Century Furniture’s outdoor lines show off the same attention to style and detail as their renowned indoor furniture, as well as their commitment to sustainability. Plantation-harvested teak (rather than forest-harvested), water hyacinth rattan, and their wide range of durable outdoor fabrics make outdoor furniture selection fun as well as eco-conscious.

West Bay:

Palm Beach:

Bernhardt made a splash this year with their unique line of outdoor furniture. The chunky knit look of the Wailea swivel chairs looks more like a designer indoor chair than an outdoor piece, but it has the durability and quality always present with Bernhardt. Their patio sets are unlike anything else on the market.

Wailea:

Sanibel:

Padma’s plantation takes sustainability seriously. Their line has evolved from sustainable natural materials like bamboo and water hyacinth to case goods made from reclaimed woods. Their styles are fun and versatile, trending from rustic modern to Paris bistro to traditional.

Barbados:

Ralph table / Boca chairs:

Castelle has been showcasing their handcrafted luxury outdoor furniture for over 40 years. The customizability of the lines is perfect for one-of-a-kind patios that will be the envy of the neighborhood. They have a vast array of options for fabric, metal and wood finishes, tabletops, and accessories.

Avenue:

Monterey:

North Cape – Universal:

Lane Venture is a luxury brand that combines high style with superior quality. Their drainable cushions dry quickly and come in exclusive fabrics. For a truly curated look, these collections will bring your patio to the next level.

Cocoon:

Winterthur:

Summer Classics sets itself apart with options like cast and wrought aluminum frames, nano-ceramic pre-wash for a more durable powder coat paint and UV-resistant resin wicker. Their pieces are versatile, and the various lines will complement any backyard.

Malta:

Havana:

Lexington offers the kind of customization that will make a space feel truly unique. You can choose from 175 all-weather performance fabrics in many colors and patterns, including designer options like trim and fringe. Their outdoor line runs the gamut from traditional to modern, so there’s something for every style.

South Beach by Tommy Bahama:

Tres Chic:

Aviano:

Jensen Leisure Furniture is a fantastic line if you’re looking for something of quality craftsmanship and made from sustainably sourced materials. They use FSC-certified Ipe, which is insect and decay resistant like teak, but is almost four times harder than teak and so dense it doesn’t float in water.

Jensen – Coral Line:

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Kitchens are notorious for being neutral-colored spaces. With white or grey cabinetry and tile so prevalent, even a well-designed kitchen can run the risk of feeling washed out. It’s important to incorporate color to make a space feel inviting.

Aside from a bright bowl of fresh fruit on the counter, how do we add color to kitchens? There are several ways to go about this.

Area rugs can really spice up a kitchen, and having something soft underfoot can be a blessing to anyone who spends a lot of time at the stove. The opportunities for pattern and color are virtually endless in this category, so let your creativity out to play. Choose something that’s durable, preferably with synthetic fibers – avoid wool or antique rugs.

Counter stools are a fun way to bring pops of color into the kitchen. These chairs are a way to continue a color theme that might be prevalent throughout your house. In this kitchen (as well as throughout the rest of the home), red is the repeating pop of color that shows up in accent furniture, accessories and sculpture.

Don’t overlook window treatments – they are design opportunities. Fabric shades in fun patterns are a great way to stylize a space. Traditional kitchens do well with traditional patterns like damask, modern kitchens work with bright geometric patterns, and ginghams or plaids pair nicely with the modern farmhouse look.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have something special already integrated into the structure of the home. The brick in this kitchen brings texture and color to the white cabinetry and neutral countertops. This space feels unique. Not every kitchen has a fireplace – embrace the architectural elements you have! This could include wood beams, paneled ceilings or even the subtle colors of a slate floor.

Artwork goes a long way toward making a home feel complete. Your kitchen is no exception to this rule. In a kitchen with neutral cabinetry, floors and furnishings, colorful artwork draws the eye and makes a huge statement.

Paint is a great inexpensive option. Because there’s generally less wall space in a kitchen, you can really go bold here. Choose a color that complements the other rooms in your house, particularly ones you can see from the kitchen. This will make your home feel cohesive. In this kitchen, dark blue walls tie into the banquette seat covers as well as an accent chest in the living room.

