Top Tools, Tips & Trends

The latest must-haves for your home.

By: Steve Slack

Where in the World Is Your Living Room?

You almost need a passport to enter your local furniture store these days. Designers are borrowing ideas from ports of call ranging from Bangkok to Boston. From Australia comes a collection called Matilda Bay by Century® Furniture. The pieces have a hybrid French/Dutch country look. Thomasville Furniture showcases Visaya—brown leather seating paired with banana-bark tables.

Broyhill® debuts Eastwinds Tapestry, Asian-inspired motifs; and Lane® Home Furnishings teamed with the National Geographic Society to produce Cote d’Azur, a collection based on decades of photos documenting the style of the French Riviera.

African blackwood accents give foreign flair to this sideboard from the L. and J.G. Stickley® Pasadena Bungalow Blacker House collection.

Flat-Screen Solutions

The hottest must-have home technology, the flat-screen TV, presents a challenge for home decorators. Up to now, the slim-profile TV seemed perfectly suited for flush-mounting to a wall like a painting. But the heavy screen needs special hardware to hold it securely in place, and finding a suitable viewing wall sometimes makes for awkward room arrangements.

Homeowners need help integrating the TV into more traditional design schemes. Lane Home Furnishings presents several traditional cases made for a flat-screen TV.

Another creative way to decorate around the new technology is with the Reversica Gyre, right. When mounted in a custom cabinet, it allows the TV to rotate 180 degrees. “You can have bookshelves, a wine rack or DVD storage on the reverse side,” says Darren Alt, senior sales representative for the company. The Gyre accommodates screens from 42 to 65 inches wide, reversica.com

Bejeweled Baths

All that glitters is not gold but glass, at least when it comes to trendy wall treatments. Glass mosaic tiles in sparkling jewel tones rival the once wildly popular tumbled-stone look for baths, entries and even pool linings. Glass seems especially appropriate for the more contemporary statements made by today’s high-end baths, according to bath designers surveyed at the 2007 Kitchen and Bath Show. Florida Tile’s® Dimensions Glass Mosaics product line is one example. The variations in each tile’s color, shade and size are part of the charm.

You also can get the sparkling-glass look in textured wallpaper from Maya Romanoff. Beadazzled™ is a glass-beaded wall surface that, at $200 a linear yard, may not glitter like gold but costs almost as much, mayaromanoff.com

Gadgets for Comfort and Convenience

Just can’t bear to part with your vinyl records? Hammacher Schlemmer has the answer:a stereo system that records LPs onto CDs. The company also markets a turntable that plugs into your computer and converts vinyl to MP3 format for playback on an MP3 device; $399.95, hammacher.com

Comfortably read or work on your laptop in a chair or in bed with a rolling reading table from Brookstone®. The tabletop tilts and locks in place, and the height adjusts from 28 to 38 inches; $149.95, brookstone.com

Who needs an old-fashioned ice bucket when you can have an electronic ice bucket that keeps champagne or any chilled wine at the peak of perfection. The bucket has 10 presets ranging from 37 to 122 degrees (mulled cider, anyone?). A blinking LCD indicates that the wine is chilling, and the bucket stops when the beverage is ready to serve; $59.95, sharperimage.com

Nature’s Color Palette

Kermit the Frog would be proud that his favorite color, moss, is making a comeback. This year’s key colors are coming down to earth. According to Color Marketing Group (CMG), an international association of more than 1,000 color designers, nature rules the palette for home decor. “The mainstreaming of environmentalism is the key to next year’s colors,” says the group’s executive director, Jaime Stephens.

Specifically look for four basic color groups, green being the most predominant. Soft, botanical greens, such as fern, moss, seafoam and avocado, will take the lead. Sky blue, ocean blue and azure shades (true blues from nature) will abound. Brown is the new beige, but not just any brown. Think rich latte brown, chocolate brown, scrumptious brown. Lighter shades will take on the flat tones of stone and soil. The accent colors will come from the spice bazaars of north Africa and the sun-rusted roofs of the Caribbean. Look for deep, rich ethnic reds and burnt oranges.

ECO Hits Home

Green is more than the go-to color for decorators this year. Home decor focused on earth-friendly furnishings and sustainable materials (a.k.a. “green design”) has finally come into its own. More than just pretty, this design revolution figures to be part of a new lifestyle and attitude.

From wall coverings to case goods, from upholstery to flooring, furnishings made from recycled, renewable or sustainably harvested materials have taken hold. Interior fabrics woven from starch-based plants, like corn, rice and beets (bio-based materials), in fashion-forward designs
boosted Carnegie Fabrics into showrooms around the country.

Cheryl Terrace, whose design company, Vital Design Ltd., is one of New York’s premier green interior design firms, also cites an exciting new collection of bamboo-based chintz from Beacon Hill Design. “Up to now, bamboo fabric has been in rough textures, like a terry cloth, but this has a finish and a ‘hand’ that feels like linen,” she said. “It’s glorious.”

Leading green furniture suppliers include Branch, where designer Daniel Michalik conceives contemporary designs in cork, and Verde Design, a Chicago-based company that produces upholstered pieces using natural latex foam.

Stylish and contemporary case goods from Vivavi also generated lots of showroom buzz. The company’s philosophy is “live modern + tread lightly,” and it specializes in a line of children’s furnishings that are as artful as they are eco-friendly.

Autumn Turf Quiz

So you think you’re all done with your lawn just because it’s fall? Think again. Here’s a turf-tips quiz about prewinter lawn care, as devised by the Soil Sciences Department at Michigan State University. See how much you know—or don’t know!

1. When is the best time to get control of broadleaf weeds?

a. summer

b. spring

c. autumn

d. it doesn’t matter

Answer: c. October is the ideal time to control broadleaf weeds because they are storing carbohydrates in their root systems and are more susceptible to herbicide applications.

2. When do you apply herbicides?

a. cool days after a rain

b. sunny days

c. cloudy but dry days

Answer: b. Apply herbicides on a sunny day when rain is not in the forecast for 24 hours. You want the herbicide to stay on the leaf surfaces and not be immediately washed off.

3. Which is best?

a. rake off all the leaves that have fallen on the lawn

b. mulch leaves into the lawn with a mower

c. leave them alone; the turf needs the winter “cover”

Answer: b. Mulching leaves returns nutrients and organic matter to your lawn. Make sure your lawn mower blade is still sharp after a summer of mowing. Go slowly to allow the leaves to be “churned” into minute particles. Try to mow the leaves when they are moist from the morning dew. This will prevent the leaves from flowing all over the place and hold down “leaf dust.”

4. Lowering the mower height for the final cutting of the season is:

a. a good idea

b. a terrible idea

c. neither good nor bad

d. too much trouble

Answer: a. When you get past the leaf-mulching period in the fall and the turf has essentially stopped its top growth, it’s OK to lower the mowing height and give the lawn a nice short cut for the winter months. Don’t scalp it, though. Usually lowering one notch (about a half inch) is sufficient.