Tag: Glass wall partitions

New Year’s Resolutions

Interior Design Trends

Happy New Year from all of us at The Sliding Door Company! Like most, we’re overwhelmingly excited about the prospects of 2021 and hope that this year will prove to be far more relaxed, joyous, and more fruitful than the last. And just as we are, many across the country are graciously welcoming in this new year with open arms and a uniquely hopeful spirit. After the year we’ve all just endured, we find that the only direction to move is upwards. Which prompts a wonderful opportunity for each of us to define a new season of dreams, resolutions, and positive life changes moving into 2021. Need a little inspiration defining your resolutions? We’ve got you covered.

You Do You

Our advice? Stop apologizing for everything. The past year was fraught with difficulties, uncertainty, stressors, fears, and hurdles for every single one of us. Blaming yourself and feeling badly about whatever emotional, financial, or physical shape you currently find yourself in, will not help matters. The best way to move forward is to forgive yourself, reduce your internal expectations, and practice acceptance. Actively accepting things as they come into your orbit will allow you to adapt, pivot, and reorganize yourself to meet your modern demands. By being kind to yourself, and leaning into your intuition, you’ll feel a lot more filled up and relaxed moving into this new year.

Choose Health

Perhaps the best (and most common) New Year’s Resolution is a pledge to our physical bodies. Whether that means eating healthier, reducing alcohol consumption, meditating daily, starting to work out with consistency, or spending more time outdoors, all of the above are great ways to improve your well-being from the inside out. And when our bodies are at peace, so is our mind. Here are some ideas for setting yourself up for success:

Meal Planning
By sitting down and putting your dietary goals onto paper, you’ll be able to outline and define a health plan and have guidelines for how to stick to it. Make a weekly shopping list of the health food you’d like to transition to and have it handy when you head to the store to help remind you what to buy. The internet is a great recipe and dietary resource, use it to find your ideal meal planning tips and tactics.
Pick A Partner
Get a friend to partner with you for your exercise goals. That way, you’ll have not only a motivator but someone to help keep you accountable throughout the year. Even if you can’t meet in person, you can always connect online. Zoom workout sessions are super easy and fun! Plus, having someone share the challenge with you may help motivate you.
Bring the Outside In
Home gyms are a great escape during normal circumstances, but especially during these pandemic-induced limitations, being able to work-out from home is essential! If you don’t have an extra bedroom to spare, construct your own private space within a larger area of the house. By using glass wall dividers from The Sliding Door Company, you can create a fully enclosed home gym within a day! Choose between sliding room dividers, and other glass partitions available. With hundreds of unique designs, you’ll have no issue finding the perfect partitions to suit your home’s aesthetic.

Put a Hold on Procrastination!

One of the biggest struggles most of us face in our daily lives is procrastinating on the things that matter most. This can look like many things, for example; scrolling through social media rather than clocking those work hours, putting off physical exercise, procrastinating on your to-do list, and in general, becoming distracted by inconsequential happenings throughout the day. In order to hone in on a more productive workday and a more balanced home-life, think about creating a special space just for yourself, even within a bustling interior environment! To do this, you can make a home office or personal study practically out of thin air with sliding room dividers and glass wall partitions made by The Sliding Door Company. Installation takes less than a day and requires no major construction, making your interior transformation a total breeze!

With the Sliding Door Company’s glass wall partitions, the options are truly endless! Start this new year off right and stick to those resolutions. Make your interiors work for you and transform your space with the solutions you need to achieve your goals. Schedule a free consultation today with one of our team members. View our online catalog and see what glass solution suits your needs specifically!

Fall Design Tips for Interior Designers

As an interior designer working during COVID, all sorts of new challenges have arisen with your client’s needs shifting dramatically throughout this past year. One of the demands interior designers are met with currently, is finding ways to accommodate the changing circumstances of this pandemic within the home. With so many kids remote learning from home and many of your clients working from home themselves, your job is to create functional spaces without the disruption or cost of substantial construction.

Keeping the peace within the home during a time when communal spaces are being used more than ever, and homeschooling shapes our workday, these design challenges must be met with ingenuity and with your client’s daily schedules in mind. With regard to home life, there are at least three main necessities that have been born out of the pandemic.

