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The rising cost of supply, combined with global warming, makes energy-efficient technologies essential today. Floor heating – which uses 30% less energy than warm water heating and over 10% less than ceiling radiation plates – is well placed to reduce energy consumption, cutting carbon emissions and slashing energy bills.

Despite the clear advantages of floor heating, building owners have traditionally been resistant to it. This is the result of myths that have been spread about the technology and a lack of knowledge about what modern floor heating systems are capable of in both commercial properties and residential housing.

Perhaps the largest myth about floor heating is that it simply cannot work for large scale structures. This is fortunately not the case. For example, so enamoured was one major German supermarket chain, a familiar face on the UK high street for its superb value. They installed under floor heating at 15 of its main distribution warehouses – covering 500,000m², which is equal to five Wembley Stadiums.

The heating that rises from the substrate is the source of many myths about floor heating. First amongst them is the belief that it creates flooring that is uncomfortably hot. This is untrue. As heat rises from the entire floor, it need only be a couple of degrees hotter than the desired air temperature.

It has also been said that providing heating from the substrate affects its strength. Some systems, which are laid under the substrate in fact, have no negative effect on its load bearing properties. Some commentators have even argued that as floor heating provides a stable temperature, it combats thermal shrinking and expanding and as such protects concrete substrates. Tough piping ensures the longevity of underfloor heating.

Laid under the substrate, floor heating does not restrict ability to insert fittings into the floor. This is because the drilling depth for fixings is limited by the depth of the substrate. Ceiling fittings however may prove an inconvenience if the purpose of a commercial structure changes.

Another major misconception about under-floor heating is that it proves difficult to control. Again, this is not the case. Fed from a single feed, the hard wearing piping that runs under the substrate can be arranged to ensure that buildings are heated uniformly and thoroughly. Operated by digital controls and automatic thermostats in the same way as home systems, it ensures comfort for users.

It can also be localised. Some under-floor heating allows heating pipes to be laid in greater or lesser concentrations. This allows individual comfort zones to be implemented, such as under drafty windows or doors.

Lately, sustainability has rightfully become a key concern to the construction industry, due to new construction laws.

Specifiers have a duty to implement environmentally beneficial technology wherever possible, whether it is energy saving light bulbs or recycled ply-boarding. Combining the best in performance with immense carbon – and cost – reduction, under-floor heating systems are the prime choice for large scale heating.

They can do this in two different way one of these ways is a full interior design which means they will take everything out of the room, or the house and redesign it with your ideas mixed in with their ideas and how you want the house to feel for example you could want to feel warm, modern or you could want it to look like a older house, and then they mix all the ideas together and incorporate them into desired room, and the finished product will be better than you would of expected.

The other way that they can make your house feel more like a home is by just adding a few other things like fireplaces and different styles of lamps and all the small things like this can add character and the desired feel to the house that you want. But in all interior design  is quite difficult to achieve the look that you want and there are lots of look to chose from for example there is the modern look, traditional look and the cabin look these are the main looks that people choose when they design there house. I am going to tell you how to pull that look off and what colours and styles you use but like every other design you will need to put 100% of your time and effort into the house or you could end up with a house that you might not like and it could end up costing you a lot of money.

The modern look: For each room of the house the style and look will be different so for this one I will be telling you how to make your kitchen look modern. This type of look consists of lots of big glass windows sometimes covering the whole wall to let as much light in as possible to make the room feel bigger and also the worktops in all of the modern kitchens I have seen all have floating worktops made out of black granite and have lots of secret storage spaces to keep all the kitchens essentials in.

The traditional look: To make your house look more traditional it doesn’t matter what type of house you are living in. To make house look older it is quite simple but it involves a lot time and patience. The first step to making your room look more traditional you could get some wooden beams to put on the ceiling to give it the traditional look, the next thing to get is a old metal fireplace that burns coal and you can gets these from most home designers but if you want a good one its going the cost a fair bit. Most old houses usually have their walls painted in a cream colour but some can be wall papered.

