How to Select Art for Your Home

1.Look at as much art as possible before you make your selection. In addition to museums and for-profit galleries, check out local outdoor exhibitions, co-op and non-profit galleries, and art in public spaces such as banks, restaurants and libraries. The internet is another great way to find a large variety of fine art available worldwide. One advantage of using the internet is that you can search for the specific kind of art you are interested in, whether it's photography, impressionism, bronze sculpture, or abstract painting.
2.Search for great art that you favor. eBay is they best place to search. Check out the self-representing artists for your best values. Stay clear of the assembly line Chinese art, as these are mostly ripoffs from legitimate artists on eBay. There are many artists who represent themselves at a savings to you. Check out the SRA, Folk Art and Contemporary categories for your best buys! Don't forget to check feedback. Numerous negatives will often burn you. Read about the seller and ask questions before you bid. If they don't respond, look on down the line. You'll find a seller you like who will respond.
3.Visit school art shows. If you live near a big city which has a well-known Art School, find out when students are going to exhibit their work and attend the show. Though students at famous European schools are likely to be asking more for their work than unknown small town schools, you are still going to be buying cheaper than at a commercial gallery, you know the artist is a top performer in their year, you can be sure they have put a lot of work into their piece, and who knows, they may become very famous and their early paintings will be sought after!
4.Select art by size to fit a particular space. Art that is too large will overwhelm and art that is too small will be lost and look out of proportion. The bolder the art, the more room it needs to breathe. Measure the space you want to hang the art and leave enough "white space" so that the painting will not feel crowded.
5.Choose one that harmonizes with the colour of your room. When selecting a painting to match color, select one or two of the boldest colors in your room and look for art that has those colors in it. You're not looking for an exact match here. Picking up one or two of the same colors will send a message that the painting belongs in this environment.
6.Opt for paintings that matches the style of the paintings is your room. If your house is filled with antiques, for example, you'll want to use antique-style frames on the paintings you hang there. If you have contemporary furniture in large rooms with high ceilings, you'll want to hang large contemporary paintings.
7.Amend your room if the painting doesn't suit. If you find that when you get the art home and place it on a wall or pedestal, it doesn't work with its surroundings. If you bring a painting home and it clashes with its environment, first try hanging it in various rooms on different walls. It may look great in a place you hadn't planned on hanging it. If you can't find a place where the art looks its best, you may need to make some changes in the room, such as moving furniture or taking down patterned wallpaper and repainting in a neutral color. The changes will be worth making in order to enjoy the art you love.
8.Hang correctly. As a rule, paintings should be hung so that the center of the painting is at eye level. Sculpture may sit on the floor, a table, or pedestal. Rules should be considered guidelines only, however, so feel free to experiment. One collector hung an acrylic painting on her bedroom ceiling so she could better view it while lying down.
9.Make the painting the center of attraction of your room of your house by playing down the other design elements such as window coverings, carpeting, wall coverings, and even furniture. A room crowded with other colors, textures, and objects will take the spotlight away from the art.
10.Experiment to learn what pleases you and what doesn't. Selecting and displaying art is an art in itself. You'll be well-rewarded for the time you invest by finding more satisfaction both in the art and in your home.

Pierre François Léonard Fontaine

Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (September 20, 1762, Pontoise, near Paris – October 10, 1853, Paris) was a neoclassical French architect, interior decorator and designer, who worked in such close partnership with Charles Percier, originally his friend from student days, from 1794 onwards, that it is fruitless to disentangle artistic responsibilities in their work. Together, Percier and Fontaine were inventors and major proponents of the rich and grand, consciously archaeological versions of neoclassicism we recognize as Directoire style and Empire style: see Charles Percier.

Dorothy Draper

Dorothy Draper (born Dorothy Tuckerman November 22, 1889, died March 11, 1969) was an influential and innovative American interior decorator of the early to mid 20th century. She helped inspire a generation of home improvement devotees with her 1939 book Decorating is Fun!, subtitled "How to Be Your Own Decorator".