Finding space where it doesn’t exist
Creating a sanctuary
Maintaining a healthy balance

Your task as a designer is to address these necessities and give your clients the gift of a well-designed space. Here are some (very) helpful spatial solutions for those challenges you’ve been met with.

Finding space where it otherwise doesn’t exist

Now more than ever, it’s so important to analyze every nook and cranny of the home to determine what works and what doesn’t work for space. With more family members (or roommates) using shared spaces, these rooms can quickly become inundated with people’s belongings, school and work tools, toys, clothing, projects, and just general clutter. Organizers and well-functioning closets are a great place to start. Consider installing sliding closet doors to replace front-opening swing doors in order to save more floor space and modernize the home’s aesthetic. The key is easy access to everything inside! Labeled bins and baskets keep individual belongings tidy and easy to find. Bring in a standing organizer drawer system for the kid’s school supplies. These will act as cubbies where they can put away their work, technology, and art supplies at the end of each activity to keep the communal space decluttered, organized, and open to everyone. When kids have free rein of a room or a space, it can quickly go from a family area to a kid zone, pushing the parents to their bedroom or other areas of the home. Some great organizational systems never hurt!

Creating a sanctuary within the home

Most parents are still working from home, meaning their daily distractions and lack of personal space to focus on work has dwindled significantly. Help your clients out by installing large-scale spatial dividers in common spaces to afford them that extra privacy they need to get through these turbulent times. Sliding glass wall dividers offer flexibility for the modern family, separating working parents from kids in one easy solution. Simply slide the Glass Wall Partitions to one side to reopen the space when needed! These require no major construction and come in a plethora of sizes, glass opacities, and individualized accessories to choose from. Simple, affordable, and quick-to-install spatial dividers are a homerun for the working parent.

Maintaining a healthy balance between work life and home life.

Most parents (aka your clients) are forgetting to address their own mental and physical health while trying to hold it all together during the COVID crisis. Without their own home sanctuary or office away from home, it can be tricky to create a home/work/health balance. Parents need a lot of R&R these days, so it’s up to you to provide the interior inspiration for them to relax in. Integrate a calming color palette into the home, keeping it homogenous with the wall paint, textiles, and decor throughout each room. This will help keep the interiors calm, and un-chaotic. Consider also bringing in plants and increasing the amount of available light in the home. Mirrors are great reflectors of light and can be placed strategically throughout darker spaces to bounce light around the room. Especially now as we head into the colder months and shorter days, being stuck indoors can become depressive. Plants are great at clearing the air, restoring the tranquility of an indoor environment, and providing the indoor/outdoor experience we naturally crave.

Give your clients the gift of peace and tranquility this fall with awesome space optimizing solutions offered at the sliding door Company. Hop online and check out our viewing catalog of sliding glass closet doors, Pocket Doors For Bathrooms, and stunning sliding barn doors, among others! Schedule a free initial consultation with one of our knowledgeable experts to get started on your exciting project today. With home delivery and online ordering, it’s never been easier to create a space out of nothing for your wonderful clients.

Interior Design Push For a More Sustainable Future

Interior Design Trends

As we enter into the last quarter of 2020, it feels like we’ve hit a few benchmarks however abstract or concrete they may be. Starting this year out with unprecedented climate protests around the world, it became evident that there is no time left to wait. Climate change is an all-consuming, rapidly affecting issue that we must take action against. As many have found, the transition to a more sustainable lifestyle is not a difficult one. A personal evolution of purchasing behavior and daily consciousness is all it really takes to effect positive change.
So as an interior designer in America, how can you meet the modern demand for more sustainable home goods and decor when curating a client’s home? How can you source eco-friendly products and materials, and incorporate designers that craft sustainably? Research helps. Word of mouth is also great. But research can only take you so far when you know what you’re looking for. That’s why we’ve put together a list of things to look for when researching, sourcing, and communicating about environmentally intelligent home goods and decor. Below, we’ll go over the basics, from Material Sourcing to Relationships with Local Artisans, Relative Cost, and more.

