Creating Your Own “White Box” to Help Your Flooring Decision July 6, 2010
Posted by Shannonbilby in : Design and Decorating , add a commentAre you an HGTV addict? If you are not a fan, Home & Garden Television offers programs on decorating, home improvement and design. “Design Star,” is HGTV’s reality program that pits 12 designers in a contest to win an opportunity to develop their own show. After watching the first episode from this season, it made sense that you could use one of their concepts to make choosing flooring easier.
Are you ready to take a chance and consider a dramatic shift in your home but don’t know where to start? Well, it’s difficult to make a change when faced with all of your old decisions in a room. Let’s clear out most of your old choices to leave the door open for new ones.
Start by removing all the accessories from the room. Lamps, small tables and chairs go next. Are there larger pieces that you are ready, or almost ready, to replace? Cover them with white sheets. Now you’ve created your own version of a white room. You’re down to the room’s bones, without any distracting elements taking your attention away from the possibilities of the room itself.
Now that you’ve cleared the space, take a walk through it, considering every angle. Are there features you almost forgot were there? Are there wonderful windows, or possibly an appealing fireplace to warm the space? Play with any photos you may have saved of flooring from magazines, or lay out any samples you have. Picture light and darker floors, and consider what appeals to you most.
Next, take pictures of the room from every angle, and bring them with you to the store when you select your new flooring. It will be so much easier to imagine the floor with those photos in your hand. Keep the accessories packed up until your new floor is installed, then replace each item, considering whether you want to keep it, and where to put everything. In some ways by doing this you actually get to start over, with your own white box to decorate any way you want.
If you aren’t ready to do heavy lifting, you could always try out virtual room designer, here!.
Virtual Room Designer March 9, 2010
Posted by Shannonbilby in : Website tools , 1 comment so far 
Are you familiar with our Virtual Room Designer tool on our website? It is a fantastic tool to help you visualize different products in different room scenes. You can even upload a photo from one of your rooms in order to “try on” different floors, walls and even area rugs. With our virtual room designer, you can look at different size tiles in a room, different installation directions, dark floors or walls versus light floors or walls, you can look at hardwood installed in different directions. When it comes to choosing flooring, it’s nice to have a “crystal ball” to help visualize what your floors will look like before you make your purchase.
Using the Virtual Room Designer Tool is easy!
- First, choose a room type to work with or upload a photo of a room in your home.
- Then, choose a room that most closely resembles your room layout.
- From there, select an area to work with such as floor, wall, steps, cabinets, area rugs, etc.
- Next, you can make a selection of different products we offer by choosing the type, brand or product.
- Once you have chosen a product, you can choose to rotate the product to see different degrees of rotation for the installation.
You can change as many items as you like as many times as you like until you get the look you want. Along the way, you can save these images and selections in your own personal workbook. (you will be asked to provide some registration information in order to save and share your workbook) You can share these items in your workbook with friends or family and then we can review together to look at the actual samples of the products you have chosen. See? It’s that easy!
