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"Inspired by You\nDesigners answer readers' questions\nQ: What do you look for in a sofa?\n\nSamuel Botero: A sofa is one of the largest pieces of furniture in a room and speaks volumes. I like the simple clean lines of a Lawson or a tuxedo sofa. You can drape your arm over the back, allowing the freedom of placing yourself for conversation, left or right. Detailing is important. The cording or seams must be straight. With a patterned fabric, the pattern on the seat must line up with the back and the front apron and be centered on each cushion. A deep sofa is a joy for a tall person, while a shorter person may find it uncomfortable. Bear this in mind.\n\nQ: What precautions should one take when choosing colors for one's home?\n\nSuzanne Tucker: All colors can be used but they need to be used selectively together and in relationship to each other, with consideration to the direction a room is facing and the quality of light that comes into a space. As an example, I would never paint a room green that has masses of greenery outside. You would be enveloped in a bilious sea of green! Instead you need to offer a complementary color so that the interior and exterior hues harmonize with each other.\n\nPictured: Sofa by Stephen Sills Associates.\nQ: What's the best way to incorporate green design into your home?\n\nCampion Platt: Start with your appliances\u2014replace anything that is inefficient, spend a little extra on what you love and plan to use for many years to come, and don't forget that giving antiques and vintage furnishings another life is a green idea.\n\nQ: How do you design a high-traffic area? What are the best rugs for high-traffic areas?\n\nThomas Allardyce: For corridors and hallways, I use minimal furnishings, preferring to focus attention on architectural symmetry for interest. When there is a high-traffic area in a living space, I always plan furnishings around an axis path that leads one naturally to a destination.\n\nMartyn Lawrence-Bullard: The best rugs for high-traffic areas are those made of tight wool pile. They last longer, are easy to clean and don't give off static.\n\nPictured: Early-20th-century watercolor map of the United States; circa 1880 French carriage clock.\nQ: How do you dress a low table?\n\nCampion Platt: My preference is to use overscale low tables with shelves below to stack books. This sets a casual, modern tone in a room, and the surfaces are incredibly useful when entertaining.\n\nThomas Allardyce: I like to vary the scale of objects. One example is to use an appropriately overscale box (always useful for holding remotes, etc.), a tall, thin candle, a compote or dish and a small vase for adding favorite flowers.\n\nTerry Hunziker: I dress it simply, with a collection of objects or maybe books, an orchid and sculpture.\n\nQ: How does one begin to decorate one's home on a tight budget?\n\nSuzanne Tucker: Never feel like you have to furnish your rooms all at once if you have limited means. The best rooms evolve over time, and the initial focus should always be to get the bones of a room right. You have years to buy furniture and accessories. It is better to have one fabulous chair or table or rug than a whole room of mediocre pieces.\n\nPictured: The library of designer Terry Hunziker's Seattle home, AD September 2010\nQ: What are the essentials for creating an outdoor living space?\n\nCraig Wright: I find the single best addition to an outdoor space is a fireplace. Everybody likes sitting around the campfire telling stories until the wee hours of the morning.\n\nMartyn Lawrence-Bullard: An outdoor living space should be centered around a conversational element\u2014a fireplace, fire pit or water feature. Always buy furnishings that wouldn't look out of place indoors. Deep comfortable sofas and club chairs. Use an outdoor-fabric-covered ottoman instead of a glass coffee table for a truly unexpected moment. And then add your own style by putting outdoor-fabric throw pillows on the pieces for impact and a great color accent.\n\nTerry Hunziker: Treat it as you would an indoor space, with some intimate seating areas. And keep in mind comfort\u2014it should be as welcoming as an indoor living space.\n\nQ: What element of the home says \"comfort\" more than anything else?\n\nPenny Drue Baird: Nothing exudes comfort as much as a fireplace. I never shortchange the fireplace, always creating or purchasing the mantel that is most flattering for the firebox and the room itself. The seating group that surrounds it should be cushy and cozy. The fireplace is a microcosm of design\u2014such a small area that can be adorned with so many accessories. But the most important aspect of the fireplace in order to create comfort is to actually light it!\n\nPictured: The \"outdoor room\" of a Wyoming retreat by designer Mariette Himes Gomez and architect Jim Morter, AD June 2007\nQ: Can you recommend dining chairs that are comfortable as well as great-looking?\n\nSandra Nunnerly: One idea is fully upholstered chairs: two tall wingbacks at the head of the table and then smaller upholstered chairs at the sides. We've been doing more and more combination dining rooms\u2014where it's also a library or study\u2014and this is a fantastic look that's also very comfortable.\n\nMargaret McCurry: The Brno chair by Mies van der Rohe is supremely elegant and available in a wide range of coverings. Although heavy, they glide and are springy, so one can occupy them at length.\n\nQ: What is one of the biggest experiments you undertook in designing a home that paid off really well?\n\nElissa Cullman: For a family that rarely used their formal dining room but was obsessed with playing pool, we worked with Blatt Billiards to create a perfectly functional and aesthetically pleasing billiard table that doubled as a dining table. We incorporated a hydraulic lift system, which could be lowered to dining height when needed, and we designed a wooden tabletop made in sections to allow for easy installation and storage. When the top is laid over the base, it extends a few inches past the edges of the billiard surface, looking just like a proper dining table.