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Accessorizing completes a room the way jewelry completes an outfit. It’s the finishing touches that make a space feel like home. Good interior design always incorporates the personality of the homeowner, and accessorizing is a fantastic way of doing this. Personalization is the difference between a home and a showroom.

Accessorizing in a tasteful and cohesive way can be daunting, until you learn the basic principles used by professional designers. Let’s look at some examples of beautiful accessorizing.

In a room with a neutral palette, you have a great opportunity to incorporate color with accessories. Clean white bookshelves are a fantastic backdrop for your most colorful books and sculptures. In this room, the color in the bookshelves becomes a focal point, inviting you to grab a book and curl up for a good read.

Lean some artwork against the wall for another layer of design, adding smaller items on the shelf in front of it. This etagere shows how bookshelves don’t need to be limited to books. Framed art, boxes, and pottery work together to show off this homeowner’s personal style.

If you prefer a cleaner look, go with a color scheme like the one in this photo. Books can be covered in fun or neutral paper.  Turn them on their sides to create little display platforms. Blue is carried throughout this space from the chandelier to the handrails to the books and coral sculptures.

For tabletops, statement lamps can feel like works of art. Pair them with books and small mementos that are unique to you.

Walls above shelves and tabletops are an excellent way to add dimension. Look beyond artwork and photography to find hanging sculptural pieces that draw the eye up.

Spaces don’t have to be cluttered to feel accessorized. Even with a minimalist look, there are opportunities for personalization.  Keep objects to a minimum, but make them bold and fun.

Height differences are a key element of accessorizing. Try to find a mixture of different-height objects to fill the space.  In this living room there are tall, mid-height, and short vases on the sideboard, opposite from a couple of stacked books to give the vignette balance.

Plants and natural objects provide organic shapes and textures that offset harder surfaces like stone countertops or metal fixtures.  A little green makes a space feel alive, whether the plants themselves are real or faux.  Plants also give an opportunity for color or texture in the vessel they are placed in. Rustic pottery has a very different feel than a cube concrete planter.  Do what is right for your style.

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MDG to the rescue!

After meeting with the client and hashing out a game plan and budget, the MDG team got together an extensive finishing scope that would have the house feeling “done” in no time.  We worked with all the existing pieces that the client already invested in and added wallcovering, decorative fabrics, window treatments as well as other finishing touches that made the house feel warm, cozy, and complete.

Dining Room- Before & After

All the client’s existing furniture was gorgeous, it just needed the backdrop to make it all shine.

Breakfast Room- Before & After

Updated art & window treatments finish off this eating area with some nice softness.

Family Room Before & After

Toys to the basement and the family reclaims the family room in style.  The addition of the trim helps add visual interest to an otherwise boring wall.

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When our clients bought their new home, they felt the kitchen did not quite fit the style of the home. MDG agreed on that point. The cabinet selection felt builder’s grade for such a custom space.  They did not want to go into a full renovation but wanted to update the space and add a hood that fed to the outside (the current hood was just a recycled air hood – not great for all the Indian food our clients loved to cook).

MDG created a plan to reface all the existing cabinets with new doors, raised the height of the soffit of the cabinets, updated the hood, and updated the backsplash.  We kept the existing countertops, appliances and light fixtures. We changed the color of the wall cabinets to a darker espresso color instead of the dated cherry finish and updated the white paint finish of all the surrounding cabinets.  New barstools were added to pick up the color of the backsplash.

Overall the kitchen renovation was approximately 1/3^rd of a full renovation, approximately $25,000 for the work completed.

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Basement playrooms are an interesting animal depending on where you’re at in the journey of parenthood.  New parents tend to get extremely anxious about their three-year-old playing on another floor in their home while the seasoned parent (usually one with a second child) is happy for the peace and quiet.

Without a doubt, the overwhelming accumulation of STUFF by that small human being you call your child will soon overwhelm your home. So, the basement is sure to become a needed bit of real estate for you to regain your sanity.  Many parents believe they can organize their way out of the accumulation nightmare that can come with young children, but the truth is, stopping the accumulation of TOYS is the real battle.

