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 first article is about patterns.
Ask a London schoolgirl to imagine natural patterns, and she may talk at length of curvaceous seashells, the undulating edge of waves on the shore, the grooves in a gnarled tree trunk. Interior designers know that patterns are all around us. Patterns profoundly influence all interior design schemes, transforming our appreciation of color and texture, adding fluctuations and drifts or promoting harmony and stillness. London Interior Designers will focus on soft, fluid outlines in order to create relaxing patterns. By contrast, bold graphic statements in a wallpaper stencil can be invigorating for a London discotheque or salon. Pattern is a foundational ingredient of interior design, fragmenting overwhelming shapes and plain surfaces while simultaneously lending personality and profundity to a room.
London’s professional interior designers know one big secret: pattern is created not only by fabric and wallpaper. Light also forms any number of patterns through a virtual tussle or rough-and-tumble interaction between light and shadow. Light patterns are foundational to interior design schemes – from snippeted, kinetic and frosted patterns to curvy arcs, spearhead-style lines and theatrical projections of abstract forms.
Patterns of light fall into two main interior design categories. The first is all about objects in the path of light, casting shadows. We draw our inspiration from the natural world where, when sunlight strikes rippling water on London’s famous River Thames, flickering patterns are reflected up into the trees along the water’s edge. Similarly, if an artificial light source is directed onto water – perhaps a pool, fountain or babbling artificial brook – active reflections will dapple the surrounding walls and become an interior design feature. Sunlight may shine through the branches of a tree to create moving patterns of light and shade below, and similarly a low-voltage uplight, positioned behind indoor plants, can create beautiful interior design features on the walls and ceilings. This technique can be stunning both inside and outside the building.
In my next article, I turn to patterns that use perforations and glass.
Posts Tagged ‘Understanding’
Colour Me Brightly! Understanding Light in Interior Design. Part I: Introducing Patterns of Light
Tuesday, July 12th, 2011Understanding Type of Home Insurance is Very Important
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010Home insurance is a type of protective cover that helps to ease the financial implications involved with the loss, theft, or damage of your belongings and the damage of your actual home, and can be broken down into two parts, buildings insurance and contents insurance. It is too important to not have a full understanding of it. It is an insurance policy that protects your home structure and property, and is divided into two sections, namely the building home insurance which covers the structural building and content home insurance, which only covers the contents of your home listed in the contract.
Home insurance is not compulsory, but is highly recommended, as the cost of home repairs can be very high if a serious issue is encountered, and because most of an individual’s belongings are held within their home. It is your way of protecting this asset, and is an easy product to buy.
Home insurance is often sold on a large scale under the rubric of property insurance. It is expected to increase by only 2.5 percent, the smallest increase in six years, and is needed to provide for the cost to rebuild or replace damage to the home. It is a great way of getting coverage for the damages of your home in the events of natural calamity and other accidental occurrences.
Home insurance is aspect to be taken into consideration, and comprises buildings insurance cover and contents cover, and these can be taken as a bundle or can be taken separately if you prefer or in the event that you only need contents cover. It is, essentially, there to give you peace of mind and put you back in the same financial position prior to any unfortunate occurrences. It is the easiest and the most popular way to protect your most cherished asset, your home, from any untoward incident.
Homeowners can purchase home insurance online with relative ease. Whether a homeowner is concerned with getting the right coverage for personal property or they are looking for liability protection; whether a homeowner is looking to insure a home, a mobile home, a condominium or a rental, there are home insurance providers willing to work with new customers via the Internet.
Home insurance is like imperative for the protection of your home. It is very inexpensive and available from many different sources when you shop over the Internet. It is an insurance policy that covers your house, the garage, other related structures, and also personal possessions inside the home against damages caused by everything from fire to natural disasters and even theft.
Colour Me Brightly! Understanding Light in Interior Design. Part III: Patterns from Opaque Materials
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010Professional 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 third article talks about how to create patterns using opaque materials.
The second way for an interior designer to create light-based patterns involves opaque surfaces, which reflect light back into a room. This pattern creation process is more sophisticated and can be fine-tuned for stunning interior design effects. Light portrayals impact how we understand a surface and its texture. For example, the “standard” technique often seen in London residences simply involves casting a gentle play of light across a wall. The light brushes the fittings, causing the wall to appear even, flat and two-dimensional. Some top London Interior Designers know that their clients crave more drama and stylistic nuance. In such cases, placing lightwell fillings very close to the wall and angling them downwards can be really striking. Using this technique, interior design consultancies can transform the previous gentle wave into an enunciated designer style, as the photons shave the surface and build to form sturdy optical patterns, including top-level arcs and dramatic textures. A sharper, more laser-like focus will only make the pattern more conspicuous – recreating a look that is popular in many trendy London nightclubs.
The direct counterpoint to this interior design technique involves the use of close-offset uplighting. With this approach, floor-level filaments cause the eye to move up vertical columns of light which dance across the wall to form puddles of dappled reflected light on the ceiling. Professional London interior designers often work alongside colour consultants to make sure that the result has practical relevance as well as aesthetic appeal. In particular, some newer London residences often have uncomfortably low ceilings. Interior designers can use this lighting approach to draw attention to the vertical plane of the wall, thereby counterbalancing the hemmed-in feel of the low ceiling.
In the next and final article in this series called “Colour Me Brightly!” I will finish by revealing some top lighting tips from London’s interior design community.