Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

Is your bed feeling a bit lumpy? A bit limp? Does your back ache all day at work? Maybe it’s time to buy a new mattress. Here are some tips for mattress shopping:

1. Take advantage of white sales. You’ll frequently find discounts from December to February and from June to September.

2. Look for private labels to save up to 25%. Though name-brand bedding is more popular, you can find similar-quality mattresses or box springs from lesser-known companies. Ask your retailer what they’ve got in the “back room.”

3. Watch out for extra thick mattresses. If you buy one that is 3″ to 5″ thicker than traditional, you’ll have to buy special bedding for it, as your current stuff won’t fit.

4. Check the coil count, since mattresses with more coils will keep their shape longer. A full-size mattress should have at least 300 coils, a queen 375, and a king 450.

5. Try out all the mattresses in the showroom to help you to decide which is most comfortable. Don’t just sit on the edge of the bed. Lie down, grab a pillow, and assume the position!

6. Check for a sturdy ticking on the mattress covering. It should have a pattern that’s woven instead of printed.

7. Consider a mattress with a handle for easy turning.

8. Consider mattresses with plastic corner guards, as they can protect the bed from scratches and nicks.

9. When you’re shopping, also buy an extra-thick mattress pad, as this can add three years of life to your mattress.

10. Prolong the life of your mattress by turning it once a year.

Source: Cut Your Spending in Half: Without Settling for Less : How to Pay the Lowest Price for Everything

We’ve talked about cork flooring in the past, since it’s an environmentally friendly resource (cork bark can be peeled from a trunk without damaging the tree itself, and the bark eventually grows back), but did you know there is such a thing as cork fabric?

The couch shown in this picture is upholstered in, you guessed it, cork. The fabric is covering the pillows, too, and there are even inserts in the coffee table. It’s the living room for the eco-conscious interior decorator.

You can get the cork fabric from the Jelinek Cork Group, and it comes in several colors (there’s an interesting ottoman on their site upholstered in green cork).

http://www.jelinek.com

I like Ikea as much as the next homeowner, but it can be depressing when you go over to a friend’s house only to find they have the same couch and coffee table set you just bought. If you’re looking for fun and eccentric pieces (i.e. no way is anybody else on the block going to have that coffee table), try browsing the furniture section over at Etsy.

If you haven’t been to the site before, it’s a big shopping spot where people sell hand-crafted items. It’s where I found this “mosaic fusion” side table. The top is done with ceramic shards in a variety of colors: purple-blue, yellow, white, and black.

The shop owner decorates all sorts of furniture pieces with colorful mosaics.

If you have a music lover in the family, this guitar chair could be a big hit.

The chairs are individually made, so you can get any shape and color. If you have a favorite guitar, you can have the chair made to match.

Each piece is made from numerous layers of Baltic Birch that are molded using the same gluing techniques as with a Steinway piano. According to the artist’s description, the “contour of the chair cradles the body similar to a sports car seat.” And if a chair isn’t your style, you can get a guitar-shaped coffee table from the same folks.

$800 from http://metzfunctionalart.com/

Have you ever noticed that most dressers, nightstands, and storage units for home use are rectangular? Ok, I hadn’t thought about it either until I spotted these distinctly round pieces.

Chances are you can’t fit as much stuff in them, but I love the uniqueness of the look. And if you’ve ever bumped into a corner of a dresser on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night (and woken with a bruise the next morning), you might appreciate them too.

Available in differing sizes, the Kartell pieces “have been designed to meet various needs of use and live in any environment in the home or in the office: in the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen or lounge.” And they look cool too.

Prices start at $26.90 from Questo Design.

Some people like sleek serious furniture, and some people don’t.

If you fall into the latter camp, then this tree coffee table is sure to appeal to your sense of whimsy. The base is carved into the shape of a tree with differing silhouettes, depending on which side you’re looking at it from. One edge has a squirrel running up the side, while another features a knothole with an inquisitive owl peering out. The surface of the table itself, though flat, borrows from the billowy imagery of a tree top.

This is a fun piece for a children’s room, but if you don’t take yourself too seriously, it could squat by your couch in the living room too.

From Because We Can

Here’s an interesting take on the living room couch. Or is it a giant chair? Or two chairs as the case may be.

Yin Yang Seating is two seats in one piece of furniture with a base that swivels 360 degrees. The interesting design lets both parties relax while promoting conversation—it lets you look at each other (a novel concept in today’s world when most seating is geared toward letting two people look at the television). “The answer to the question of style. Relaxation flows to environments that are composed by nature’s beauty, and where the beauty of nature is brought home.”

From Domo Collection in Australia.

Whether you live in a mansion or a tiny apartment, you can probably appreciate furniture that does double-duty as storage. It seems that no matter how much space you have, you always run out of room for things eventually.

The Magino Stool from Inside Avenue is clear and simple, offering a place to sit in a pinch. Its legs also double back to provide a niche on either side where you can tuck magazines. So you’ve got one piece of furniture working as stool and magazine rack. Now if I could just get my refrigerator to cook dinner for me…

The stool is $375.

Inside Avenue

So, you’re looking for some new colorful furniture for your living room… Glad you stopped by, because it doesn’t get any more colorful than the Miss Gana Ottoman. Crafted from a soft rubber made from recycled flip flops, it’s even eco-friendly. And if you’re worried about sitting on something made from people’s old sandals(sandals trod across dirty streets, gum wrappers, dog droppings, and the like), the flip flops were never actually worn; they come from overstocked sandals that otherwise would have been thrown away.

The colorful ottoman is $250 from DWR.

Those people with big houses and big yards can afford the space for as large a hammock as they’d like, but for condo and apartment dwellers, or house owners with postage-stamp-sized yards, a regular hammock just isn’t an option. No swaying gently in the breeze on summer evenings for them. Unless, you have an Xchair of course.

This indoor/outdoor piece of furniture offers the “same comfort as a full-size hammock while taking up a quarter of the space.” It features a swinging chair mode and a full-sized hammock mode, so you can sit and read a book or stretch out for a nap. Fully assembled, the chair fits in a 4 x 4 foot space, and it can hold up to 400 pounds.

It is $120 at Amazon:

Xchair-Indoor/Outdoor Hammock