Sybil Colefax

Sibyl Colefax (1874 – 22 September 1950) was a notable English interior decorator^[1] and socialite in the first half of the twentieth century.^[2]
She was born Sybil Halsey in Wimbledon into a noted society family^[3] and lived in Cawnpore until the age of 20 when she went on the Grand Tour. In 1901 she married patent lawyer Arthur Colefax, who was briefly the MP for Manchester South West in 1910. Based in Lord North Street, Westminster they became famous for their high society parties.
When she lost her fortune in the 1929 Wall Street Crash she began a consultancy to advise on interior design. In 1938 she began a partnership with John Fowler.^[4] During the Second World War she organised a soup kitchen and continued to entertain^[5].
She died on September 22 1950 in her London home.

Syrie Maugham

Syrie Maugham (née Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo, 10 July 1879 - 25 July 1955) was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best-known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white.
BIRTH : She was born in Hackney, England, a daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the Barnardo's charity for destitute children, and his wife, the former Sarah Louise "Syrie" Elmslie.
CAREER : In a career that lasted from 1922 until her death, Syrie Maugham became a legendary interior designer credited for designing the first all-white room. She established her own interior decorating business, Syrie LTD., at 85 Baker Street, London in 1922, and as her reputation grew, so did her business. She later opened shops in New York and Chicago, and designed homes in Palm Springs and cities all over America.
Syrie was born during the Victorian Era, a time characterized by dark colors and small spaces. Syrie rejected these norms to create rooms filled with light and furnished in multiple shades of white and mirrored screens. In addition to mirrored screens, her trademark pieces included: books covered in white vellum, cutlery with white porcelain handles, console tables with plaster palm-frond, shell, or dolphin bases, upholstered and fringed sleigh beds, fur carpets, dining chairs covered in white leather, and lamps of graduated glass balls. Maugham also started the trend of stripping and repainting French provincial antiques with a secret craquelure technique. This technique remains a popular treatment seen in many modern interior designs.
Although it cannot be said that Syrie was the first interior designer, she did bring more freedom and creativity to the design profession. Elsie de Wolfe was quite formal, correct, and respectful, but Syrie drew from a various mixture of sources ranging from Picasso to baroque antiques. She reinvented classic furniture with crackled paint applications. She used strange colors. And she did the first all-white room.
She is most well known for the music room at her house at 213 King's Road in London and the salon at her villa at Le Touquet, a society resort in France. The music room was actually the only room designed in all white, but many other rooms were primarily white with accents of color in the draperies or pillows. The salon was decorated entirely in shades of beige, relieved only by pale pink satin curtains. Although she made her fortune and fame with her white decors, by the mid 1930s she had largely given up the white decors to create interiors with baroque accessories and color schemes punctuated by bright green, shocking pink, and bold reds. Cecil Beaton remembered leaf-emerald wallpaper, magenta cushions, and Schiaparelli pink.
Her contemporaries included Elsie de Wolfe and Lady Sybil Colefax. Her clients included Wallis Simpson, the Prince of Wales, the actress Marie Tempest, the Texas politician Oveta Culp Hobby, the Reader's Digest founder DeWitt Wallace, the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli and Capt. Edward Molyneux, art patron Edward James, American socialites such as Mona Williams, Babe Paley, and Bunny Mellon, the playwright Clare Booth Luce, and British socialites such as Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll and the Hon. Stephen Tennant.
Marriage to Henry Wellcome :
In 1901, on a visit to Khartoum with her father, she met Henry Wellcome, an American-born British industrialist who had made his fortune in pharmaceuticals (his firm became Burroughs Wellcome). She was 22 and he was 48, and they married soon after. In 1903 they had a son, Henry Mounteney Wellcome, who apparently had a learning disability that kept him apart from his family for most of his childhood and youth.
The Wellcomes' marriage was not happy, and Syrie reportedly had numerous affairs, including with the department store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, Brig. Gen. Percy Desmond Fitzgerald, and the novelist William Somerset Maugham. Eventually, after some years of separation, she became pregnant with Maugham's only child, Mary Elizabeth, who was known as Liza.^[1] When the child was born in Rome, Italy, she was given Wellcome's surname. Wellcome then publicly sued for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent.
Marriage to W. Somerset Maugham :
Syrie Wellcome and W. Somerset Maugham married in 1917 in New Jersey, although he was predominantly homosexual and would spend much of his marriage apart from his wife. They divorced in 1928. Her divorce settlement from Maugham was their house at 213 King's Road, fully furnished, a Rolls-Royce, and 2,400 pounds a year for her and 600 pounds a year for Liza.
In his 1962 memoir Looking Back Maugham virulently criticised his former wife, which caused a public outcry. After Maugham's death in 1965 Beverley Nichols, a former lover of Maugham's and a close friend of Syrie's, wrote in rebuttal a defence of her called A Case of Human Bondage (1966).

