Tangerine is the first new color to show up in the 2012 color trends, and from kitchen gadgets to these flip flops, it’s getting some attention. Teal appears almost as often as an accent. Since these two colors are at opposite ends of the color wheel, the really stand out when paired.

Although you may not want to convert your home to a tangerine and teal wonderland, you might want to consider adding some splashes of these colors to your home to provide a quick color update. Here are a few suggestions.

If your kitchen or a bathroom could use a brightener, you could add an area rug and some towels in these vivid colors. Look for rugs with a rubber backing that go in the washing machine. These colors need to be sparkling clean to work. This is a low-cost way to make a change.

Look for tangerine and/or teal throw pillows. Brighten up a chair or sofa with these colors and you’ve added an unexpected vivid element to your décor. Teal also stands out in glassware. Look for glass vases or bowls to perk up a bookshelf. If possible, set the glass against a white or light background to help the color shine. Notice how well the teal color works in this photo.

Tangerine works well in large color segments. Teal is better as a color accent. If you’re using both, have tangerine take the lead and let teal serve more in the background. Notice in the photo the tangerine sofa blends well in the room and the teal accents toward the back still have a presence.

Are you ready to take a color chance? How about tackling two of the stars of 2012, tangerine and teal?

Balance is something that we seek in many aspects of our lives: work, home, finances and family. Achieving a balanced room may be easier than finding balance between work and family or balancing the checkbook.

Creating a balanced design for your room can be done by simply rearranging furniture, lighting and accessories.

This living room is a nice example of a balanced room design. Centered off of the fireplace, the living room arrangement is balanced and symmetrical. When creating a balanced room design, think of Noah and the pairs of animals. Pairs are key in achieving balance in a room. The sofa in this living room faces the fireplace and anchors the seating area. Flanking it is a pair of tray-top side tables. These side tables would be the perfect place for a pair of table lamps. A pair of chairs sits across a coffee table from a pair of ottoman stools that serve as extra seating.

Low stools or ottomans make great seating in front of focal points like windows, televisions or fireplaces because they do not block the view. Centering the seating area is an area rug. This area rug is a little small and could extend under the seating to help tie all the elements together. Plants can make great accessories for a room. Other lighting and accessories would be nice additions to this living room. Dressing up the mantel and area above it would finish the room design.

Wood floors in the bathroom were once avoided because of the worry about the wood staining and warping with moisture.  However, with today’s hardwoods, engineered wood, and laminate floors, wood floors can work in the bathroom. In fact, they can make beautiful bathroom floors.

If you do choose to put wood floors, hardwood or engineered, in your bathroom, definitely talk with us first.  You’ll want to make sure that the wood you choose can withstand the humidity and moisture in a bathroom.  For this reason, laminate flooring might be a good choice to consider as well.  Laminate flooring has come a long way in the past few years. There is a wide selection of colors and wood grains that can imitate most woods.

Whatever flooring you do choose, a few accessories can warm up the floors and the bathroom.  One or two bathmats, or a larger cotton rug that can be washed, can be placed over the floor to absorb water from the tub or shower. A rug by the sink is another good idea.  Getting in the habit of wiping up splashes of water is a good idea for wood floors.

If you want to add heat under your wood floors, be sure to discuss this when choosing your flooring. The heating elements will need to be installed first.  This might also affect what flooring will work in the bathroom.

Wood flooring adds warmth to a bathroom that stone or tile doesn’t.  With some thought and added care, wood floors can work in the bathroom just as well as these traditional choices.

Salmon pink on the living room wall may not be for everyone, but this living room does a beautiful job of balancing the bold color on the wall with neutral furnishings. Bright color on the wall, like sunny yellow, grass green, or salmon pink, can bring life and energy to a room’s design.  Don’t be afraid of color on the walls. Just pick a color that you love and will be happy to live with everyday.

Of course, if you really love color you can have color on the walls, furniture or floor that contrasts and complements each other. Monochrome or multi-colored, colorful rooms can be calming or energizing depending on what color or colors are used. Pink can be a calming color, especially when paired with neutrals. The warm neutrals of the furniture and flooring in this living room create a warm, inviting living space.  The polka dots on the ottomans tie into the wall color with a subtle pop of pink.

Warm wood tones and creams on the furniture and floor could work with a number of wall colors. It is easy to replace a wall color with new paint or wallpaper which is much cheaper than investing in furniture and carpet.

Be bold with paint colors. You can always repaint if you get tired of the color. And if you have neutral furnishings, you can pick up the new color in accents and objects around the room. If you love salmon pink, incorporate it into your décor.

If you are frequent traveler, you’ve probably stayed in your fair share of hotel rooms.  The rise of boutique and designer hotels has pushed the design envelope on hotel rooms. Hotel design has evolved over the last few decades to become a great source of design inspiration for our own bedrooms. Luxury materials, sleek modern designs and thoughtful touches inspired by the best hotel rooms can infuse your own bedroom with chic design ideas.

The cookie cutter feeling of big chain hotels is not where we are finding our design inspiration, although those hotel rooms have benefited from the rising tide of hotel design. Boutique hotels, with their personal sensibilities are the leaders in hotel design.  Using modern furniture, classic designs, and even antiques in the rooms gives them the feeling of a guest room in someone’s home. Luxury linens with high thread counts, down comforters and a choice of pillows make these beds inspiring.

Added touches like chic bedside lighting, chandeliers and even floor lamps easily translate to a home bedroom. Thick carpet underfoot is great first thing in the morning. If you don’t have carpet in the bedroom, buy a large area rug for underneath the bed. Make sure it is large enough to extend far enough out from under the bed so that you can walk on it.

Next time you stay in a beautiful hotel, look around the room for inspiration for your own bedroom at home. You might be surprised what you find.

