Skip to main content
CartClose Cart
Category

Advice for Designers

How to Specify Colour for a Bedroom (and Closet)

01/27/2013
21 Comments

Tracey from Fort Langley was the winner of a brand new custom closet from Designer Closet Guys I Hate My Closet Contest! Her prize included a colour consultation from me so we all arrived together a couple weeks ago to measure up her closet and choose colours. Chris Isfeld, Owner of Designer Closet Guys In…

Continue Reading

How to be Smart in a World of Dumb Designers

01/15/2013
135 Comments

Recently, I received this very generous email from one of my lovely readers (no names will be used here), who said I was welcome to share her story: I have made literally every mistake in the remodeling book! I really do not like to complain, I dislike myself for being negative this way…but my mind cannot…

Continue Reading

The Best Inspiration for Styling a Room for a Photo

11/17/2012
10 Comments

On the third day of my True Colour Expert Workshops we talk about the business of colour. The best way to sell a colour consultation, etc. My advice to any designer setting up a website is NEVER use photos that are not professionally taken. Jeffrey Bilhuber I talked about this here, with some great visuals….

Continue Reading

Is Your Bath Perfect or Just Perfectly Nice?

10/28/2012
19 Comments

Is your bath perfect or just perfectly nice? When done well, a bathroom design will be perfect. You can’t just purchase the perfect bath, it must be created and designed. And, just like any other room in your home, it all starts with inspiration. Source I recently attended an event at  Cantu, a fabulous bathroom…

Continue Reading

Rules for Choosing the Right Colour Quartz Countertop

10/25/2012
16 Comments

House and Home I received some new quartz samples the other day. This is how they were packaged when they arrived. . . Every single sample had to be pried off with a screwdriver and taken out of the packaging. Why? Because it’s virtually impossible to choose the coordinating colour for your walls or cabinets…

Continue Reading

The Rule of More

07/21/2012
22 Comments

source I chose two different faucets for both of Mom’s bathrooms in the carriage house she built last year. Because I’m in her house and see them all the time (different from a client’s home) one day I said to her, I like the faucet downstairs so much better than the one in your master….

Continue Reading

Advice Every Designer Should Give

07/15/2012
8 Comments

I’m featured on Tobi Fairly’s blog today with my expert advice, more on that in a minute! This is my sweet nephew Noah and it’s his birthday, he’s seven! My sister Anita (his Mom) has a stunning brand new white kitchen that I helped her with last summer. The reason why you haven’t seen it on…

Continue Reading

Two Ways to Know if You are a One-Trick Pony Designer

07/13/2012
19 Comments

I have a confession. Lately I’ve been feeling like a one-trick pony. Because I’m specifying the same grays over and over and over. Thank goodness I know better. Shaker Beige (source) Because here’s the thing. When the brown trend was here, it was the same, “Oh, you have an espresso brown sofa, brown floors, and…

Continue Reading

How to Inject Fresh into Your Earth-Toned House

07/01/2012
22 Comments

Yesterday I posted my Styled Interiors board from Pinterest on my Facebook Fan Page and one of my readers commented that it was her favourite board and wondered if I would post more images on tablescapes for coffee tables and end tables. So I clicked over to Ralph Lauren Home because I adore the styling…

Continue Reading

Do You Give Your Client Exactly What They Want?

06/09/2012
16 Comments

The best part about the designers, decorators and homeowners who attend my workshops is they already know me before they get there. So it’s like I’m your friend, teaching your colour class. Paula (below) and I have been emailing back and forth forever because she comments a lot on my posts. Comments are almost like…

Continue Reading

Best Quotes from Blogfest 2012 in New York

05/22/2012
8 Comments

Traci Zeller (We do this a lot in New York) Darryl Carter was part of a panel this morning at breakfast at the top of the Hearst tower. He said his family was first generation so he pretty much had to be a doctor, a lawyer or an Indian Chief. His decorating career was launched when his…

Continue Reading

6 Ways to Choose the Perfect Neutral Paint Colour

05/06/2012
59 Comments

I received this question the other day and realized that even though my ebooks covers it in comprehensive detail, I don’t have a single post that answers this question directly. So here are the 6 best ways to choose one: 1. Start with the living room because that’s where the entire colour scheme for the…

Continue Reading

Advice for Designers: Why your Project isn’t Published

04/29/2012
42 Comments

After I had finished decorating this living/dining room for my lovely clients Jim & Carol I sent the photos to some magazines. Only to receive zero response. I tried to figure out what was wrong with it.

Then in February, at the Design Bloggers Conference in LA I got to chatting with Kimberley Seldon. She is a celebrity designer from Toronto. She had a show called Design for Living for many years and is the editor of a fabulous on-line magazine called Dabble

Continue Reading

How Important is Pretty?

02/22/2012
31 Comments

When I had my first website designed, I consciously chose to show only after photos in my portfolio. I did this because when I looked at interior design portfolios that I admired, I saw just one pretty picture after another. Pinterest My advice is to show just the after, keep your website as pretty as…

Continue Reading

Vancouver Interior Designer: How to be Legendary with Your Clients

01/24/2012
7 Comments

So I’m in a workshop for facilitators here in Vegas. The difference between training which is what I mostly do in my True Colour Expert Workshops and facilitating is this:

1. Training. I need to get my participants from A – B and I have the answers (it is MY system after all).

2. Facilitating. The facilitator stands inside the gap between A – B and you bring activities and resources to lead your participants to B and you don’t even pretend to have the answers.

There’s parts of my course when I’m facilitating and other parts where it’s full on training.

Continue Reading