Pangaea Interior Design Home Stager - Redesign - Model Homes

Oh we love space! Air above our heads! A roof that requires clearance from the FAA! Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit ... just a bit. But it does feel good to see those soaring heights ... right up until you have to decorate or stage the place. Then what on earth do you put in a place that has 15' ... 17' ... even 23' high ceilings? Well, I have a few tips and suggestions and one or two might surprise you.

The first thing I do when faced with a property that has soaring ceilings is to look for some art that is large enough to take advantage of the great verticle space. If your budget doesn't allow for a large piece of artwork, consider a fabric panel like the orange one below. Marimekko makes fabulous large scale prints that look wonderful hung as art.

The second way to enhance a tall ceiling and add drama is to install a fabulous chandelier. It's like art for your ceiling! Be sure to use a chandelier that is large enough and that provides plenty of light, while reflecting the style of the rest of your furnishings. Photos are of the Foscarini Big Bang Chandelier, and a room by designer, Shaun Jackson. This is an opportunity to really make a style statement!

The third important piece is to add accessories such as exceptionally tall plants, sculpture, or floor vases with tall branches that are large enough not to feel dwarfed by the height of the room. Scale is important. I would say that the number one mistake people make in using art and accessories in their homes is to use pieces that are under-scaled for the space. Notice how much better this living room looks after removing the too small book shelves and replacing with a fiddle-leaf fig that is nearly to the ceiling. The height of the plant also balances the strong vertical lines of the concrete fireplace across the room.

The final piece that really makes a home with tall ceilings work is to incorporate some good strong horizontal lines in the room, and to be sure to also have some of the art or accessories on a human scale. Notice in the living room above that the very long sectional provides a strong horizontal line to anchor the vertical fireplace and plant. In the photos below, the strong horizontal lines and lower height of the furnishings and artwork along the wall on the left, provide a human sized foil to the floor vase with tall branches, the high windows and the tall orange panel on the right. If I had used very tall artwork on both sides of the room, it would have begun to overpower the space and make people feel like everything was looming over them.

So, the key is to finding a good balance between pieces tall enough to accent and dramatize your ceiling height, and good strong elements that keep it feeling the right size for humans.

My original post for Part 1 can be found on this link to Defining Space, Not Dividing Space - Home Staging & Interior Design Tips for Lofts / Open Plan Homes.

Pangaea is an interior designer who also offers home staging service in Portland, Oregon. You can see more of her work at Pangaea Interior Design, Model Homes, and Home Staging in Portland, Oregon.

Lofts, lofts LOFTS! If you know me, you know I love those wonderful urban spaces, with their feeling of spaciousness and unique architectural interest. They have become popular with people who are looking for creative, open, multi purpose spaces. However, they do have their special challenges, and require the ultimate in creative thinking. Concrete floors/walls/ceilings look cool but feel colder and bounce sound around --- no walls can mean no privacy with neighboring high-rise building's views looking straight into your entire home --- windows all on one end are common --- little to zero storage --- these are just some of the issues facing people in lofts and even very open plan homes.

I'll be blogging about many of these issues in this series. This first posting is on the topic of:

Defining the Space ... Not Dividing the Space.

Although these wide open spaces feel great, and even the smallest lofts feel large due to the lack of walls, they can leave you in a real dilemma with furniture placement. How do you make things feel cozy and warm? How do you give yourself some privacy without blocking light and views and without reducing the feeling of spaciousness you loved in the first place? If your office is in your home, how can you separate work and private life with no walls? Below are some photos with tips for these situations.

Groupings of furniture:

Create groupings of furniture according to activity - living - dining - sleeping - working. Avoid lining everything up along the walls.

Area rugs serve to visually pull together a space so that it feels more like a cohesive "room" whether that is a living area, sleeping area or dining area.They can be mixed or matched as long as they all look good in the same room.

When you create a living room seating area, keep the furniture away from the walls if possible, and arrange it in a tight enough group that conversation is comfortable when everyone is seated. Look for furniture that is attractive from the back as well as the front because it will be seen from all sides. Consider using swivel chairs so that you can turn one way to enjoy conversation and another to enjoy the view, or the TV, or a fireplace.

