Hunter Douglas Wireless Wall Switches

By: Andrea Schuch

Fresh out of the Hunter Douglas PowerRise seminar held on Tuesday in Itasca, I am so excited about the wireless wall switch. Get the look of hard-wiring with the price of battery power! This switch is almost the same price as the PowerRise remote but - you can mount it on the wall in a light switch sized hole for flush mount or not with a slim profile. The best part - YOU CAN'T LOOSE IT! If your house is anything like mine, remotes walk away all the time, With this being attached to the wall, you always know where it is. There are, of course, a few great options on the wall switch that are not on the remote as well like it's memory. You can operate two shade groups at once, then walk away and when you come back the switch will remember which groups you operated (this will come in handy if you are only operating a few groups all the time). Also, you can select multiple groups to raise and lower instead of doing one at a time. Definately a MUST HAVE for all your PowerRise customers!

Fall Trends 2010

By: Shannon Higgs

With this summer season fading very quickly it’s time to start thinking about fall and all the new trends that come along with it! There are many new things to focus on this season but I decided to just cover a few including window treatments and fabric. Fabricut is coming out with new prints this season that are more graphic and the prints are on a larger scale. There will also be brighter colors and combos of blue, red and orange together that will make a bold, yet relaxing statement. Being “green” is something that is continuously getting more and more popular and Fabricut has come out with the new Crypton Color Studio upholstery books which are made of all “green” materials. These fabrics are made of recycled polyester and contain no harmful chemicals or metals in the finishing process. All of these fabrics will be high performance and easy to clean.


Crypton fabric above

Because these materials are “green” that does not take away from the beauty of the fabric but enhances it, all of these materials are very elegant and soft. Fabricut has also come out with new trims including the Cosmopolitan collection. This collection has a great color palate and they give a much cleaner look, the cord is also much smaller and that is something that designers are always asking for.

Moving on to window treatments, Hunter Douglas has many new items launching this season including new Design Studio Roman Shades, Designer Roller Shades and NewStyle Hybrid Shutters. The Design Studio Roman shades will only be offered at the Gallery and Showcase dealers. These will come in four shade styles; batten front, batten back, flat and hobble and this will offer 320 color and fabric combinations. Valances are also available with the Roman Shades but they can stand alone as well. When considering these shades keep in mind no vertical seams up to 96” wide, linings will be a minimum of 103” wide and all fabrics, trims, linings and tapes will be offered by the yard. Also, the Designer Roller Shades, Designer Screen Shades and Alustra Woven Texture Roller Shades will be offered with the Hunter Douglas PowerRise 2.0 Platinum Technology. This technology will provide a battery operated shade and there will be twelve new fabric styles to the Harmony program for the Roller and Skyline products. NewStyle Hybrid Shutters look like a freshly painted wood shutter that also have the strength and stability of advanced modern day materials. For these shutters there is also a new UltraGrain finish that replicates the color and texture of real stained wood. The new colors include Golden Oak, Warm Cherry, Amaretto and Bahama Brown.

NewStyle Hybrid Shutters above

Repurposing Furniture

By: Andrea Schuch

Sometimes to get your client to spend on that great piece that will make the room, you need to help them figure out what to do with the furniture that is currently in the room – and they don’t always want to get rid of it.

I just experienced this with my own home. I shampooed the carpets in my downstairs a few weeks ago and to do so, I moved everything out of the rooms and into the kitchen for a brand new start! Of course, as a designer, as soon as I started doing this I began thinking about where I could move things. I have a very small house and with that come very small rooms. I have been very grateful for some hand-me-down pieces for the dining room. Since the dining table is so large, I have hated having even just the buffet in the dining room since we moved in two years ago. With all the furniture in the kitchen, now was my chance to change the layout. I decided to use the buffet as a sofa table behind the sofa in the living room. This made the space so much easier to use (along with a few other changes) and I received many complements when I hosted family over this past weekend. With these successful changes, my mind starts racing on what else I can do…

Turns out, repurposing furniture pieces is huge in the blogs lately, with articles written on Decorology http://decorology.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-furniture-repurposing-ideas.html and She Knows http://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/814405/guide-to-repurposing-furniture-1. You can find ideas on these sites for using cabinet doors for trays or doors for headboards. It is really something designers have done for years – think about how many sofas have been reupholstered and tables refinished to match a new décor. I also refinished my childhood day bed a year ago to go in my Cape Cod style guest room. There’s even a blog dedicated to making IKEA furniture into one-of-a-kind pieces – IKEA Hacker http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/. All these sites are also great for ideas of how to use a client’s existing furniture for something you may not have thought of before – like chicken coops for a French-country kitchen storage look.

There’s always the piece that client’s do need to get rid of (hopefully that they’re replacing with some magnificent piece you’re selling them). There are plenty of things to do with that also – besides the trash. Assuming the piece is in usable condition there are websites like Craigslist www.craigslist.org and Freecycle www.freecycle.com where pieces can be sold or given to others at no charge. Goodwill is also an option, when you do donate to a charity you can use the donation receipt to write off on your taxes.

In the end, if your client sees you are trying to help her in areas where she may not want to spend a ton of money, she tends to trust you more on those great splurges!