Month: February 2020

How to Persevere in the Face of Neighborhood Gentrification

Interior Design Trends

frosted glass sliding doors with stainless frame for room dividers

What happens when your once affordable neighborhood becomes a watering hole for new wave techies and startups that bring in money and change the entire financial and physical atmosphere of your sleepy town? It seems that almost overnight your rent soared, your local mom and pop restaurants were replaced with expensive franchises, noisy new developments inundate the community, and you’re worried about being able to afford your street because you’re competing with the assemblage of new families that just moved in next door. Gentrification can be a difficult transition period for those native to their undiscovered towns. In most cases, people become scared that they won’t be able to integrate into this changing and developing environment and leave their communities prematurely. This can be a big loss of culture to any town or city and an unfortunate burden on existing families. Our advice? Employ a bit of flexibility, make use of your existing resources, and capitalize on this new gentrification.

Luckily, there are a few ways in which you can mitigate these uncomfortable times. Below are a few tips on how to ride the gentrification wave, keep your house and even profit from this new development.

Flexibility Will Keep You Afloat

A lot of renters that deal with the gentrification of their once-affordable neighborhood are stricken with an uncomfortable choice; either pay more or find greener pastures. And by greener we mean cheaper. While many choose to give in and head out, you have the opportunity to prove your flexibility and employ some creative remedies for this burgeoning issue.

A common solution to mitigate the rising cost of housing is to rent out rooms in your house that you aren’t necessarily using. You can add a roommate or turn one of the rooms into a home office that generates income. If you find that all of your available rooms are occupied, fear not, there is still hope. Say you have an expansive living room that takes up too much space or a bedroom that could be divided to create two separate entities. By installing a room divider with doors you can easily craft an entirely new room that will generate passive income for you. These glass room partitions offer you the flexibility to install and deconstruct with no major construction or costly hassle.

As a homeowner, consider Airbnbing out your home during weekend trips away or converting a wing of your home into a rental. Again, glass wall partitions are a painless and super stylish solution to optimizing your interiors quickly and affordably. Choose from different glass opacities for these floor to ceiling glass wall partitions, from completely opaque to see-through translucent and everything in between. You can choose to install a partition that is fully closed or opt for a partition with an interior glass door built in so you can move through the two spaces easily or lock when needed. By choosing to turn a fraction of your home into a rental, you can effectively monetize your home and pick when to rent and for how long. There is less commitment associated with vacation rentals than compared with long term renters. By adding a bit of practical functionality to your home, you can make passive income and afford to stay in your beautiful neighborhood throughout the many waves and stages of gentrification.

Capitalize On Your New Booming Economy

Instead of seeing gentrification as a harmful new development, notice all the ways in which you can benefit from this exciting evolution of your community. Now is a wonderful time to start a new business, team up with your fellow community members and craft an innovative business that will enjoy the influx of finances to the area. Position yourself in an economic stronghold by developing a company or startup doing something you love. Convert a part of your home into a new home office with sliding wall doors or glass sliding room dividers to create a work sanctuary from the comfort of your home. This minimal physical transformation of your interior spaces will allow you to create and imagine, without the cost of renting out a studio or office space. Enjoy the flexibility of hassle-free installation that allows you to expand or contract your interior space easily and without any major construction. This flexibility will allow you to adapt to the inevitable expansion of your new business and create enough room for a few new team members along the way. Though it can be uncomfortable at first, not all gentrification is bad. In being adaptable, and by making good use of the new development throughout your town, you’ll find that this evolution can actually create an entirely new economic opportunity for you and your community.

By being flexible where it counts, you’ll be able to persevere in the face of unavoidable gentrification. We at The Sliding Door Company see value in offering products that allow for flexibility and ease of modification. That’s why we’re here to help you spatially optimize your interiors going into this new decade and enjoy all the best things 2020 has to offer. For more exciting solutions and inspiration, Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your design dream today.

Serendipity Labs: The Genius Behind Trendy Business Models

Interior Design Trends

As a growing, relatively new enterprise, Serendipity Labs is leading the way with its comprehensive approach to office spaces and a well-rounded understanding of what people want. The latter is perhaps the most important ingredient in crafting this successful business. Simple supply and demand. Serendipity Labs caters to the evolving demands of their target demographic, making them a huge competitive force in a relatively young coworking space industry. They are able to achieve this through four key components of their business model. Below is a comprehensive step-by-step breakdown of the intelligent elements Serendipity Labs considered when designing their franchise.

