Inspiring Blog Award – Interior Design

Posted: 26 March, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Companies, contemporary interiors, Environmental, Fabric Tips, home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, Market Comment, modern homes, modern interiors, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Inspiring Blog 2013

Interior Design 2013

A big thank you to Kiki for our nomination for the Inspiring Blog Award. It’s always great to know that we are reaching out to new generations of Interior Designers.

Following the rules of this award I have to tell you a little bit about myself.

1. Many years ago I danced with Brad Pitt. Well; I was in the same nightclub and I sort of manoeuvred myself into his general vicinity. That counts right?

2. One of my scariest moments is travelling at over 230kmh in a sports car. I wasn’t driving (luckily someone else was) and you will be relieved to know that we were on a race track.

3. I inadvertently inherited a collection of 1980s vinyl ‘LP’ covers. After years of sitting in a box I discovered that when framed then made a great art installation next to my work area at home.

4. The first paint I chose was for my own bedroom .Dark green. Hmmm.

5. I like people, dogs and cats. In that order.

6. Most interesting party venues: On a roof top in Manhattan and some bizarre, mostly uninhabited, island somewhere near Comodo that even now I can’t quite remember the name of.

7. Most stupid question, “Do you like chocolate?”

Inspirational Blogs (I’d like to nominate!): Here are some that I enjoy:

Pippa Jameson

Kelly Hoppen

The Style Files

Anne Sage

Design Geek

Apartment Therapy

Tevami

There are a few rules to accepting this blog award…

1. Display the award image on your blog page.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you and ‘like’ the post

3. State seven facts about yourself.

4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award.

5. Notify your bloggers of their nomination and link to their posts.

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Pink Linen For Upholstery & Curtains

Posted: 26 February, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: contemporary interiors, Curtain Fabric, Domestic Fabric, home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, Market Comment, modern homes, modern interiors | Leave a comment »

LinenPinksPink linen is a rather rare and unusual flower. Not often specified in your average interior designer’s scheme. I found this scan that we had emailed someone recently for the client to choose for some curtains. We were even able to introduce different pinks into the warp and weft of the linen for an unusual effect. (We can do that with most of our linen colours).

Anyway, I just thought the pink linen image looked nice and I wanted to share it with you!

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Silk Velvet – What makes a great upholstery velvet

Posted: 22 February, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic Fabric, Fabric Tips, home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, modern homes, modern interiors, Upholstery, Upholstery Fabric | Tags: , , | Leave a comment »
Decorex Logo

Silk Velvet Upholstery with Fine Italian Silk

Silk Velvet really is one of the great upholstery velvets. It looks great, it feels great and it can be up to the job if your upholstery velvet is chosen wisely.

If your last and only experience of a velvet was sitting on one in the cinema then you really haven’t lived!

Firstly let’s look at silk velvet’s suitability for upholstery. It can have a Martindale Rub Test result of over 20,000 – so it CAN be readily suitable for many upholstery uses.

Composition. Just because it is sold as 100% silk can be misleading and not necessarily relevant. Is this 90% silk velvet better than that 100% silk velvet? You just can’t answer that by simply looking at the composition.

A silk velvet that is sold as being 100% silk may in fact be a 100% silk velvet pile and 100% cotton backcloth. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. If it is the look and feel of the silk that you are looking for then maybe it’s best to just consider the pile (assuming the backcloth is up to the job of course). One of our fine silk velvets has a 100% pile and then a backcloth of silk and cotton – with the cotton being added for strength and the overall silk content being 90%. Compare this to our Italian Silk & Cashmere Velvet which has a 70% silk + 30% cashmere pile.

Next look at the silkiness or the shininess. If you are looking for a silk velvet you will usually want a shine.

Consider too the length of the pile. Again, there is nothing inherently good or bad about a long or short pile. A shorter pile may be more rigid and upright and that could be a characteristic that you are looking for. Alternatively a longer pile will probably lay better in one directions – and you may well want that characteristic.

The weight of the fabric in grams per metre is often used as a measure of quality. That is not always true and could, for example, easily be distorted by a heavy and poor quality backcloth.

