Coordinating Hunter Douglas Throughout Your Home

This is the newest featured article on hunterdouglas.com from Sally Morse.

A common mistake that many people make when decorating their homes is to think of a room as a box. Why wouldn't they? A room is literally self-contained with its four distinctive walls. But even if we decorate our home one room at a time, we certainly don't want our home to appear simply as a series of boxes. Instead, let's think outside that box. Another frequent mistake is decorating that room in their favorite colors or the style du jour without taking into consideration what is in the next room. As a result, they end up with a patchwork-quilt effect without any flow or continuity, thus making their home appear smaller.
Not surprisingly, at "Ask Sally & Jen," the question that we hear most often is "How can I make my home look bigger?" Indeed, I understand that we all want bigger, but don't always know how to create this effect when decorating our homes.

Thankfully, making your job easier are a variety of helpful Hunter Douglas programs, including Counterparts® The Whole House Solution™, Counterparts® Refined, The Harmony Program™ and Accents By The Yard™.

First, let's begin with a few basic tips: Imagine standing in the middle of your living room and turning a full 360 degrees. What rooms can you see when you're standing in the center of your living room? If you want to make your home appear larger, you need to connect your rooms together with color. In the interior design business, we call this Color Connect; the term refers to using at least two to three colors in one room and then carrying over these colors into the adjoining spaces. One of these color connectors could be your window covering. Even though the styles might be different, the colors will blend from one room to the other.
Let's say in the living room your main colors consist of soft gold, red, and greens. Your walls are painted an elegant gold color. For furniture, you have a green velvet sofa, two chairs with a gold, red, and green stripe in the fabric and a chair with a delicate red-and-green-paisley pattern. On the window, you have Silhouette® window shadings in the Originale™ Quarette® fabric in the color Linen Flirt. Completing this beautiful window treatment is a floral drapery in the gold, green, red color palette. It's a lovely room! Let's move on to the adjacent room—the dining room. The carpet, a shimmering gold and tan color, is the same shade as the carpet in the living room. The walls are painted red, and the dining room chairs are upholstered in a plaid pattern with the same color scheme of red, gold and green. The Silhouette window shadings are also used in the dining room.

Next up: the kitchen. In this room, the main colors include gold, navy and some dark green. The kitchen flooring consists of a stone-like material with shades of tan, gold, and cream, which flow nicely with the gold-and-tan carpet that covers the floors in the living and dining rooms. The kitchen walls are a golden tan color, and the accessories reflect the gold, navy, and green colors of your favorite dishes. The breakfast-room windows are perfect for the Silhouette window shadings in the Originale color Linen Flirt accented with Swags and Cascades dressed with our Accents by The Yard fabric. The kitchen sliding door that leads to the deck features the Luminette® Privacy Sheers in the Angelica Refined Translucent color Linen Flirt. The Silhouette and Luminette window treatments enhance each other and complete these rooms fearlessly.
This first-class look unites all three rooms, so each embodies their own personality, but yet a relationship is clearly established throughout the different areas, so the collective living space appears larger and more seamless.

The coordinating colors and products we used in the living room, dining room and kitchen are part of the Counterparts Whole House Solution Program. Products include Vignette® Modern Roman Shades, Pirouette® window shadings, Duette® Honeycomb Shades, Silhouette window shadings, Luminette Privacy Sheers, and Luminette® Modern Draperies. This program will enable you to achieve your vision of a well designed, spacious home effortlessly.

A popular feature of today's homes is an open floor plan. This can be tricky to decorate since this configuration may include several different window styles. Let's use an example of home I know. The layout revolves around a great room with very large windows that surround a sliding glass door. There are also some smaller casement windows that include a window over the kitchen sink. Ample amounts of sun pour through the south and west exposures. My client wanted to know if she could coordinate the same fabric in multiple products to use in these adjacent spaces—and I said, "No problem!" We decided to use the Skyline® Gliding Window Panels on the large windows and door in the Del Sol fabric. On the casement windows we used the ever-popular Designer Screen Shades in the same Del Sol fabric. Her design problem was easily solved with the Harmony Program.

The Harmony program includes these products: Skyline Gliding Window Panels, Designer Roller Shades, and the Designer Screen Shades. Counterparts Refined provides superior color and product coordination between Vignette Modern Roman Shades, Silhouette window shadings, and Luminette Privacy Sheers and Modern Draperies.

Finally, don't forget about Accents By The Yard to complete any home-decorating project. This cut-yardage program allows you to polish your style with matching fabric for window coverings, pillows, tablecloths, draperies, and even bedding. You may have started in a box, but with Hunter Douglas and its multiple programs and products, you can take the guesswork out of the color coordination and open up your home in beautiful and exciting ways.

As always, if you have any additional questions about finding the perfect window fashion, don't hesitate to send us an email.

- Sally