The cabin look: The cabin look is the easiest design to do as it is quite simple, all you have to do is have wooden floors, walls and ceilings and have spot lights. But the key bit in all cabin rooms is the wood-burning fireplace and this will also make the room have a warm feel to it.

Like I have said before, to design your house and build the room and to capture what you truly desire takes time and effort.

Brian Messana declares a hate for the word contemporary. When asked to describe the architectural style of Messana O’Rorke, he doesn’t care for minimalist either. “It’s too Zen,” he says. “We’re much more pragmatic.” Clearly, he and Toby O’Rorke found their ideal client in an Irish banker who’d purchased a four-bay redbrick 1853 town house in New York shortly before being transferred to Hong Kong. For the ensuing 12 years, he rented the house to a series of tenants-the last being TV personality Charlie Rose-and time, alas, took its toll. A renovation, the first since 1981, would be essential.
The owner, who’d meanwhile returned to Ireland, wasn’t sure if he would sell the renovated property, rent it out again, or keep it as a second home. But he harboured no ambivalence about the desired aesthetic. “There’s a Spartan-ness about how he lives,” O’Rorke says. Achieving simplicity, however, would be complicated. Though the house is 2,800 square feet, that generous amount of space is divided between three upper stories and a basement, and each of those was subdivided into four little rooms, a claustrophobic condition intensified by a trapezoidal footprint narrowing a full 8 feet from front to back. “Out of this hodgepodge, how can we create a sense of spaciousness?” Messana and O’Rorke wondered.
Their approach was to capture as much usable square footage as possible, to rigorously limit the number of interior elements, and to extract maximum impact from the chosen interventions. After gutting and restoring the rundown structure, Messana O’Rorke was ruthless in the pursuit of optimal functionality and clarity. The house used to have two desirable fireplaces per level, but one of each pair came out to make way for the closets so essential for clothing, audio-visual equipment, and mechanical systems. Not least of all, the closets also conceal the house’s distracting diagonal sidewall. With essentially rectangular volumes now established, Messana O’Rorke left the basement, the parlour floor, and the second story largely open-dominated, respectively, by the dining room, the living room, and the master bedroom. These primary rooms are street-front. Supporting spaces, such as the kitchen, study and bathrooms, are at the narrow rear, on either side of the stair hall. The top story, by contrast, is divided into two front-to-back guest suites.
Resulting rooms appear, at first glance, to be vanilla-plain. On closer inspection, an array of details heightens one’s perception and appreciation-of the angles and surfaces that give the interior a surprisingly vital, tectonic presence.

Walls, ceilings, and floors, separated from one another by narrow coves, become discrete elements with dynamic interrelationships. In the bathrooms, rectangular sinks float inches from the walls behind, adding architectural definition and making the small spaces feel larger. When possible, Messana O’Rorke eliminated the doors to closets and fitted them with concealed vertical fluorescent bars that cast a glow into adjoining rooms. “It creates the illusion that the space goes farther back than it actually does,” Messana observes.
Such a pristine environment requires a judicious selection of materials. As a contrast to the white walls, Messana O’Rorke chose oak flooring wire-brushed and lightly limed to bring out its vivid grain, simultaneously conveying the woodworker’s craft and the rawness of nature. Elsewhere, materials deliver surprises.

White-painted doors open to reveal closets lined in tactile walnut; statuary marble in the kitchen and the master bath was chosen for the painterly quality of the veining. Furnishings, selected with the same care, acquire the authority of sculpture-the Shaker-like table in the centre of the dining room, the vintage black leather-covered swivel chairs on the hair-on hide rug in the living room, the Hans Wegner chair in the monastic master bedroom. Architectural photography and ceramic objects add to the sophisticated drama.

The residential house refurbishment taken together, express Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s suitably terse description of his visual ideal: beinahe nichts, i.e. almost nothing. Or, as Spencer Tracy said of Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike, “Not much meat on her, but what’s there is cherce.” Messana O’Rorke’s client certainly seems to think so. As renderings became reality, his notions of selling or renting evaporated. He kept the house for himself.