Qubiglass workstations with sliding glass room dividers

Material Sourcing

As a designer, you know that one of the main tasks of your profession is material sourcing. Your insider abilities are essentially your bread and butter. Within a whole world of textiles, materials, furnishings, and art, it’s up to you to make the best sourcing decisions and think for your client’s needs, tastes, and their best interests. More than just knowing where to source your goods from, you must know about the goods themselves. Distinguishing factors such as thread count, bamboo versus cotton, real wood versus synthetic wood, chemical-free or cost-effective? These are everyday considerations you make while material sourcing. Now, with a sustainable lens placed over your work, you have a whole extra set of considerations, worries, and awareness guiding your search. Here is what to look for:

Textiles

When sourcing textiles, try to stay away from plastic-based “synthetic” fibers. Oftentimes, department stores such as Target or Walmart will carry pillows or blankets made with synthetic fibers that are heavily processed and will literally off-gas chemicals into your home and into your body.
“Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage an organism. Whenever we go shopping for our clothes, we don’t know how toxic and harmful that piece of fabric could be for our health. Neither do we think of its origin nor its manufacturing process and the toxic load on our body and on the environment… because of many properties like wrinkle resistance, easy to wash, easy to store but most of them are manufactured with tons of chemicals. These are highly toxic and are increasing the negative effects on our health. These synthetic fabrics also pose a serious threat to ecological balance.” -Sunita Bhalla, Department of Fashion Designing, PCM S.D. College for Women, India
The same is true for furnishing textiles. Synthetic fabrics are used widely in drapes, pillow covers, throw blankets, tablecloths, rugs, and more. Harmful to our physical and mental health, as well as the environment, these chemical textiles are quickly being replaced by safer options. Returning to the basics of material sourcing, choose from natural fibers like wool, cotton, jute, and silk, we can safeguard ourselves against chemical toxification, allergic reactions, and environmental damage.

Processing

Material processing is perhaps the largest contributing factor to water waste in the textile industry. Heavily processed synthetic materials, and even some natural fibers like cotton, require millions of gallons of freshwater each day in order to process these fabrics. Fast growth alternatives like bamboo or hemp not only solve a resource issue, but they also require up to 10x less water during processing.

Lifetime/durability

Most of our cotton or synthetic fabrics don’t last as long as we would hope. Especially in the interior design industry, this is a crucial factor when sourcing materials and furnishings that get high use, or are exposed to harsh weather. Most outdoor furniture today is made with a lot of plastic and synthetic coverings that claim to be water-resistant and durable. Yet these end up lasting only a season or two before the wear starts to show. Hemp and Bamboo are two of the strongest fibers available, while also being regenerative, sustainable, and cost-effective!
Sourcing larger interior goods like sliding doors from American-assembled companies like The Sliding Door Company oftentimes means enhanced durability and longevity. With 17 showrooms scattered all throughout every major U.S. city, it’s no far trek to source your client’s glass wall partitions and sliding room dividers from inside the country. These spatial solutions are beautifully crafted and built to last, while also providing easy-to-install solutions that require no major construction! A win-win for you, your clients, and the planet.

Where Are You Sourcing From?

One of the newest considerations is the location of your wholesaler. Are they local to your area or your client’s area? Supporting local makers and artists is a fast-growing trend that won’t slow anytime soon. By buying local and sourcing your interior art and furnishings, construction materials, and spatial dividers from companies, brands, and individuals in your city, you sustain smaller businesses and don’t require environmentally harmful shipping and handling from outside the U.S.
Check out The Sliding Door Company online today for an assortment of sliding barn doors, accessories, and other customizable options to suit your design needs.

TSDC 1027 – A

Save Money Where You Can During Economic Instability

Interior Design Trends

What do you do when everything in your life is falling into uncertainty due to the lockdowns brought on by COVID 19? Of course, many of us would like to hole up in a corner somewhere, close our eyes, and pretend like this was all a bad dream. While appealing, this may not remedy our stresses as much as we’d like. In order to regain footing during this crisis, we need to put one foot in front of the other and devise a plan of action moving forward. What strategies can you use to ensure financial stability, career optimism, and healthy home life?