Placing your dining table nearer the kitchen makes practical sense, but it can be positioned nearer a nice view. In the interest of multi-purpose use and saving space for smaller lofts, sometimes it is more useful to get a counter height table and use it as a kitchen island/dining area. It doubles as a great spot for people to gather during parties.

In this first group of photos, notice the use of area rugs to define separate groupings mostly away from the wall, seating placement close enough to each other to encourage comfortable conversation, furniture that looks good from the back, and counter-height tables in the kitchen area.

Division of Spaces

Whether you want a bit of privacy from time to time for your sleeping area, or would like an office area to be something you don't have to look at all the time, consider using these methods instead of walls:

This office area is visually separated from the entry and from the living area by a massive, yet low, glass free standing room divider. It serves as a sculpture in it's own right, and is translucent enough to let light through, while preventing the feeling of looking straight into the office as you enter the loft.

This next office is on a rather large landing at the top of the spiral staircase, around the corner from the sleeping area. Although no room dividers are used, making use of this corner and the direction it faces keeps it from feeling like it is in the bedroom, and it also has a great view out the windows across the living area.

PRIVACY

Sometimes my clients feel like in an open loft, their guests are walking straight into their bedroom ... and that would be because, well ... their guests ARE walking straight into their bedroom! So various room dividers can really make a difference. I find that three things help a lot in the use of room dividers to keep them from taking away your feeling of spaciousness.

One is that light can still transmit through the divider.

The second is that the divider be movable.

The third is that the divider not go all the way to the ceiling.

Here are some photographic examples. In this first bedroom area, the curtain at the right pulls across to provide privacy. It is a combination of opaque and translucent bands. When you don't need it, it pulls completely back. The Shoji screen at the back would hide clothing in the open closet, or another curtain could be used here. You could even create a curtain that is opaque up to about 6 feet tall and the top portion of the curtain could be sheer to let in light.

These beautiful translucent sliding doors by Constructavision offer privacy for the bedroom area while allowing light to pass through. They can slide back to open the space. This particular loft is not my design, but I do work with Constructavision to build my custom designs.

Storage Room dividers like the spectacular River Room Divider, shown in the next photo, from Spacify, visually divide the space by giving your eye a stopping place. Used between a sleeping area, and the rest of the open space, it would keep a bed from feeling "front-and-center", while also providing great display space.

See Part #2 in this series under Soaring Ceilings What on Earth to Do With Them Home Staging Interior Design Tips for Lofts / Open-Plan Homes - Part #2

Pangaea Interior Design and Home Staging, Portland Oregon, specializes in contemporary design for modern properties. You may visit our website by clicking on this sentence.

After touring the main floor and upper floor of a large bungalow for our home staging consultation, the seller opened the door to the stairs heading to the dungeon .... ummm, the basement. It was currently being used as a rented studio apartment (shhh! Not a legal one) and the renter would be moving out. A dark and dreary space, it came complete with a boarded up fireplace and the kitchen windows opened to a view of the underneath side of the back deck. Yuck!

They wanted to stage the main floor and master bedroom, but thought it might not be worth staging the dungeon basement at all. Somehow I managed to tactfully point out the general creepiness "undefined nature" of the room and the need to really make it feel cozy, inviting and useful. After discussion with the broker and sellers, it was determined that a TV den or family room would be the most valuable use of the room for potential buyers in the neighborhood.

Here are the before and after photos. The home is in the Piedmont area of Portland, Oregon and it sold in 3 weeks!

You can see more home staging and interior design work at Pangaea Interior Design.

Well, yesterday I received not one, but TWO inquiries about the art seen in my posted photos with the specific request to post a blog about my art. Cynthia Bartsch & Debra Rowley - Thank you both for your inquiries and for your kind compliments about my work.