Children fall in love with television shows and funny little cartoon characters which gives you inspiration for their bedroom theme, but just a few months down the line they seem to find some other obsession, which is particularly frustrating as not only have you bought them all the figures, and cuddly toys but you have also painted their room for that particular TV show.

I know by experience that the children will no doubt love their new colourful bedroom, and all the lovely visual things they have now that they didn’t before, but it took only two months for my nephew to no longer like his bedroom decoration which I spent hours painting using nothing but a very fine paint brush.

Although it may be nice to see their faces light up at the sight of their favourite characters at present, it is in no comparison to the face you pull when they turn around and tell you that they ‘hate’ it just a few months later. As a person with a lot of patience, I put on my best grin and asked what he wanted instead of the in the night garden theme.

Ben 10! I have a knack for painting, as I spent just a day drawing picket fences on all four walls, a tunnel for a Thomas the tank engine bed, and smoke clouds with letters spelling out my nephew’s name, but to be asked to paint ben 10 was daunting. After all in just a few months he will be back asking for yet another theme.

Now there is an addition to the family, a little brother for him- so I had to decorate the room to suit both ages. In the end I found the happy medium. His furniture is blue and green from bed to cupboard, so why not create a funky bedroom to last hopefully a bit longer than before. I painted the upper half of the room sky blue, with a scattering of white clouds, and the lower half leaf green- with a rather large tree in the corner which has got to be my best piece of art to date.

This was all a bit rushed however, and to be frank half hearted, if I could go back and do it all again, I think hand on heart I would just pay the professionals to do it. Whilst I am there I might just get the whole residential house refurbishment deal, so the rest of the house can be updated and replenished back to its former glory.

Do not make the same mistake as me, do a design that will suit the age they are now, and ambitiously the age they will be in 4 years’ time, or alternatively just get furniture which can be updated every now and then.

Country Originals

The most enduring and original interior decorating styles are the ones you can still find away from the cities. A traditional country home feels timeless because it is made to last.

Its blueprint has been developed over hundreds of years, in response to the landscape, the climate, and the requirements of farm work and of running an extended-family household.

Original country home decorating styles are, strictly speaking, not interior design styles. There is nothing ‘designed’ about them – no one sat down and said, “Right, let’s develop a stylish interior design concept for this west-facing living room!”

Similarly, redecorating in a new interior decorating style wouldn’t have entered the mind of someone who lived in a country home, say, 50 years ago. You usually ‘got it right’ the first time, and then you stopped worrying about it

City Fashions

Interior design styles, on the other hand, are much more at home in towns and cities. They go in and out of fashion all the time.  Sometimes they are inspired by the interior decorating styles (or fashions) of foreign countries – whatever is considered ‘exotic’ or ‘chic’ at the time.

In this tradition, home decorating styles have now turned into home decorating fashions, and fashion houses launch ‘home’ collections at least once a year. We’re told what our walls should be wearing this spring, and that it’s probably time to update our living-room.

If you’ve ever felt the pressure to spend time, energy and disposable income, dressing your home up in the latest interior decorating fashion – even when you’re actually happy with its current state – that’s your opportunity to create style rather than follow fashion.

Your home is the perfect place to surround yourself with what you love and what inspires you, and pursue happiness, and great design isn’t about fashion. Sometimes it’s even the opposite of fashion. Really stylish homes feel ‘right’ rather than ‘hip’, and they age very gracefully.

Fashion goes out of fashion. Style, never.

A stylish residential house refurbishment can be easily achieved, on simply a shoestring budget or on the other hand you could be extremely rich and have very little sense of style.

Interior design style can improve quality of life in addition to work surroundings. When businesses start-up, the majority hire in an interior designer: to ensure their business is aesthetically pleasing to both employees as well as clients.

Restaurants also use particular interior designers in order to draw the customer in, using certain colours and textures in a restaurant can boost sales by convincing customers they are hungry, when they may otherwise be full.

Interior design style can also be used to make life a little easier for the elderly and the disabled by incorporating user-friendly aspects into the home or environment that would not normally be found elsewhere.