Save Where You Can

By cutting back on large expenses, vacations, and unnecessary material goods you can begin to shave down your finances to the point where you only spend on the bare necessities. Rent, car insurance, phone, food, and other bills should take precedence over other frivolities during this time. The idea is to recognize what is an unnecessary purchase from what is truly needed to survive. Start there and then assess where you’re at in a few months. You should also be making a monthly budget derived from a realistic list of all of your expenses and then compare that with your current income as well as any government financial help and understand what your true budget is per month. Additionally, you may need to consider adding a roommate in order to afford rent or a mortgage. If you’re running a start-up or working freelance, consider constructing a home office in an open space within your home to cut down on the cost of renting an office space. Worried about being in the middle of your living room? Simple solution: Set up floor-to-ceiling glass wall partitions (glass room dividers) that you can customize and tailor to suit your unique needs. These walls are super easy to install and order online from the comfort of your home! The best part? You’ll have devised a separate sanctuary in which you can focus on work, free from distraction and surrounding foot traffic. Living with family or roommates has its obvious perks, but trying to work amongst them can be exceptionally trying. Think about even installing Sliding Room Dividers between the living room and kitchen so as to create two distinct spaces. Sliding glass barn doors are a fantastic solution for an open floor plan spatial configuration.

Create Balance in Your Home

With an unprecedented amount of time spent indoors and many of us working from home as well as children being forced to homeschool, we are experiencing a completely different home life reality. Something hard for many people to adapt to is nurturing the need for space, alone time, and above all else- balance. Without the ability to head off to the gym, enjoy a movie out at the theater, or get together with friends, we have found ourselves craving space and routine to keep us grounded and sane. Looking at the silver lining, we have all significantly decreased our spending on material goods, outings, vacations, and memberships over the past few months. This has allowed us to save and regain a bit of financial security in the process.

It is so important to have balance within your home and to take ownership of your indoor spaces in order to feel whole and maintain a healthy mental state. Even if you aren’t working from home, there is still need and value in creating more physical distinction from other family members and roommates in your living environment. That’s where Sliding Glass Wall Partitions come in handy. Without having to endure the cost and disruption of real construction, you can craft private, serene spaces in your home to escape. Consider making a yoga space, a home theater, or a small home gym with these wall partitions, a place to get away and enjoy some alone time.

For more inspiration and spatial solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best space-optimizing sliding glass doors, Sliding Closet Doors, and sliding room dividers offered at The Sliding Door Company. Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

TSDC 1018

Coastal Living in Marina Del Rey

Interior Design Trends

Living in California is essentially a luxury unto itself. Living in Southern California, even better. Living in Marina Del Rey? An absolute dream. Great weather all year round, palm trees, a stunning harbor, fine dining, and shops scattered throughout a breezy coastal landscape. It comes as no surprise that real estate in Marina Del Rey is some of the most sought after in the world today. Getting the chance to build your own dream home in Marina Del Rey is an exciting, inspirational adventure. You should be intentionally designing your home to utilize all the best assets this area has to offer, including the sweet ocean breeze, stunning coastal views, plenty of sun exposure, and your proximity to the Pacific. Here are a few design considerations to keep close in mind while contracting your new home in Marina Del Rey.

Would You Look At That?

When you set out to design your dream Marina Del Rey home, take into account your innate access to a plethora of stunning views. Whether they be of the sparkling Pacific Ocean, the famous yacht harbor, or of the striking Los Angeles skyline, the views are essentially limitless. Once you define where you wish to direct your gaze for the foreseeable future, you can then start to think about how you can situate your home to emphasize that view. Making use of large-scale sliding glass doors that will forward you that beautiful view is a wonderful way to bring the outside in, so to speak. Additionally, think about other space optimizing solutions that will enhance and enable your visibility throughout the home and transmit the most natural light throughout your interiors. Let the ocean breeze sweep you up with floor to ceiling glass wall partitions and sliding glass room dividers for enhanced visibility of breathtaking views within your bedrooms, work-study, or family room. Do you use glass wall partitions and sliding room dividers or a breeze to install, will last a lifetime, and offer you the physical barrier of a wall without sacrificing your view maintaining a consistent aesthetic throughout your house is super important during the design process. If you decide to integrate glass wall dividers throughout your home, consider also installing sliding glass closet doors and sliding glass bathroom doors to match. To achieve a sleek modern interior theme, glass wall partitions will do the majority of the work for you!