Decorating really begins at the front door. Whether you have a formal entry, steps, a porch or a portico, you’ll want to create a welcoming feeling before your guests ever step through the front door.

A beautiful front door is the first step in decorating your entry.  Paint can do wonders if replacing the door is not an option.  Second to the front door is lighting.  An overhead porch light can be as stylish and charming as an indoor fixture. A single sconce or a pair of sconces flanking the door is another option. Outdoor lighting has come a long way and you can find lighting that suits any style of architecture.

Pretty flowers or a pot of branches in the winter can decorate the area around the door. A seasonal wreath is a classic choice for any time of year. Keep the look clean and simple to highlight the door. Like elsewhere in the home too much of a good thing can make the space look cluttered.

Add a door mat for wet and muddy feet. Just inside the door add another area rug or mat to protect hardwood and tile floors.  If you have a tiled or wood entry and carpet throughout the home, you’ll definitely want a door mat.

Setting the tone for your style at the front door is a great way to make your house truly feel like your home.

The Romans used mosaic as flooring for their homes and bathrooms so we have them to thank for the beautiful tile mosaics still being used in flooring and bathrooms today.  Mosaic is a natural choice to be used as flooring and walls in the bathroom.  It also makes wonderful accents with other materials.

A narrow strip of colorful mosaic tiles add interest to the wall in this bathroom.  The natural stone color of the larger tiles is given a punch with the deeper red tones of the mosaic.  This is also a great example of a more expensive material used sparingly for big impact at low cost.  Adding a strip of mosaic tiles made of tumbled marble or glass adds a touch of luxury to even the simplest bathroom tiles.

Mosaic tiles on the floors and walls can mean a lot of grout to keep clean.  Adding a mosaic tile border around the middle of the floor or stripes of mosaic tiles would liven up a plain floor.  In the shower, mosaic tiles can be used with natural stone tile, ceramic tile or porcelain tiles.  Tumbled stone mosaic tiles would have less impact than a glass or colorful ceramic mosaic.  A single row of mosaic tile used as a border high in the shower or at waist height, or both would work well.

Mosaics can also be used to decorate a mirror and bath accessories. Find a flat plain frame to fit your bathroom mirror and cover it with mosaic tile that you use elsewhere to help bring together the design of the bathroom.

Whether you have toddlers who are just crawling around or teenagers having friends over, finding kid friendly (and kid tough) flooring is a must.  Carpet is a great choice, but there are other options out there besides traditional wall-to-wall carpet.  If you do choose wall-to-wall, make sure you are getting something that is not only soft underfoot but also durable and most importantly, stain resistant.

Wool carpeting is naturally stain resistant and durable. Wool carpet, like in this kid’s room, has a great texture but is also soft on feet. Cotton area rugs have the bonus of being washable (if they are not too big) in the machine or spot cleaned.  Carpets with patterns are also a good choice.  There are many pattern choices these days, ranging from modern to traditional and antique patterns.  These can be found in both area rugs and wall-to-wall.

If you have wall-to-wall carpet that you want to protect from little feet or messy teenagers, placing an area rug over the high traffic area or middle of the room is a smart, and stylish, addition to the floor.

Hardwood is durable, but can be slippery or tough on little ones. A natural wool or cotton area rug is a good way to make hardwood, or any hard surface flooring, more kid friendly.

Carpet squares make a smart choice for kid friendly floors. If a stain should occur, simply swap out the tile for a new one.  Cork is also a soft and natural flooring choice.

This cool bathroom was designed by Sarah Richardson’s show, Sarah’s House. It has a lot of wonderful and stylish design elements that all come together to make it feel polished and styled. Let’s take a look at the major elements of the bathroom.

Use of natural stone. Both the floor and counter top are white marble with gray veining. This is a classic choice of hard surface for bathrooms. Using the marble on both the floor and the counter helps unify the design in a relatively small space.

The glass shower enclosure also helps the small space feel bigger. A shower curtain would close off the space and make the shower feel smaller. The glass opens up the shower space and lets it flow with the rest of the room.

Small tiles are used in an interesting way. Creating stripes of color with small square tiles makes a bigger impact than using all one color or even having a random mosaic pattern. Horizontal stripes help to widen the feeling of the room. The tile is also a nice way to introduce color into the room.

A non-traditional bathroom mirror over the vanity is a nice way to add style to a small bathroom. The round mirror also echoes the round vessel sinks. Both circles break up all the linear shapes of the room.

Silvery sconces complement the silver frame of the mirror as well as the nickel bathroom fixtures, including the faucet and shower head.

In a small space, such as a bathroom, all design elements need to be well thought out to make the room feel bigger than its small footprint.

If your child is starting to outgrow a menagerie of stuffed friends, this approach can keep them out of the way without having them totally disappear. Or maybe you have a collection of old friends that you are not quite willing to tuck into a closet but would like to keep under better management.

One appealing solution is to create a set of boxes that permit arranging the stuffed crew in an inviting and imaginative way. Here we have about 22 animals living in peace while looking more interesting and appealing than they would scattered throughout a room

This multiple-space shadow box is the work of an afternoon for someone handy with basic carpentry. To dress it up you could add a back and some wallpaper or contrasting paint inside each area.

The secret to the charm of this display comes from the casual display of various toys, combining some open space with piles of different creatures. You can make the same magic in any room by breaking the balance rule a bit. Maybe you have a side table just perfect for a bowl filled with old coins, or a corner of your kitchen where all of your favorite cookie cutters just fit on one wall. Some small shelves and a few nails and you are reminded of cookies every time you glance that way.

The white paint on these shelves allow virtually any flooring choice, but you may want to go with wood stain instead if you have wood flooring and want to make the two pieces connect. You have unlimited choices if you’ll just think outside the box when deciding how to display treasured possessions.