Color Effect - In Your Kitchen

Color makes a huge impact on the space it fills. The right shade or texture can make your kitchen look bigger, smaller or even cheerier. Knowing how your color choices will affect your kitchen design can help you develop a color scheme that improves your room’s overall design while also filling it with your favorite hues.

Depending on what you want to accomplish with your space, the colors you choose can help you achieve it. The effects of color can create the illusion of a changed space. Cooler, lighter colors can help make a room feel bigger while warmer and darker colors can make a space smaller or bring a high ceiling down farther.

Similarly, the textures you choose will change the look and feel of your kitchen.  The texture effects of stainless steel with its sleek visual interest will vary from the impact of wood’s natural warmth. Meanwhile, a combination of the two will lead to an entirely different design.

Finally, nothing makes a big impact in your kitchen like bright colors. A splash of orange or turquoise brings a bold look to your design when done right. Discover where the best spots are for your favorite saturated shades.

Texture Effect - In Your Kitchen

Make the Materials you use work for you.

Texture adds contrast and interest to your kitchen surface. Think of texture in both tactile and visual terms. The txture of materials becomes apparent when you feel it. Other have strong patterns or designs that create visual interest. A good design will typically three to four textures in the kitchen.

Here's how some product and materials can add texture to the kitchen

Material	Effect
Laminate and solid surface	Smooth tactile texture; visual interest from decorative patterns
Stone	Smooth surface with visual interest from granules and patina
Wood	Smooth finishes with visual interest from wood grain: maple offers cleanest, less grainy look; cherry has a little more grain; and oak and pine show the most
Tile	Unglazed offers rough tactile texture, while glazed will be smooth; visual interest comes from patterns and cut
Concrete	Generally smooth to the touch but visual interest from pits and discolorations
Stainless steel	Smooth feel with sleek visual interest
Vinyl and linoleum	Smooth surfaces with visual interest from decorative patterns
Architectural details	Both tactile and visual texture from materials such as pressed metal, plaster, exposed brick and concrete, and exposed beams and rafters

Atelier Pfister = Radicals by rock-solid quality

The basic idea behind this design collection is simple: We want to maintain our tradition, passion and quality culture and modernize ourselves continuously. We carry these values together and draw the eye towards zeitgeist. And the thing is clear: quality through radical-solid craftsmanship and durable design that stands out from the rest.

Colorful Offices of Creative Studio 3FS

It’s official- the wall decal is the new mural! These popular graphics are fun, witty, and technically “green” because they are easily applicable and transferable. In our search for creative office spaces, we found the offices of Third Frame Studios to demonstrate just how clever these décor concepts can be. Slovenian firm Zek designed the graphics which are slightly geeky in nature to bring the rooms a focal point by dressing up the vibrant office walls with playful images. Although it is questionable whether all this colorful art is stimulating work productivity, they certainly make it an amusing work environment with each statement!

Cafe Pavilion

The town cemetery in the Eastern part of Düren has taken on the role of a public park. Before, there was nowhere for cemetery visitors to shelter nor for large or small funeral ceremonies to take place. The new cemetery and café pavilion is a space where people can encounter each other when things are out of the ordinary. They can grieve together, exchange memories and look for refuge, which they will find under a multifaceted ceiling landscape.

The architecture of the pavilion unfolds out of a neutral, nondescript, square ground plan. Three closed volumes have been inserted to accommodate the service facilities of the pavilion; they structure the space and divide the ground plan into three areas, without blocking them off from one another. Each of the three areas, which all receive visitors, is characterized by archetypical roof shapes and varying room heights, combining to form one large space. The barrel vault, the mono-pitch roof and the tented roof of the visitor areas together form a manifold, continuous ceiling landscape, which offers refuge and connects the visitor areas to form a flowing unified space; it also provides richly diverse views into the surrounding park. The landscape profile created by these roof shapes can be read on the façade; it connects the individual exterior elevations of the building with one another.

Furniture by Tyler Beauty + Function = Reinier de Jong

GREEN