Interior decorators

* Syrie Maugham
* Sybil Colefax
* Dorothy Draper
* Pierre François Léonard Fontaine

Many of the most famous designers and decorators during the 20th Century had no formal training. Sister Parish, Mark Hampton, Robert Denning and Vincent Fourcade, Stephen Chase, Mario Buatta, John Saladino, Kerry Joyce, Kelly Wearstler, Nina Petronzio, Barbara Barry, Jeanine Naviaux and many others were trend-setting innovators in the worlds of design and decoration.

On television

Interior decoration has become a popular television subject. In the United Kingdom (UK), popular interior decorating programs include 60 Minute Makeover (ITV), Changing Rooms (BBC) and Selling Houses (Channel 4). Famous interior designers whose work is featured in these programs include Linda Barker and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. In the United States, the TLC Network airs a popular program called Trading Spaces, a show with a format similar to the UK program Changing Rooms. In addition, both Home & Garden Television (HGTV) and the Discovery Home networks also televise many programs about interior design and decorating, featuring the works of a variety of interior designers, decorators and home improvement experts in a myriad of projects. Fictional interior decorators include the Sugarbaker sisters on Designing Women and Grace Adler on Will & Grace. There is also another show called "Home MADE". There are two teams and two houses and whoever has the designed and made the worst room, according to the judges, is eliminated. Another show on the Style Network, hosted by Niecy Nash, is Clean House where they re-do messy homes into themed rooms that the clients would like. Other shows include Design on a Dime and Designed to Sell.

Interior Styles

A style, or theme, is a consistent idea used throughout a room to create a feeling of completeness. Styles are not to be confused with design concepts, or the higher-level party, which involve a deeper understanding of the architectural context, the socio-cultural and the programmatic requirements of the client These themes often follow period styles. Examples of this are Louis XV, Louis XVI, Victorian, Islamic, Feng Shui, International, Mid-Century Modern, Minimalist, English Georgian, Gothic, Indian Mughal, Art Deco, and many more. The evolution of interior decoration themes has now grown to include themes not necessarily consistent with a specific period style allowing the mixing of pieces from different periods. Each element should contribute to form, function, or both and maintain a consistent standard of quality and combine to create the desired design. A designer develops a home architucture and interior design for a customer that has a style and theme that the prospective owner likes and mentally connects to. For the last 10 years, decorators, designers, architects and homeowners have been re-discovering the unique furniture that was developed post-war of the 1950s and the 1960s from new material that were developed for military applications. Some of the trendsetters include Charles and Ray Eames, Knoll and Herman Miller. Themes in home design are usually not overused, but serves as a guideline for designing.

Earnings

Interior design earnings vary based on employer, number of years with experience, and the reputation of the individual. For residential projects, self-employed interior designers usually earn a per-minute fee plus a percentage of the total cost of furniture, lighting, artwork, and other design elements. For commercial projects, they may charge per-hour fees, or a flat fee for the whole project. The median annual earning for wage and salary interior designers, in the year 2006, was $42,260. The middle 50% earned between $31,830 and $57,230. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $24,270, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $78,760.[4]

While median earnings are an important indicator of average salaries, it is essential to look at additional key factors in a discussion about revenue generated from design services. Location, demographic of client base and scope of work all affect the potential earnings of a designer. With regard to location, central metropolitan areas where costs of living expenses and median earnings are generally greater, so is the potential for higher earnings for the interior designers and decorators in these locations. Indeed, urban areas attract a greater population of potential clients thereby creating a greater demand for design services. Additionally, as the average square footage of homes and offices has increased over time, the scope of work performed translates directly to higher earnings. Scope refers to the overall size and detail of a project - materials, furnishings, paint, fabrics and architectural embellishments utilized are all examples of scope. As stated above, earnings for interior designers and decorators may include a margin charged to the client as a percentage of the total cost of certain furniture and fixtures used in the scope of work. Hence, as scope increases, so do earnings.