My personal preference would be to get my hand on a sample; feel it and look at it. What I look for and prefer is a slightly more rigid and consistent pile with a very dense weave. I would look carefully at the country of manufacture. I prefer an Italian velvet (mainly because it sounds better!) but if not Italian then I would certainly only consider a velvet produced in mainland western Europe. But don’t copy me, have the confidence to choose what you like – you are going to have to live with it. I would now choose my upholsterer carefully; many years ago a velvet covered chair came back for me from a local upholsterer and the pile was not running in a consistent direction…it didn’t look great (read ‘awful’). So don’t, like me, assume that all upholsters know what they are doing with velvets, they patently don’t all know. I would then read our guide to upholstering with velvet – a designer’s worksheet and armed with a bit of knowledge quiz your upholsterer carefully.

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Who is the best interior designer in London?

Posted: 22 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: contemporary interiors, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment »
London

London (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I was wondering just “Who is the best interior designer in London?”. I recently wrote about who was the best interior designer in the world and got some rather unexpected results.

You could, and of course probably did, do that same Google search to find London’s “best interior designer”, just like you’ve probably also googled your own name at some point.

And yet here you are.

Maybe you are one of those top interior designers wondering why your name didn’t appear on Google’s first page like Blanchard, Helen Green, Tollgard and Robin Moore Ede did?

Is it really important? For example I’m writing this in 2013 and Victoria and David Beckham have just, apparently, commissioned Kelly Hoppen to do their London pad. Do you think they did that Google search? Probably not, in fact certainly not, as I am sure they were influenced by many other factors. So even if you target ‘rich people’ then you might argue that your target market will never make that search.

Maybe.

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

I bet some of them do though. I bet some of those responsible for recent influxes of property investment in recent years do as they are based out of London. Perhaps they did have one or two recommendations but perhaps they also wanted a few new faces to present fresh ideas. & you weren’t on that list!

So how do you get on that list? Well this blog page probably did get on or near the top of that list. So you might wonder why? Well if you look at the first paragraph you will see that I use ‘who is the best interior designer in London’ near the start of my article (google likes that) Oooh and look I’ve just included it again in the previous sentence. Google likes that too. But I will stop putting it in as if you do it too many times Google does NOT like that. & now take a look at the title, the name of the page and the excerpt…do you see a pattern emerging? :-)

So the lesson is that you actually have to put the words into your website that people might type (keywords). That’s an art in itself. Covered elsewhere on this blog. Of course now you know the trick you will all do it and I will get bumped further and further down the listing…giving me a reason / excuse for not being on the first page when you finally get around to reading this!

Then of course you actually have to have a good website and I ‘m sure you’ll agree that those companies that come up do have amazing looking websites. We deal with some of them and they certainly ARE at least amongst the very best designers in Europe, let alone London. And yet if you have the time to check their technical google ranking or ‘pagerank’ (I’ve done it for you!) you will find that most are 3 or 4; which is not so great. Certainly no higher than this blog. So you DON’T have to have a really high pageranking to get on that first page. You  have to have the right content (as well as an OK pagerank).

Now here’s how you can cheat. Search instead for a generic “interior designer in London“. Different results. And you will see that maybe your adwords advert for those keywords appears on the right hand side (you don’t use adwords? why not?). You will maybe also see that you need to have a google business/places listing to get put there as well a perhaps a listing in Yell.

So you can cheat by paying for a position on the ads on the right hand side. It might cost you a bit though. And if you get a lot of ad clicks then google will promote you to the ads at the top of the search (because your ad generates more revenue for them). And you will see that those ads at the top don’t always look like ads and they kind of blend into the normal search results. And people kind of think that they are the first results of the search…and click them. Good clicks if you can get them maybe?

Maybe a listing in Yell is a good idea and getting a Google Places/Business listing IS DEFINITELY a good idea.

So who is the Best Interior Designer in London? Well Google’s first page for that search shows designfinder.co.uk and there listing says that www.forsterinc.co.uk are the best designers…so it must be true.