\n\nCampion Platt: A glass-topped pergola. With the glass, the sun still comes in and vines grow in the trellis ceiling, but you can stay there in the rain!\n\nPictured: The Brno chair by Mies van der Rohe.\nQ: How does one determine the right scale of furniture for a room?\n\nSamuel Botero: Make a floor plan to scale and play with furniture placement. For small rooms, avoid oversize furniture. It is difficult to make it work and usually fails in the long haul. Consider the height of the ceiling. A low ceiling makes a room feel far smaller than it really is. Use low-slung furniture in such a room. Look at design magazines and study the proportions of things in the layout. Large lamps don't work with small furniture. Make sure your basic pieces\u2014sofa, side chairs and tables\u2014are proportionate to each other.\n\nQ: How do you properly light a living space?\n\nMargaret McCurry: Artfully designed lighting creates a soft, welcoming ambience while cleverly highlighting certain key elements such as art on the walls or special objects on tables. Ideally, there should be three types of lighting: uplighting, like torch\u00E8res or sconces, to add a general level of light that bounces off the ceiling, and then accent can lights to pick out objects below, and lamps to particularize comfortable seating for reading or to highlight fabrics on chairs and sofas.\n\nPictured: Laminated-cherry chair by David Upfil-Brown.\nQ: What are the essentials for creating a fun children's room?\n\nSandra Nunnerly: The number-one thing is color, and I also think it's critical to have versatility: I do these wonderful rubber floors that can be done in vibrant colors and patterns, which children can paint on and play on, and you can do them either as wall-to-wall or as big area rugs. Children like to move furniture around, so I look for worktables and chairs that are light and can be moved around, and things like big, colorful beanbags. Durable fabrics are also important\u2014things like felt or outdoor fabrics that are attractive but stand up to wear.\n\nSamuel Botero: Avoid making a TV the focus of the room. You want them to play and interact, not zombie out.\n\nMargaret McCurry: I always, when possible, add lofts above children's bedrooms in the attic space under the roof with a specially designed ladder for access. These spaces become secret retreats.\n\nQ: What's the wildest thing a kid has requested for his or her room?\n\nCraig Wright: A client's child requested a life-size dinosaur hanging from his ceiling. By the time one of Hollywood's film studios had completed the model, the child's interest had moved on to something else.\n\nMartyn Lawrence-Bullard: I once had a kid request a gorilla for her room\u2014a real one!\n\nPictured: Bohemian Garden table and chair from Lilipad studio.\nQ: What is an essential element for a kitchen?\n\nSuzanne Tucker: No good kitchen should be without two things: The first is to always have strong, bright task lighting and the ability to dim it. Second is a good glass of wine, particularly if you are the cook!\n\nQ: What is the best type of flooring to use in a kitchen?\n\nPenny Drue Baird: While there is much room for stylistic preference, the best flooring for a kitchen is undoubtedly durable and camouflages dirt. There are numerous ways to do this. One can use terra-cotta, slate, ceramic tile that mimics wood, French cement tiles, either vintage or newly made. I don't recommend light-colored flooring.\n\nPictured: The kitchen of a Colorado ranch house designed by William Sofield, AD June 2010.\nQ: How high should a chandelier hang above a dining table?\n\nCraig Wright: I like to hang a chandelier so it is above eye level when standing. This is not always possible. I remember a very grand chandelier that was hanging so low, it was almost like another guest in the room with whom you could converse.\n\nLaura Hunt: A general rule of thumb is to hang a fixture 30 inches above the dining room table. Make sure the light source is neither blocking nor shining in any guest's face. The height also depends on the chandelier size and style and your ceiling heights. Rules are meant to be broken, and scale is key.\n\nQ: What's the best type of lighting to use in a bathroom?\n\nGeoffrey Bradfield: The most important requirement, especially for our female clients, is to have enough light on one's face. Though perhaps old-fashioned, many of our clients swear by a run of \"Hollywood\" exposed light bulbs to achieve this.\n\nCampion Platt: I like sconces at the vanity with recessed overhead fixtures. The combination gives a warm glow to the room with the necessary brightness where it's needed.\n\nPictured: Maison Bagues chandelier.\nQ: What are some illusions you have created in designing a space?\n\nJohn Stefandis: Trompe l'oeil has always been a favorite. It is lighthearted and gives a dimension to a room or staircase landing.\n\nGeoffrey Bradfield: I find the introduction and use of mirror creates an immediate sense of illusion, adding instant infinity and volume, and a sense of romance.\n\nQ: In a large loft space, what's the best way to visually divide the room into a series of separate but connected spaces?\n\nTerry Hunziker: Use almost-floor-to-ceiling panels. These could be of different materials from the walls, like steel, wood, plaster or translucent glass. Experiment with a floor pattern that switches materials\u2014from stone to wood, for instance.\n\nPictured: Trompe l'oeil wallcoverings in an installation by designer Juan Pablo Molyneux, AD May 2008"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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