The University of Southern California Los Angeles did an anthropological study regarding our consumption and our homes. One of their observations was that most families complain that they have no space, yet the number of toys owned by children takes up a large portion of that space. When given a value, toys usually represent a large fraction of the monies that families claim they need to live better. And American children buy 40% of all toys manufactured. Think about that…  REALLY THINK ABOUT IT!  Our children’s toys are making us poorer.

But wait!  “I didn’t buy all of them”, you say.

Sure, but all those toys take up valuable real estate, both in your home and in your mind.  They add to overall clutter which has been proven to create anxiety for most people. Maybe the toys aren’t making you financially poor, but they may be making you mentally poor.

What do I take away from this?  First, we need to consider limiting not only the space but also the number of things in any playroom.  This is not only better for the environment (WIN) but also financially better for the family (WIN, WIN).  By creating dedicated creative play spaces, we teach children the value of space, keeping that space clean and organized, and how to care for our things in a meaningful way. These lessons will be important one day  when your children will have their own apartment, office, or home.

Play is one way that children learn about the world.  By approaching a play space thoughtfully, one might even find some hidden sanity in all those Legos!

Who knew our child’s playroom and the environment were so interconnected!

So here are some tips to help cull the explosive expansion of your child’s toy collection…

• Limit new toys to ten a year. Our need for consumption comes from the never-ending choices we have. Children are overwhelmed when we give them too many choices and we also teach then to devalue what they already have.  By limiting the toys available in a play space, kids use their creativity to cross play with what is available to them.  By limiting we also teach them to care for what they have.
• Create a space that make organizing and SEEING easy. Keep toys in clear containers and label them, so the child learns to relate items with the words. Your goal is to encourage self-clean-up.
• Aim towards creativity! Create bins that encourage creation. With a dedicated space, messy art projects and creative activities are a bit easier and there’s less need for an immediate clean up.
• And with that creativity, what can you do to recycle? Kids love cutting up old magazines and creating objects from old things…think of sock puppets!
• With that said, carpet tiles are a great solution for messy rooms. By using carpet tiles in this kid’s playroom, we hid lots of sins AND allow for replacement when needed.
• Give your kids experiences instead of things!

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Our Sicklerville client wanted to break out of the typical kitchen renovation.  They wanted to move their kitchen to their unused dining room and create a large open plan design. They also knew they wanted to add a little bling!

Our client’s budget was initially too low for their goals, which we discussed at our first meeting.  To help them understand the budget, we created several different space plans that included different sized kitchen spaces along with correlating prices for those proposed kitchens. This gave them the chance to see how the size of the kitchen and the number of cabinets would affect the overall cost of the project.

The fact that the client wanted to move the whole kitchen 10 feet added an undeniable cost that could not be negotiated. So, the quantity of products, as well as the quality of those products, had to dictate the budget. Once they picked their plan and understood that the budget was going to be higher, MDG then moved forward with the selection process.

We wanted the backsplash to stick out as a large focal point.  With the addition of some pantry cabinets, there was no need for the upper cabinets along the stove wall.

We took the opportunity to add the “bling” tile to the project.  This stone and metal backsplash created a show-stopping feature that set the tone for the rest of the kitchen.

The simple grey and gold palette was a warmer palette than the typical grey offerings.  The combination of the grey, golds, and beiges that are already throughout the house add an overall continuous aesthetic that the client can build upon for years.  The stylish light fixtures, appropriate furnishings, textural window treatments, and the pop of color art finish a clean and contemporary space.

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I hate working from home.  This feeling comes from a few places.  First, I am not interested in making my home an office.  I want my home to be a place of relaxation.  Second, I just don’t have an efficient space to work!  Having a dedicated space to spread out, I believe, is the key to a successful home workspace.

We have helped many clients transform their home offices into efficient home workspaces.  At MDG, we not only take into consideration the need for a practical work area, but also the overall aesthetic so the workspace blends with the room itself.  There’s nothing like an oversized desk to kill a design intent!

Another bonus with our designs is that they are totally kid proof!

WHAT?  How do you make anything kid proof these days?  By choosing materials that will withstand the battles of the babes, that’s how.

All of the following designs are done with laminate. Yes, you read that right: laminate.  These wooden designs are really laminate wood wannabes. Your eye may not be able to tell the difference but your pocketbook sure will know.

