Space and Light: How to Maximize the Potential of Your Home

Whether the property you live in is large or small, in the town or the country, a flat or a mansion, you'll want it to feel uncluttered, spacious, bright, and airy. Space & Light provides solutions on how to achieve this quickly and inexpensively, and gives clever, practical examples of real homes that look fabulous as a result. Elements covers those key points of interior design that affect space and light in the home (colour, pattern, and texture, storage, furniture, mirror and glass, windows, and lighting), and takes a close look at practical examples. The chapter Ideas for Living is a room-by-room analysis examining the specific needs of each room and how to satisfy these without compromising on a feeling of light and air. Each "room" closes with a summary of the ideas covered by applying them to an annotated example. The final section has six real homes that show how these ideas have been brought to life, and how specific issues such as poor natural light or limited space have been addressed and resolved. The book is thoroughly practical throughout, with specific, easy-to-achieve ways to maximize space and light in the home.

Table of Contents:
6 Introduction; 8 Elements; 10 Colour, pattern, and texture; How and why colours affect the look of a room; ways to use paint cleverly to make your home seem bigger and brighter; different types of paint; why texture is the new colour; how pattern can create visual clutter; how to mix-and-match plains, stripes, checks, and patterns to create the illusion of space and light; 22 Storage; Getting rid of clutter to bring space into your home; how to recycle, sell, or otherwise dispose of clutter, and where to put what's left over; practical, good-looking ideas for organization and storage of all kinds; 32 Furniture; Re-arranging the furniture to create clearer floor areas; choosing furniture that helps create space and makes your home feel lighter and brighter; 38 Mirror and glass; Clever tricks with mirrors to double the effect of space; how glass brings light into your life; replacing solid cupboard doors with glass ones or adding glass panels into doors; 46 Windows; Why the wrong window treatment can actually make a room seem darker than necessary, and how to get it right; introducing blinds, sliding panels, screens, and pretty-but-minimal curtains; 58 Lighting; The importance of natural and artificial light in the home; how to design and implement schemes for each room in order to create the right mood at the right time; 66 Ideas For Living; Living Rooms; Kitchens; Bedrooms; Bathrooms; Home offices; Outside; 114 Real Homes; A carefully selected group of case studies that show a range of styles and size of home, each with its own particular problems; 140 Resources; 142 Index; 144 Acknowledgments