Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

Decorating with folding screens is an easy way to divide large spaces or hide eye sores (for example, my neighbor has a screen hiding her air conditioner). One doesn’t usually think of the trendier ones as being made out of metals like aluminum though. In this case, one would be wrong.

The Eileen is an aluminum screen made from rows of pivoting panels. Each panel can be tilted along its axis to allow varying degrees of light through. Want complete privacy? Just flip all the panels so they’re flush. Want to allow air and light in? Angle the panels in any arrangement to get the desired affect. The screen itself articulates and folds up nicely for when you need to store it out of sight.

£1750.00 from DesignShop UK

Looking for some eco-friendly home decor? How about something to spruce up your table at meal time? Don’t these placemats look fun?

The Haute Surface ZigZag pieces interlock to form different sized items, so they can be used anywhere in the house (wall decor, trivets, coasters, placemats, mouse pads, etc.). Made from 100% recycled cork, the tiles were inspired by railroad tracks.

A box runs $20 and comes with 12 tiles, 6 light-colored and 6 dark-colored pieces. You can buy multiple boxes to hook the tiles together to form larger items (you know you want to wallpaper a room in your house with the stuff…).

From BranchHome

Are the pots your plants are living in a little drab? Just some common pots picked up at the home and garden store? You could try adding a bit of whimsy with pot hangers (not pot holders, mind you). Who wouldn’t smile at these cute little frogs?

Made from a durable resin material, the two-piece set includes one frog facing up and one facing down. The price is $7 from Croak City Wholesale (as you might guess from the name, the store does indeed specialize in all things frog).

Are your ceilings looking a little plain and ho-hum? Want to do something to spice them up? Well, if the idea of “tropicalizing” your home appeals to you, you might like the idea of this bamboo ceiling.

You could add a small decorative element or run bamboo across the whole room.

This ceiling was done for a home in Tampa, Florida, to help bring some of the tropical climate indoors. The company responsible is Bambu Tropical, which specializes in ceilings, window treatments, furniture, and home and garden accents, using imported bamboo as the primary material.

http://www.bambootropical.com

Are you looking to add more interest to your walls? Or perhaps change out the art and decorations you have there now? This teak lotus wall panel is certainly a handsome way to go.

The panel is made from recycled rough-hewn teak planks that originally came from old community buildings and homes in small villages in Thailand. The work is done by native craftsmen who spend countless hours carving the wood by hand, then sanding and waxing it to create an intricate lotus flower motif. In Thailand, the lotus flower symbolizes prosperity and fertility. The carved panels are sold to help pay for new community buildings in each village.

The price is $425 at Viva Terra.

If you want to add some life to your walls, but you’re not ready to plaster wall paper everywhere, maybe these wall bands will pique your interest.

Available in a number of different colors and designs, the bands measure 15 feet long by 13 inches wide and can go horizontally, diagonally, vertically, or any other direction you can imagine. Apply them as they come, or cut them to suit your needs.

Prices run about $60, and that includes the pre-pasted band and directions for hanging. ShopTwenty2, the company that sells the wall decorations, promises they’re easy to take down when you’re ready to change your walls again–simply grab a corner and peel them off.

ShopTwenty2

There are all sorts of decorative doorbells you can get to mount outside your front door, but the doorbell box that’s inside your house (the source of the actual “bell”) is often forgotten. For most of us, it’s just a plain square box mounted high on the wall in the hallway or somewhere unobtrusive. Kind of boring, isn’t it?

The Droog Doorbell from Greener Grass Design is a little different:

“What we know as a doorbell is a square box that strangely enough says nothing about what a doorbell really is: an appliance consisting of an electromagnet, a hammer and two sound sources. In this design by Peter van der Jagt, crystal glasses make a crystal clear sound, announcing guests with a musical toast.”

The Droog Doorbell measures 9.8″ x 3.5″ x 9.5″ and sells for $151.

Greener Grass Design

If you’re looking for a way to add some color to the outside of your house and welcome in Spring, these decorative flags from the Online Discount Mart are an inexpensive way to do it. There are a number of flags and windsocks you can choose from, starting at around $14.

This bright and cheery lady bug, trailed by a couple of baby lady bugs, caught my eye. The nylon flag measures 12″ x 19″ so it’s large enough to see from the street but small enough to hang in a window or from your mailbox.

Online Discount Mart

When you think of throw pillows for the sofa, you probably don’t think of breakfast foods. That’s understandable. There’s not an obvious connection (unless certain family members eat on the couch often and spill said breakfast foods onto the pillows…), but somebody decided to put the two together anyway.

Over at the Sofa Garden, you can get all sorts of decorative pillows, including these breakfast-themed ones. There are pillows shaped into pieces of toast (with butter of course), coffee beans, fried eggs, and pancakes. This kind of ode to breakfast food might not be for everyone, but if you prefer your furniture to be humorous rather than stately, maybe you should check the site out.

Prices start at $40.

Some decorators say the ceiling is the 5th wall, so if yours is a ho-hum expanse of white (or worse a popcorn ceiling leftover from another decade), you may not be doing all you could for your favorite rooms. You can add depth and interest to ceilings with faux beams or textured paint, or perhaps you’d like to decorate them with handsome ceiling art. For that you could hire a mural specialist who doesn’t mind painting from flat on his back on a scaffolding, but there are also simpler alternatives…

Modello Designs creates “decorative masking patterns” that you stick to your ceiling. The finished impression is that you had someone came in and paint a motif just for your home. They have a number of designs you can browse on their site, and they’ll also come up with custom pieces if you have something else in mind.

http://www.modellodesigns.com