Seaside Home Office

Regardless of how valuable having a home office is during this troubling pandemic, it’s always wise to design your home to include a full-size work-study. A place to collect your thoughts, work on personal projects, or to work from home while the necessity to work remotely continues for months on end. When designing your dream home office, think about how you can maximize your view to feel integrated to the outside while working away during the best daytime hours. Install glass office partitions rather than typical walls in order to enhance your view and visibility of the beautiful Marina Del Rey landscape.

Take Advantage of those Rays

Living in light-filled Southern California obviously offers many environmental benefits. One of the best perks about living in Marina Del Rey is your ability to install solar panels to power your home and situate yourself in the wonderful position to receive a generous ROI in the near future. Being able to sell your power back to PG&E is a huge financial relief and a large point of pride for many homeowners that switch to solar. Speak with your architect about your solar options, and inquire about other forms of renewable energy such as wind power. Being that you live in a breezy seaside town, you can effectively install rooftop windmills to generate even more electricity than solar alone. These technologies will undoubtedly save you money and earn you a few eco karma points in the process.

For more inspiration and space optimizing solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best sliding glass barn doors, sliding closet doors, sliding room dividers, and spatial solutions offered at The Sliding Door Company. Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

TSDC 1008

Eco-Architecture Design Tips

Interior Design Trends

Design to Keep In Mind During Commercial and Residential Real Estate in Irvine

The architectural industry coming out of COVID-19 will undoubtedly never be the same. Regardless of the human impact the virus has had, this global phenomenon has in more ways than one become a mirror for humanity to collectively look at our daily routines, environmental impact, and carbon footprint on the whole. Our use of resources, our building practices, the foods we eat, the number of throwaway plastics we use every day, even our transportation. All of these considerations are now scrutinized under the environmental microscope of today’s global climate. This will ultimately alter the way in which we choose to build and design architecture, forever.

In a US state as environmentally aware as California, it has become common practice and necessity even, to go into a design process with utmost intention and regard for the environment. When initiating your architectural project in Irvine, California- be it residential or commercial- there are a few key considerations that must be taken into account before the heavy machinery arrives on site. We will examine these steps, including eco-design concepts such as directional positioning, alternative energy sources, and sustainable materials. Achieving an entirely off-the-grid structure is not exactly the first inclination for most architects and contractors. Yet if we wish to further develop our environmental awareness and contribution as a country then we need to be building innovative, environmentally intelligent structures that are not only built to last but also built to sustain.

Directional Positioning

In order to achieve a structure that is energy-efficient, cost-effective, and works with a natural environment, directional positioning is a necessity that needs to be taken into account. This refers to the positioning of the structure to effectively utilize and take advantage of wonderful natural daytime light brought in by large windows, that will provide not just visible light, but sustained temperature regulation throughout the building during all hours of the day. South Facing Windows in the northern hemisphere that face the sun obtain a maximum solar gain, while in the southern hemisphere, the windows should be designed to face the north in order to maximize solar gain. This intelligent design dramatically reduces heating and cooling costs, saving you money, and reducing the need for carbon-heavy HVAC systems. This concept is called Passive Solar Heating and Cooling, and it is widely adopted by architects and builders throughout the world today. To further your gains while designing with this concept, you can maximize light spread by installing glass wall partitions and sliding glass room dividers in order to transfer heat and light all the way through the house. Fantastic for home offices, frosted glass office walls, and glass office partition panels let in beautiful natural light, and create a warm, pleasant sanctuary perfect for concentrating and enjoying productive at-home workdays.