What People Want

When intending to cater to what a target market seeks, often involved are years of research, case studies, and failed previous models. With each decade, we get closer and closer to understanding what makes people work better, faster, and smarter. Today, we have arrived at a general cultural zeitgeist that shoes us what we want now is comfort, collaboration, and flexibility all wrapped into an aesthetically pleasing package.

Serendipity Labs crafted a business model largely based on these simple human preferences. Because they understand their general clientele, they were able to create these stunning coworking spaces that offer flexibility, comfort, and elegance. They realized that there was an overwhelming need for the availability to utilize professional office spaces without the overhead of a solid monthly commitment. A lot of self-employed entrepreneurs and business folk don’t need a full-time office space. Some only need a few days a week, others perhaps just a day or two a month. Some just need a small office to share with one or two colleagues or a professional environment to engage in business meetings and proposals a few times a month.

This model has taken off over the past ten years and people are absolutely loving it. The largest appeal could be the flexible opportunity in a world of laptop doting freelancers, artists, and techies alike.

Actualizing The Dream

So how did they do it? You may be thinking. Serendipity Labs created roughly 100 co-working spaces throughout America from Dallas to Nashville, Chicago to California, and more by choosing strikingly targeted locations. They chose to build these office locations based on surrounding tech and business hubs, within close proximity to public transportation, and amidst trendy parts of town and art districts that offer dining options and shops that appeal to the everyday worker.

Serendipity Labs allows individuals to make their coworking space unique to fit their distinct needs. They provide both professional individual and collaborative spaces so businesses can either enjoy both options or choose the one best suited for their goals.

Inspired Interiors

By carefully mapping out the layout and framework of these coworking spaces with the individual always in mind, Serendipity Labs set itself apart from the rest. Most people want views, open-air offices, stylish furnishings, and the ability to both collaborate and enjoy privacy when needed. Serendipity Labs designs its buildings with these important factors in mind. They create artistically forward interior lounges that greet the client from the moment they walk in right up to their individual office. This contemporary approach to lobbies has become increasingly popular throughout places of business today. Offering comfortable couches, coffee tables, an assortment of various sized and patterned chairs throughout the lounge areas provide people with options (what we are most drawn to!). Offering the ability to choose is a fundamental aspect of Serendipity Labs.

By designing with a keen creative eye, the “Labs” are furnished with beautiful, mid-century modern furnishings, well-crafted wood pieces, art, and plants to provide a home-like feel to the work environment. They also pay close attention to lighting- both natural and artificial. Because they value a well lit, inspired office atmosphere and stunning views, they contracted us at Space Plus, A Division of The Sliding Door Company to facilitate their need for glass wall partitions for closed office environments, as well as floor to ceiling solutions with combination glass to offer privacy to occupants and to capture precious natural light. We worked with them to create beautiful interior glass doors and phone booth-style open-air small rooms to provide workers with an opportunity to share lighting, heating, and A/C while enjoying a bit of visual privacy. These “booths” are available in six different glass opacities- from completely frosted glass doors to translucent, depending on the need. The booths are achieved with either sliding door panels, bi-folding doors, swing doors, or glass walls (or any combination of those) as a great space-optimizing solution.

More and more businesses are coming to realize that employees do an all-around better job when their human needs are being met when they exist in a well-lit, stylish, and inspired office atmosphere where they can be proud of where they work. Dimly-lit cubicles and windowless office spaces are no longer the standards. We have evolved far past that, and this is just the beginning.

The Beauty of Sharing

Humans already inherently gravitate towards coexisting- we always have and probably always will. That’s why all of these wonderful co-working spaces have been so popular. We like to exist amongst other humans while getting our own solitary work done. It helps us feel a part of collective humanity while we carry out our individual work. With that said, many businesses that utilize Serendipity Labs (like most start-ups for example) also bring in an entire team and are excited to enjoy the seamless working environment the Lab provides. This energetic working atmosphere helps boost morale, collective collaboration, and encourages the fluid exchange of ideas. They offer large “team suites” that accommodate up to sixty people. Making their size range a big selling point to businesses of any size.

Beautifully designed kitchens are another exciting facet of the Lab, provided throughout the office buildings so as to encourage people to cook or heat up food brought from home. Beverages and small snacks are typically available as well.

By providing the well-considered, stunning open-air office spaces people have always craved, Serendipity Labs is leading the industry in coworking spaces. It was an absolute joy working with them in cities such as Dallas and Nashville to help achieve their spatial optimizing goals and create flexible working environments that are now enjoyed by many!

