I am a gadget person. I am always picking up the latest technical doo-dad and enjoy incorporating them into my life. As a designer, I enjoy providing my clients with unique ways of incorporating the newest devices into their daily lives and homes, too. In addition to this, a significant portion of my design business comes from floral arrangements. And as a designer with a business that focuses on residential remodeling, I design a significant number of living rooms, family rooms, “man caves,” home offices and master-bedrooms. So over the years, my designs have combined my floral arrangement skills with my space planning skills. In the process, I’ve developed a niche for creating design plans that can incorporate a home entertainment system into just about any room in your home or small-business office.
Space Planning Challenges in the Information Age
I am constantly faced with the challenge of developing functional spacial plans that embrace the new smart TVs, printers, scanners and idevices in our lives. Who wants unsightly cords strewn all over the place? If the project is not a remodeling project, the desired placement of a certain electronic component may not be close to an outlet. Many people are mounting their flat-screen TVs in the middle of their walls only to find the outlet is in the corner. Cords, and how to hide them, are a constant challenge.
Relationships Create the Tone
In order to create the “tone” for your design, it is necessary to establish a relationship among the various dimensions of your room. This can be done by repeating a common element such as a certain color, or a motif such as a hound’s tooth or wood-grain pattern, throughout your design.
A Floral Arrangement Provides A Focal Point and Sets The Tone
A floral arrangement is a great way of providing a focal point and setting the tone. A floral arrangement is also a great way to overcome many of the challenges of space planning for electronics. A strategically placed floral arrangement can provide a pleasant focal point that transitions the eye away from sharp corners or unsightly elements of a room while adding a sense of comfort and familiarity.
Silk or Live Natural Foliage?
Of course, this is a matter of taste and preference, as there are benefits to both. Silk lasts longer, requires less to maintain and is easy to manipulate; whereas, it’s tough to beat the beauty and vibrancy of natural plants. A combination of silk and natural foliage works well for me. I often will intermingle dried natural plants and flowers with silk foliage with great success.
Finishing Touches are Important!
In interior design, finishing touches often go “unseen,” as it is a project’s “unfinishedness” that makes its blemishes stand out. Perhaps this is why these touches are the most important — they unify a room, they smooth the blemishes, creating a cohesive design. Floral arrangements, if placed properly, are a great way to provide those finishing touches; they are the common elements that tie your design together.
Whether you chose silk, go with natural or land somewhere in between with a combination of both, floral arrangements can provide the elegant finishing touches that not only tie your design together, but can also hide those unsightly cables.
Enjoy creating the finishing touches in your favorite room!
Recent Examples
Here are two recent examples where I used floral arrangements as finishing touches to strategically hide electrical cords.