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How to create a BAD (digital) first Impression? For Interior Designer

Posted: 22 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, modern homes, modern interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments »
Editions|Artists’ Book Fair

Editions|Artists’ Book Fair (Photo credit: j-No)

9 Ways for interior designers to create a bad impression – digitally of course!

When you first present to your newest prospect I’m pretty sure that you will be wearing your best ‘business’ clothes. When you first speak to a new client I’m sure you will make a real effort to do your best. When you send out a brochure or some other paper based literature I’m sure you will have it looking good. Hopefully too you take first emails seriously. And yes I’m sure your website looks great as well.

So all is hunky dory right? you can stop reading now and move on :-)

Well firstly, before I get into the meat of the subject matter that drew you here, I suggest that one exercise you can do on a Friday afternoon is to write down EVERY single TYPE of point of contact that you make with clients. I’ve gone through a few of them in the opening to this post. No rocket science there. However what I suggest you do is really think if they all present a coherent view, when taken together, of you and your business. Do they look similar enough and do they say similar things and present similar images?

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Just like that fine evening wear you have to impress on really special occasions and turn heads as you walk in the room all these points of contact between your business and your potential client are the same thing FOR YOUR BUSINESS (business? you know that thing that pays for the evening wear).

Well I’m going to talk a little about how to create a BAD digital first impression focussing on your website. So You need to look at the first page that people most often go to. In techie terms these are ‘landing pages’; they might include your home page or any special page that Google Adwords points to on your site or any page of yours that ranks particularly highly and get a lot of ‘hits’.

So to create  a BAD first impression here’s what your landing pages need to do:

  1. No Graphics: No logo, no head-shot of a smiley-you and certainly NOT clickable.
  2. Poor Content: Be sure to include waffle and irrelevance to the reason that drew the click..
  3. Lots of words and certainly no Bullet Points as bullet points are too easy to read.
  4. No Call to Action – an even better bad impression can be created if you make it as obscure as possible for the visitor to know what to do next. Perhaps presenting a beautiful image but making it as annoying as possible by adding some music and not making it obvious how to proceed to ANYWHERE else – Designers’ websites are OFTEN like this!
  5. White Papers, Videos, Registrations, etc: OK you might have accidentally put some of these on your website to be helpful but you can soon change any good impression that that might make by giving them away without even getting the visitor’s email.
  6. Confirmation/Thank You Pages: How rude! you forgot to add one of these and to make matters worse it didn’t offer the visitor another idea of what they could do on your site.
  7. Testing changes you make might improve a visitor’s experience to your site. So you certainly don’t want to do that..
  8. Google: create a bad impression with google as well. Ideally you will name your pages PAGE01, PAGE02 and so on. Never include keywords in the name of a page as that might help Mr Google do his job.
  9. Speling mstakes. Sme ppl really hate splling mistakes and abbreviations. Include a few to enrich their day.
  10. Always fail to deliver. Like by having 10 reasons rather than the advertised 9 reasons. Laugh! We might but our client’s probably won’t.

Am I perfect? No! Do I make these mistakes? Yes of course. It does provide some food for thought though.

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Faux Leather Martindale Test – What does it look like

Posted: 11 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Contract Fabric, Fabric Design, Production & Details, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, Panelling & Wallcovering | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Ever wondered what a Martindale rub test looks like?

 

We’ve already shown a video of this <here> however of some additional interest might be the following faux leather samples that recently came back to us from the Martindale testing laboratory.

Faux Leather After Martindale Rub Test

Faux Leather After Martindale Rub Test

 

So the link (above) shows you the machine in action and the image above shows you the circular cuttings taken of the fabric that have been rubbed, in this case, 200,000 times. As you can see this excellent performance faux leather of ours lasted WELL above the industry ‘norm’ of 100,000.

 

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Design Revolution 2013: Interior Designers Work Smart

Posted: 10 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

Source: Marketo

2013: Finally it’s here. Will it be a lucky year or an unlucky 13-based year?

I suspect that the number of the year will make zero difference to how well you do. You might get a stroke or two of good luck but I would strongly suspect that your actions might put you in better positions where ‘luck’ is more likely to go your way.

Being MORE creative might make you luckier. I also suspect that the creativity you already have is a ‘given’ amount. So what we need to do is work a bit smarter to get that darned creativity out of you.