Working conditions

There are a wide range of working conditions and employment opportunities within interior design. Large corporations often hire interior designers as employees on regular working hours. Designers for smaller firms usually work on a contract or per-job basis. Self-employed designers, which make up 26% of interior designers,[2] usually work the most hours and may have difficulty finding clients to provide for themselves. Interior designers often work under stress to meet deadlines, stay on budget, and meet clients' needs. Design professionals, such as Architects, must then review and approve this work before it is allowed to be released to clients or State building departments for official review. Their work tends to involve a great deal of traveling to visit different locations, studios, or client's homes and offices. Usually this work is done under the supervision of a design professional such as an Architect. With the aid of recent technology, the process of contacting clients and communicating design alternatives has become easier and requires less travel. Some argue that virtual makeovers have revolutionized interior design from a customer perspective, making the design process more interactive and exciting, in a relatively technological but labor-intensive environment.

Disciplines

Not to be confused with interior decoration, interior design, which evolved from interior decoration, involves a multitude of technical, analytical, creative skills, and understandings of architectural elements. There is a wide range of disciplines within the career of interior design. Domestically the profession of interior design encompasses those designers who may specialize in residential or commercial interior design. Within residential design one can specialize in kitchen and bathroom design, universal design, design for the aged, multifamily housing amongst others. Other interior designers may dwell in the commercial or contract realm of interior space design. In addition to the above commercial interior designers may specialize in furniture design, healthcare design, hospitality design, retail design, workspace design, sustainability, and if they are a registered architect they can focus on the interior architecture of a space. It is the intent of the professional interior designer to improve the psychological and/or physiological well being of their clients. The professional interior designer achieves this by understanding their clients needs, seeking appropriate solutions, respect their clients social, physical and psychological needs and applying them in a safe and ecologically sensitive manner that promotes the health, safety and welfare of the clients. Interior decoration deals with the home renovations that can be easily and quickly changed, and at lower budgets such as changing kitchen cabinets, selecting wall paper, selecting furniture and usually does not deal with structural building codes. An interior decorator does not need a degree, but may have a diploma or certificate in interior decorating, while an interior designer would have a four year degree in interior design.

Specializations

In jurisdictions where the profession is regulated by the government, designers must meet broad qualifications and show competency in the entire scope of the profession, not only in a specialty. Designers may elect to obtain specialist accreditation offered by private organizations. In the United States, interior designers who also possess environmental expertise in design solutions for sustainable construction can receive accreditation in this area by taking the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) examination.

The specialty areas that involve interior designers are limited only by the imagination and are continually growing and changing. With the increase in the aging population, an increased focus has been placed on developing solutions to improve the living environment of the elderly population, which takes into account health and accessibility issues that can affect the design. Awareness of the ability of interior spaces to create positive changes in people's lives is increasing, so interior design is also becoming relevant to this type of advocacy.

Interior Design

Interior design is a multi-faceted profession in which creative and technical solutions are applied within a structure to achieve a built interior environment. These solutions are functional, enhance the quality of life and culture of the occupants, and are aesthetically attractive. Designs are created in response to and coordinated with code and regulatory requirements, and encourage the principles of environmental sustainability.

The interior design process follows a systematic and coordinated methodology, including research, analysis and integration of knowledge into the creative process, whereby the needs and resources of the client are satisfied to produce an interior space that fulfills the project goals.^[1]

The work of an interior designer draws upon many disciplines including environmental psychology, architecture, product design, and traditional decoration (aesthetics and cosmetics). They plan the spaces of almost every type of building including: hotels, corporate spaces, schools, hospitals, private residences, shopping malls, restaurants, theaters, and airport terminals. Today, interior designers must be attuned to architectural detailing including floor plans, home renovations, and construction codes. Some interior designers are architects as well.