Alternative Energy Sources

When setting out to design your dream home or commercial building in Irvine, take note of the year-round great weather that affords you amazing eco upgrades that other states with less sunlight miss out on. Irvine is the ideal location for installing rooftop solar panels, as there is plenty of available daytime sunshine, and a wealth of wonderful solar companies to choose from. Switching to solar is not only an environmentally conscious decision, but a savvy financial move as well. Many don’t realize that when you install solar, you don’t just benefit from being off the grid and financially free from the heavy price of annual electricity, but you can also sell your energy back to the electric companies for them to use. Additionally, you can effectively generate your own home-made electricity using small-scale wind turbines. Installing a typical residential wind turbine system in an exposed site in a coastal city like Irvine can easily generate more power than your lights and electrical appliances use. Lastly, though this alternative energy source is very site-specific, you can use hydropower to generate enough electricity to power your home appliances and electronics. Your home or commercial building would need to be located within close proximity to a flower river, stream, or canal in order for this to work. However, the great thing about hydropower is that you don’t have to worry about rainy days or partial sunlight detracting from your ability to store energy, as compared with solar panels.

Sustainable Materials

Sustainable materials when ethically sourced, are the future of building. Materials such as hemp, bamboo, glass, repurposed wood and plastics, cork, recycled paper and fibers are all considered extremely sustainable, environmentally friendly materials. Using real glass for sliding room dividers or wall partitions rather than acrylic or plexiglass is a more sustainable option, as it is longer lasting, it can be recycled later down the road, and it is easier to clean and maintain.

With all of these wonderfully cost-effective, innovative, and green considerations, you’ll enjoy a novel sense of awareness when designing your ideal home or commercial business in Irvine, California. For more inspiration and space optimizing solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best glass office wall partitions, sliding glass closet doors, sliding room dividers and accessories offered at The Sliding Door Company. Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

TSDC 1005

Pandemic Safety and Your Business

Interior Design Trends

After about three months of uncertainty, job loss, strain, and discomfort, we are now finally starting to see a shift in the current pandemic outcome. With a national decline in cases and deaths, there has been a large push to restimulate the economy as best we can, come out of hiding so to speak, and make attempts at putting the pieces back together, with the tools we have left. However, despite the inherent necessity for jobs and work, many remain skeptical if these advances are premature, and more importantly, if they are putting everyone at risk. Without adequate testing and controlled isolation of those carrying the virus, it is exceedingly dangerous to assume that this will simply just disappear with time. On a global scale, the way we live, interact, do business, and provide services, will never be the same. International trade will evolve and require strict standards and safety precautions, the food and beverage industry will see unprecedented requirements and regulations in order to operate, and most businesses can expect to see fewer customers, and will be asked to take enhanced measures in order to safeguard visitors.

So, as a business owner, you now become rightfully bestowed with the responsibility to protect and provide a safe environment for your customers, patrons, and clients. Now, if you’re like most Americans, you may be wondering what these accommodations look like. What the financial strain these new “conditions” may have on your business, and how to implement social distancing tactics without compromising your vision. How does one go about increasing security while creating distance in socially close spaces? How can a business work within the new normal and still stay afloat? Below we have a few recommendations on how to not only keep your business running throughout these difficult times but also how to ensure the public that your establishment is a non-threat to their health and safety.

Create Distance With Smart Spatial Solutions

We are starting to see businesses of all kinds and sizes integrate wall partitions, room dividers, and alone tri-fold dividers into their waiting areas, and throughout vast open floor plans in order to create safer environments for workers and customers alike. Not just commercial businesses, but educational institutions, libraries, and restaurants are now also starting to utilize wall partitions and room dividers. These easy-to-install glass partitions can effectively create additional spatial separation and enhanced safety within indoor environments. Being the owner of any establishment or facility, you should consider making use of the available spatial solutions, and start to integrate glass room partitions, sliding room dividers, and other easy-to-clean glass space dividers throughout your business to create enhanced separation and safety. Decreasing the amount of foot traffic and potential contact between visitors and employees is a crucial step in a safer business. One of the most noteworthy benefits of glass walls is their antimicrobial surface. Staff can easily clean and disinfect within seconds, being that glass walls are resistant to damage and water, and are not porous like acrylic surfaces. Our glass walls are conveniently offered in a wide range of glass opacities, from completely opaque, to see-through transparent. They require no construction and take less than hours to be installed by our team of professional installers, making this one solution that won’t break the bank or cost your business weeks of cumbersome construction.