Interior design style elements can be drawn from anywhere and anything. Many people choose an interior design style based on region, religion, mood, or simply on their personal taste.

While choosing an interior designer to decorate your home, you will be losing the personal aspect of having a home that feels like your own. This you should bear in mind. A big look that is about at the moment and that will always stay classic is the Americana look. This look takes objects from pre-Revolutionary times and utilizes them in the modern home. This is a broader range of interior design styles, covering decor from the 1770′s through the 20th century. The main focus is on red, white, and blue.

These are just a few of the hot trends that we continue to see incorporated into living spaces as well as businesses. But in no way are these the only ways to decorate your home. The range is broad and only limited by your imagination.

Over the years, many looks have come and gone in home interior design style. The numbers of trends are infinite and people love to mix and match trends in order to customize their look to match their personalities. But there are some hot trends that keep popping up and sticking with our modern society. The number one hot interior design trend is the French Neo-classical. It is a look that mixes the style of old money with Hollywood regency.

There are numerous books and classes available on interior design styles, so you can familiarize yourself with the aspects of interior design aspects and have a home you can be satisfied of. Interior Design Style is a great arena to explore your creative self and be able to share with others.

To make the most of your sitting room use colour, texture and your favourite pieces of furniture.

Colour is an essential element of any room, orange and red hues tend to encourage people to eat, so they’re great for the dining room while blues, green and neutral tones encourage relaxation and might be more suited to the sitting room.  Meanwhile, lighting is an important aspect and can create the mood in a room.

Wooden flooring and textured wallpapers are great texture boosters.  Just as colour has a massive influence on the warmth or coolness of a room, texture also plays a vital role in a space’s ambient temperature. The darker the colour and more detailed its texture –such as, hard wood panelling – the warmer the look.  The lighter the colour and smoother the texture such as polished marble or industrial flooring resin– the cooler the look.

But what about when clients visit? They’re not going to be overly impressed by a garden shed that limits light and space: Its needs to be made into a piece of architecture, a true demonstration of its occupants ’skills.

This has been translated through ‘suburban studio’, which is Ashton Porter’s north London work home and just about the more stylish garden shed you have ever seen. Clients are constantly blown away by the essence of true beauty and yet simplicity. They can see what kind of creative person they are employing and perhaps are inspired to capture their own little masterpiece.

So how do you transform a typically rusty and old garden shed into a piece of pure art? The first thing is to get the spatial relationship right. The suburban studio traced the history of their old but neglected building type from medieval times through to present day: analysing its contemporary form and translating it into their work home.

Suburban studio is what the work home project classifies as a ‘live nearby’ configuration.  This means that the work part of the work home is separate (the garden shed) with its own entrance and basic facilities- a WC and a small kitchen. Employees and visitors do not have anything to do with the domestic part of the building which is this case is mainly accommodated in the original 100 year old two storey semi.

Ashton Porter, the owner did not just stop there: he went further and created a separate little world of work. entering by the door marked ‘studio’ at the side of the house, visitors are suddenly greeted by a vaguely Japanese garden, with a goldfish pond, eucalyptus tree, a large areas of painted decking and a tiny circular lawn, no more than a token.  This is in effect a walled garden- a secret garden even- enclosed by dense hedges of bamboo and ivy and timber cladding.

The slatted timber cladding, black-painted is attached to the existing brick house, and by what its designers call a ‘floating fence’, is situated next to the studio, which is also slatted but painted grey.

Ashton Porter has a perfectly presentable office for the cost of just three to four years’ central London rent. It indeed saves the time and expense of commuting and it offers flexibility for the future.  If the practice expands it can remain as a satellite to a main office in town. If the practice shrinks, either the studio or the house could be let out to somebody else. With the addition of a shower, the studio could even become a granny flat or young person’s flat.

From glossy commercial flooring, to stunning timber cladding, there is no expense spared on detail- making this work home both efficiently functional and stylishly stunning. This remarkable property could indeed make the next big idea of 2011/2012.