To improve your interiors, consult us at The Sliding Door Company- the experts in spatial optimization. For more exciting solutions and inspiration, visit The Sliding Door Company to browse our online viewing catalog and Get A Free Quote from one of our team members to actualize your co-working space designs today!

Defining Characteristics of this New Decade

Interior Design Trends

It’s officially 2020, and a lot has already happened. Most importantly though, are the positive improvements we are seeing pop up all around us and take form in ways we couldn’t have conceived even just a few years ago. Heightened awareness of our responsibility to our planet coupled with green initiatives and incentives is redefining our relationship with our environments. This decade has brought with it an emphasis on health and wellness, a movement to connect back to nature, and a shift in how and what we build. Diving deeper into these topics, below lies a bit more of a robust look into these exciting changes with the start of 2020.

What Are We Building?

With this new decade, we are seeing a lot of building practices improve, with special attention towards sustainable sourcing of materials, utilizing space in the forgotten places, and working with our natural environment rather than against it.

Architects are choosing now to focus their efforts on building and designing features that matter to their clients and eliminating all those that don’t. We see this in their efforts to eliminate waste, disregard pointless features of the home that were purely “extra” or unnecessarily decorative. A lot of the ways we used to build created much waste that was affecting our environment negatively. Now we are carefully considering every single aspect of the home or building and asking ourselves, do we really need this, or is it just nice to have? There is a noticeable shift in mentality. A ‘less is more’ attitude dominates the architectural scene currently, and fortunately, conservation of materials has been a great byproduct of this mentality shift.

Another great facet of the green building movement is finding space where we never thought to look. For example, a lot of architects are starting to utilize the square footage under stairwells now for extra storage, or as a small bookshelf corner rather than allowing it to take up useful space. Building smarter, rather than larger is very in right now. We hope to see it stay this way and develop further in the decades to come.

Another way people are choosing to amplify their interiors and make use of available inside space is to integrate space optimizing solutions and features amongst rooms that we normally overlook. Installing room dividers with a door is a flexible way to separate rooms throughout a home without needing excess construction that will drain pockets and generate unnecessary waste along the way. By utilizing interior wall partitions with interior glass doors, the home can be successfully separated to suit the family’s unique lifestyle without compromising the overall structure of the house.

Connecting Back to Our Roots

For anyone who has opened an interior design or architectural magazine in the past few years, they’d be able to note the emergence of greenery throughout any and all interior and exterior dwellings. Plants are now (thankfully) back in style, and are an integral part of any home, restaurant, office, and business. We intuitively crave nature, the outdoors, fresh air, and all the other natural perks of plants and greenery. By bringing green life into our home environments, we aim to craft a harmonious balance of nature and shelter- existing together.

Because of this, we have also seen a big design push to build with floor to ceiling windows and doors as a way to bring the outside in. Entire glass walls are making a mark on architectural designs everywhere. Everybody wants to enjoy a good view from their cozy home, and feel connected back to the earth. We feel safer, more integrated and part of the outside world when we can see what’s going on around us. There is so much natural beauty amongst us not to enjoy it from the comforts of our home.

Health and Wellness Revolution

A current and wonderful trend we are currently experiencing with the turn of the new decade is a reawakened value put on health and wellness. This covers everything from physical health to mental health, our daily routines and down to the environments we exist in. Plenty of exercise, a balanced diet, reducing unnecessary stresses, and attention to the fine details of our environments have all become of paramount importance to us. Yoga centers and meditation apps have never been more accessible or widespread as they are now. People want to feel good and luckily for us, the technology and drive are there to attain it, universally.

Of course, a large aspect of our health and wellness depends on our outside environment. We are starting to see all of these novel and exciting co-working spaces pop up in every city that value well-considered communal spaces, green building and tons of natural light. We are more interested than ever in how we interact with our spaces, both inside and outside. We value open floor plans and shared spaces because, well, why not? It just makes more sense. Glass wall partitions and glass modern sliding doors are everywhere because of their ability to let natural light flow freely in any indoor space, enhancing our quality of life and improving our physical and mental health.

At The Sliding Door Company, we value these things. That’s why we’re here to help you attain your environmental goals so you can improve your quality of life and enjoy all the best things 2020 has to offer. To jump on board the green movement, and improve your interiors, consult us at The Sliding Door Company- the experts in spatial optimization. For more exciting solutions and inspiration, Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your design dream today.