and the interior designer can even use positioning to cause refracted light to splash abstract patterns onto the floor underneath the table. I have seen some London Interior Design consultancies deliberately illuminate trophy-style glassware on display shelves from the front so that the etching on the glass throws deep shadows that recapitulate a core design theme.

In the next (third) article in this series called “Colour Me Brightly!” I will reveal another secret of London’s interior design community: how to create patterns with opaque objects.

A few decades ago, the most popular types of doors were the large, heavy, sturdy medieval-looking wooden doors with great, intricately carved designs all over the beautifully stained wood.

While those doors may still be beautiful, they also create a darker, more foreboding atmosphere for your home, because they do not allow light through and were usually stained in dark colors to create the image of being very old.

However, the modern trend has been toward the lighter and more elegant glass doors because they allow plenty of light to pass from window through door, from room to room.

Glass doors create a lighter, more welcoming atmosphere, and it’s been proven that a well-lit home can improve your mood and allow you to be more productive in general.Thus, glass doors can be a great option for your home and office, if you would like a warmer atmosphere.

There are a variety of designs that can be created on glass doors, just like with wood and its carvings. Glass door design can be very complex or very simplistic yet beautiful—there are many different ways to create wonderful designs on glass.

First is the glass frosting process. Frosting glass via sandblasting will create a translucent, rougher-looking glass door design that can show any number of intricate designs.

If you want more depth in your glass door design, then sandblasting is great because using this method of frosting in several steps, different transparencies can be created in the glass.

Lighter and heavier translucencies are akin to the shading of a piece of artwork, and create a wonderful three dimensional effect.

Another method of glass frosting is through the Leptat acid process, which was first developed by the Czechoslovakians in the World Fair that was in Osaka, Japan.

The Leptat acid process frosts and etches glass much more deeply than does sandblasting; while sandblasting will create a rough sheen over the glass and may look a little plastic-like, the Leptat acid process frosts glass by creating deep crystalline etchings that make the glass look like a cut gem, and causes thousands of glittering lights to reflect off the multifaceted surface.

Leptat etching is truly a beautiful design for your prospective glass door, but the drawback to it is that you cannot shade your pictures using light and dark, unlike in sandblasting.

The final method of glass door design is, of course, stained and colored glass. Stained and colored glass is created using metallic oxides to make colors in the glass; these days, subtly tinted glass can commonly be seen in doors and windows, and creates a beautiful effect on the sunshine.

Stained glass is also more subtle now, with a bit of staining and most of the glass left transparent so that the effect is not so garishly bright. Stained glass can be designed using liquid or semi-solid lead for the outlines, and then soldering pieces of tinted glass together for the stained glass pieces. To create it in your own home, you can use glass paints.