Weekday Work Warrior – Audubon, NJ

Our client was going to begin a longish road to retirement, agreeing to work more from home.  She liked the concept, but knew her existing workspace was not going to cut it.  She wanted to create a space that was clean, neat, and organized.  She didn’t want the space to feel like an office, but more an extension of her home.  By creating this custom desk, we were able to expand her work surface and add space for a printer and an extra monitor.

Basement Bookkeeping – Princeton, NJ

Keeping the home organized is not a small task.  Our Princeton client wanted a space to spread out and get organized.  The general footprint of the room allowed for a generous desk space and storage.  Projects both large and small can now be tackled and limited to this work/play space (instead of the kitchen table).

Glamour Games – Newtown, PA

Desk or vanity? Our client didn’t have to decide in her dedicated dressing room, as this custom piece is designed to act as both.  I can personally attest that there is nothing like a space to “get ready” in.  In fact, I didn’t know how awesome it was until I dedicated an extra bedroom in my home as a “dressing room”.  I found that I spent loads of time in the space enjoying the art of getting ready.

Dedicated to Design – Haddonfield, NJ

This zebra wood laminate shows up with amazing vertical detail in this console piece.  With plenty of file storage and storage for all things a design studio might need (paper, markers, tools), this console is not only nice to admire, it is practically perfect.

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When looking for new team members, I am always in search of the triple threat!  In the theater world, this would be someone who can sing, dance and act equally well.

In the context of an interior designer, this would mean he or she could develop new clients, service existing clients with amazing and fresh designs all while project managing multiple jobs from beginning-to-end.

Recently, I was lucky enough to be introduced to Sara Mass though a mutual colleague and it was clear from the moment that I met her, Sara Mass was a triple threat that would fit right in at MDG.

Sara started her professional career working in financial services. After years of sharpening her analytical skills in New York and Boston, Sara decided it was time to follow her true passion by pursuing an interior design certificate through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

Sara cut her teeth within the intensely competitive design community along the Jersey Shore, primarily on projects in Avalon and Stone Harbor. However, she has also spearheaded projects from Pennsylvania to Florida.

What has impressed me most about Sara over the past five months is her ability to manage her design schedule for a client while simultaneously managing construction meetings and updates for the same job.

And the fact that she does all of this with a smile on her face makes her a wonderful addition to the MDG team.

Sara’s attention to finish details shows a sophistication in mixing in materials.

A sweet dining area extends the kitchen without feel “kitcheny.”

A mix of high and low price points still feels rich in this beach paradise.

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It would be a waste of our services not to encourage our clients to try something they never thought of before. It may be a new pattern or textured fabric they’d never considered before. Or, it may be a colorful and fun piece of furniture!

In 16 years of creating spaces, I have never had a client regret one of these bold choices. In fact, they all comment about how much they love their pieces, even years after we completed the projects. Despite it seeming to be a departure from their initial vision, clients are often surprised at how many compliments they get when they step out of their comfort zone. Often, the biggest fans are family members.

A great piece of furniture becomes a family heirloom–one that your children, and your children’s children will remember for years to come. So, instead of passing by that brightly colored chest, give it a second look. You may be surprised by the joy a surprising piece can deliver on a daily basis.

Bungalow Five is known for colorful take on lacquered furniture. This Bell Desk in Navy is a statement piece that will stand the test of time.

This Isadora Console Table in Malachite Green may be the perfect touch to your new room.

Katie Ice by World’s Away is a glass chest of drawers painted a soft aqua color, perfect for your next beach home.

You can fully customize your piece’s style, hardware and color with Vanguard’s new ‘Make It Yours’ Bedroom Collection. Don’t like the colors offered? Vanguard will customize your piece with a custom color from Benjamin Moore for a small upcharge.

One of my all-time favorite pieces is this award-winning Lotus Bar from Century Furniture. I have seen it done in so many colors, and they always look amazing. My personal favorite is this teal color with an emerald green finish.

Make a passionate statement with Hickory Chair’s Carved Chest in a powerful shade of red.

This budget-friendly Avenue Chest from Universal Furniture comes in a shade called “blueprint” that I think is the perfect shade to set off a nautical theme.

Don’t be afraid to try something bold and exciting when it comes to furniture. A bright hue or unconventional design may make that piece you’re not quite sure about into your favorite part of the room.

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