…and nooks, and recesses and any other small, odd areas that lurk around the edges of your primary Interior environment, begging for attention as compatible linkage and connectors.
Homes and Business Interiors alike can have one or more odd configurations. Older buildings tend to have more anomalies — reflecting some obsolete accommodation. (What Interior designer has not encountered — sooner or later —- small Interior architectural configurations where the original need, purpose or rationale may forever remain a mystery?) Sometimes, we may speculate, the original intent might have had to do with some specific personal need — rather than a fad or trend of the time.
When an Interior design team encounters such situations as part of the business or residential Interior spaces inventory, the easy road may be just to board it up and pretend it doesn’t exist, rip it out as part of the demo or try to ignore it. Old Victorian residences are famous for such surprise “nooks and crannies.” Frustration sometimes obscures real micro-opportunities for innovative Interior design solutions.
Finding design solutions for what we can simply call “odd spaces” is quite different than creative answers for essential spaces that aren’t usually considered places to linger — such as stair landings, hallways, vestibules and the like.
Essential areas where we simply get from-here-to-there have come into their own as promising areas for expanded use and purpose. Everything from limited shelving to aquariums, bird cages, art or photography collections or secluded reading, can enhance those areas where we might otherwise just pass through. An uninteresting enclosed stairway doesn’t have to feel like a dim tunnel just to get you from here to there. Color, lighting and creative use of wall space can change that travel experience, and, more importantly, provide pleasant, harmonious and beautiful connective design to the adjacent areas.
Your professional Interior designer keeps “balanced and harmonious connection” in mind as a high priority when composing the Interior design of the primary Interior areas.
Few things can defeat good overall design goals more easily than having no “design continuity” for the transitions from one area to its adjacent areas, then, to its succeeding adjacent areas.
An unexpected benefit of revisiting such areas and considering augmentation of their primary use and purpose is the enhancement of the areas to which they connect. For instance, an entryway (vestibule) with exciting new and innovative Interior design treatment automatically changes the perception of the area it leads to. Likewise, a “landing” at the turn or midpoint of an enclosed stairway can be just and only that, or it can be converted, say, into a small adventure showcasing collections, or possibly a planted window bubble.
Taking a new perspective on the underappreciated, unenhanced transitional areas of your home or business Interiors can be surprising and uplifting. It lives and improves whatever it adjoins.
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer (CID) in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
