Styles and Trends
by Leslie Fishbein, Kacey Fine Furniture
The watchwords are choice, individualism, and customization. Life's ultimate luxury is to be able to choose your style and the articles you surround yourself with to fit your personality. The ultimate mélange of textures and materials that is available on the market today reflects the customization possible through the advent of technology and globalization. Whether you style is sophisticated luxury or inspired simplicity, rustic charm or old world comfort, crisp and clean modern, or casual elegance, the breath and depth of products available today can help you create your unique vision for your home.
Now, as never before, you are in charge of the color, size and style of the pieces you select. Not only can you custom order your upholstered pieces with your choice of colors and materials, size and shapes, but also, dining room and bedroom pieces are available allowing you to completely customize as never before. From the color and finish to the arrangement of the inside storage of the case piece, you are in charge of making the item fit your specific requirements. Hardware style and finish is also up to the individual's discretion and unique needs on many of the new items introduced for this year.
And if you don't want to entirely customize a piece of furniture, then another new trend is furniture that is up to the job of multi-tasking with multi-purposes built-in to the item. Home fashions have an aesthetic requirement, but also must serve functional purposes to help us streamline our daily tasks and activities. Now we can find furniture that is functional with hidden storage. For example, you can find a chest or dresser with moveable side panels or doors that may hold ties or jewelry. Pieces that can be made to fit in small spaces but can extend when you need something bigger. An example of this is a console or sofa table that flips open and can be used for dining. How about open storage that doubles as a room divider? And what room has more multifunctional requirements than the media center? With the advent of HDTV, Plasma and LCD televisions, media storage with full bar and entertainment functionality is necessary. Media room upholstery with motion and speakers built into the frame bring home entertainment to a new level to enhance your viewing pleasure like never before.
Technology makes it possible to render your room and any pieces you are adding to see exactly what you are creating. With computerized fabric draping programs to on line design tools, you don't have to guess about what something will look like in your home.
Materials for surface appeal reflect global interest and availability. From iron to pewter to zinc to polished steel or copper, nickel or brass, you will find metals a very important design trend to add sparkle to any environment. Wood is painted, multi-colored, distressed, waxed, and inlaid to provide texture and long lasting beauty to any room. Accents are trending toward the use of bone or horn, acrylic or bamboo, beads and jewels inspired from ethnic influences. Leather, animal prints, fur and hair on hide are important textures for home environments that have important stylistic motifs.
Geometric shapes, argyle, lace and eyelet toile, are just a few of the important trends in home textiles.
Inspiration and creativity match with customization and availability to help you create the style that expresses your personality and the home of your dreams.