On the right is a neat infographic from a company called Marketo (click the image to enlarge it). It’s tongue-in-cheek and gives 7 ways for you to waste time. Just in case you are having a sense of humour crisis today…YOU NEED TO DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE DIAGRAM SAYS :-)

Going through some of their points

  1. Set your email to only check for new emails every hour not every 5 minutes. Better still just only manually send and receive emails.
  2. Tidy desk = tidy mind (note to self: work required here!)
  3. Get a comfy chair and work in front of you not at an angle. Sit properly.
  4. Multi-tasking is the art of doing more than one thing BADLY. Men and women both think they are brilliant if they are multi-taskers. Hint: you’re not. Do one thing, do it well and move on.
  5. Turn off electronic alerts that distract you (similar to #1)
  6. Be unsociable and get back to work!
  7. Put ‘rationalise to-do list’ as first thing on ‘to-do’ list

good luck

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Fine Faux Leather Upholstery – New Contract Fabrics With High Abrasion Martindale

Posted: 8 January, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Contract Fabric, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, Panelling & Wallcovering | Tags: , , | 5 Comments »

Fine Faux Leather Blue Upholstery Contract UsageUpholstery Faux Leathers are one of our many collections being revamped in 2013. We have introduced a new faux leather with a Martindale Rub test score exceeding 200,000. This is one of the highest available in the UK.

It still looks great and also has the added comfort factor of the interior designer knowing that it can be a worry-free product to spec for even demanding contract environments. Providing that it is correctly upholstered and specified it will withstand very significant amounts of abrasion.

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Interior Designers – How Good Is Your Brand’s Colour?

Posted: 18 December, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments »
Source: Marketo

Source: Marketo

Colour (color) really does matter. As an interior designer you don’t need me to tell you that. I think sometimes though we know what good colours are and what good colour combinations are and we know what feels right to us and to our clients in the spaces we inhabit.

However…

Many of us are not graphic designers and perhaps our own branding may have suffered because of colour choices we would make in our day job.

Apparently if you look more closely at the infographic on the right then you will see that their research shows that more than 90% of the world’s top 100 brands use either red, blue or grey as the primary branding colour and more than 90% of those same companies use at most 2 colours. So there’s very much a ‘keep it simple’ line coming out for brand colours. No big surprise there I suppose.

41% only use text – so that will be the brand name and/or ‘strap line’ ie there will probably be no logo as such.

Colours considered suitable for companies in ‘the home’ are green and yellow. This doesn’t necessarily apply to the colour YOU should have for your branding as an interior designer.

Indeed their research shows that ORANGE & BROWN are questionable colours for companies in the interiors space. With our Pantone 464 I suppose we fall foul of that.

Then again it is interesting to read that people associate ‘vibrant and fun’ with Orange. It is also interesting to read that the colour is the first thing that potential clients perceive about your brand.

Yet the safest choice appears to be shades of grey. If we all had grey houses and grey business and grey clothes I guess the world would necessarily be a greyer place. And I’m not sure it would be a better place for that.

Summary: Conform or stand out. It’s up to you. You can probably make most colours work as a brand but maybe a myriad of colours won’t work. Is this all stating the obvious?

 

 

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Interior Designers: Must Blog Better – But How?

Posted: 11 December, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: home decor, interior, interior design, interior designer, interiordesign, interiors, modern homes, modern interiors, The Business Of Interior Design | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »
Content Mix: Content Marketing Institute

Content Mix: Content Marketing Institute

The content Marketing Institute created that nice little image up there that  shows what a content mix might be.

This image has been bandied about on various websites as THE correct mix. It isn’t THE correct mix but it’s a good starter to make you think. It might make you think you are entertaining your potential clients too much or it might make you think you are being a bit boring talking about kitchen worksurfaces a little too much.

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

For a start it’s saying that you should blog 6 times a week or at least create content 6 times a week. For small businesses that just ain’t gonna happen in the real world.

However it certainly DOES give you ideas about what to write next.

Provide relevant information: Perhaps contribute to a thread somewhere telling people about some of the great things you learnt with a particular product on your last project.

Teach: Show you really know what you are talking about. Share some knowledge in an authoritative way on how you do your job.

Start a conversation: Perhaps on a LinkedIn group or your Facebook business page.

Inspire: others to do better. This could be on a forum or your could write something.

Entertain: Never hurts to make someone laugh.

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