When you see a painting in my photos, it is my own original art. I think that original works of art elevate and enrich the look of a property, so using my original works of art have really made a difference in my level of quality in home staging. It's also a really fun creative outlet for me. I was asked to give all the details ... so, here goes.

It all started when I needed art for my own home and couldn't afford the originals of my favorite artists which were priced in the thousands, so I began painting my own works on canvas and board. At one point I had purchased a large floor vase for an interior design client who resided out of town, so I set the vase in a corner near a painting of mine and took a photo to email her. Not only did she like the floor vase, but she LOVED the painting and asked if I would sell it. Well as they say .... the rest is history.

I kept on painting and creating abstracts in colors that would work for my home staging decor, and have also created and sold several paintings and custom wall treatments for my interior design clients. My current art project is to create two large 30" x 54" cast glass panels weighing over 200 lbs each for one of my high-end clients. Fun, fun, fun!!! Not done yet, but I'll post pix when it is.

I was asked to give the details on mediums so this is what I use: (if you don't care about the details ... skip on down to the photos)

For the big splashy circular types of paintings, I actually use house paint. It's just the right consistency so that I can get the 'movement' and energy I like in my work. I really fling it around! You should see me when I'm working. I have drop cloths across the floor and up the walls on all 4 sides! I still end up with just as much paint on me as on the canvas. Oh, and I'm also beginning to buy my paint in zero VOC choices, so the art is even becoming rather ecologically sound. For the other paintings I use artist acrylic paints.

For my work on canvas, I buy stretcher bars and I stretch and gesso my own canvas. Much more economical than buying the ready made ones. For my works on board, I use two things ... either hollow core interior door panels which are nice and lightweight, or I use masonite attached to a 1" x 2" wood frame I cut to size. The hollow core doors are very lightweight and you can't easily poke a hole through them like you can with canvas, so they are awesome for staging. They run 28" - 36" wide x 80" long. My canvases are generally 3' x 3', 4' x 4', or 4' x 5'.

One thing I try to do on the rectangular paintings is to create designs that can be hung vertically or horizontally. I am also currently working on large panels that can be used individually, or hung next to each other to give you a very large painting that would be either 5' x 8', or 4' x 10'. Because I specialize in contemporary properties such as lofts ... those big sizes really come in handy for ultra high ceilings or long uninterrupted walls.

Not only do I sell my work, but I also rent my art very reasonably to other stagers. It can really cost a lot to buy those large works of art and they are difficult to store. I am happy to offer my paintings for rent to other stagers and to do commission pieces in colors that work with your decor.

You can see my work on Pangaea Interior Design and contact me regarding pricing.

On the surface neither one of these homes seemed like the type to be snapped up in a single day on the market. The tract home was rather nondescript ... master bedroom had no attached bathroom, and it backed up to a busy and noisy street. The bungalow had 3 bedrooms and only 1 tiny bathroom ... really tiny! So what did these two properties have in common that had them both sold the first day on the market? I can sum it up in one word: Teamwork!

1. A seller who was committed to doing everything within their power and budget to completely prepare their house to go on the market. They painted, re-carpeted, made repairs, and spruced up the landscape.

2. A broker who did their homework and priced the home correctly for the neighborhood and current market conditions. They took many photos and created great marketing materials to stir up interest for the initial broker's open tour.

3. A stager (me, of course) who used their expertise in display and arrangement of beautiful furnishings, accessories and art to accent the positive features of the house and to add warmth and wide appeal.

In both scenarios, we all worked together as a team. We discussed the particular issues of concern in the home and the most likely types of potential buyers who might be interested in a home in the area. I was supportive of the broker's suggestions, as the broker was of mine. The seller knew they had hired two great professionals and they acted on the advice they were given.

Nobody can guarantee you that your property will sell in a day. But, if you are to have your best shot at selling quickly and for top dollar, be sure to assemble a great team.

I'm showing a single "before" photo and two "after" photos of each property .... and yes, these both sold during the last part of 2008.

You can see more of my work at Pangaea Interior Design, Model Home Decor, Home Staging and Redesign, Portland, Oregon.