Limit Capacity and Encourage Face Coverings

By limiting your business’s overall intake capacity, you can safeguard everyone involved. By choosing to half your normal capacity, you effectively create increased distance and reduce the chance of person-to-person contact. This keeps the indoor air quality much fresher and allows visitors the peace of mind they’re looking for. Additionally, by requiring face coverings within businesses that allow for it, you can create a healthier environment and protect against airborne viral spreading.

Mandate Employees and Workers to Comply With Enhanced Safety Standard

While this may take a bit of initial work to develop new standards and regulations for employees and staff to follow, the benefits are well worth the work. Stay up to date on all the latest health recommendations from the CDC to understand what the most effective methods for controlling the spread of viral disease and sickness are, as well as learn more about sanitation standards and cleaning necessities. Once you have everyone on board and in the know, it will be much easier to control and regulate these new practices moving forward. Owning a business will also require you to think of ways that can allow customers to enter and exit your establishment with the least amount of contact. Limit the need for your patrons and employees to physically touch door handles, menus, and other such communal things that could hold germs and harmful bacteria. Ask your staff to continuously sanitize, deep clean, and disinfect all surfaces and communal items to ensure the cleanest working environment possible.

Enclosed glass corner office with modern sliding doors

For more inspiration and space-optimizing solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best glass wall partitions, sliding glass barn doors, and spatial solutions offered at The Sliding Door Company. Our in-store locations are not available during this time, so please do Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

How to Self-Construct A Home Office During COVID 19

Interior Design Trends

The past two months have been a complete whirlwind of emotions, uncertainties, and swift transitions since Coronavirus hit U.S. shores in February. Starting with a crash course on how to adapt to quickly changing landscapes, the virus later spurred the birth of new routines, taught us how to order our entire lives online, and more than anything- COVID 19 has forced us all to spend an unprecedented amount of time at home. For anyone still holding a job, or those able to do remote work, having a space at home that allows for concentration and productivity has been an absolute god-send. Though, if you’re like most stay-at-home workers, your “home office” situation might look a little different than the executive suite we all dream of. Tired of roughing it amongst the battlezone of children, pets, and loud neighbors? Wishing you had a peaceful work sanctuary right about now? Well, here are four simple tricks and tips for transforming your home interiors into a Pinterest-worthy, envy-invoking dream office. Warning: you may never want to return to work ever again.

Enclosed frosted glass corner home office with modern sliding doors

Step #1: Find the Ideal Atmosphere

If an empty room is not available, no worries! Creating a home office out of thin air is essentially what glass wall partitions and sliding room dividers were made for. When setting out to determine your in-house office “location”, take into consideration the available natural light, the surrounding noise contributors, the amount of foot traffic that area gets, as well as the space’s functionality within your home. Once you’ve picked out your little slice, set about visualizing where you’ll need your walls to be installed, or a room divider to be placed.

Step #2: Craft A Room From Nothing

Next, you must decide what kind of room partition/dividers your space would benefit from best. This all depends on the type of home you have, your children or roommate situation, and your available space. With so many options, ranging from different glass opacities, and handle types, to accessories, frames, and overall design, you’ll be able to find an option that integrates into the rest of your home flawlessly. After picking and installing super easy to set up temporary glass walls (or glass room dividers) you’ll have a better idea of the actual square footage you’re working with. If your home is designed with a natural “nook” somewhere within the living room, use that floorplan to install a sliding glass barn door, or a floor to ceiling room divider that provides the privacy you crave while maintaining an artistic flourish. You can then envision what you can fit into your new office, what supplies you’ll need, how to decorate it, and what to perhaps abandon out of necessity.

Fixed privacy wall for partitioning and people seating in the chairs while waiting

Step #3: Spiff It Up

Any office, be it at home or within a real office building, should feel inviting enough to encourage a productive workflow. The days of fluorescent lighting, rows of grey cubicles, no natural light, and an overall depressive atmosphere are long over. Now that you have the pleasure of working from home, which luckily, excludes the once cumbersome commute, you have the opportunity to design your office however you like. Everything from artistic lamps, to thoughtful wall art, the perfect height desk, and a comfortable chair will make all the difference when curating your office’s interior design. And if you’re feeling a bit extra, introduce some relaxing air purifiers and beautiful houseplants to add that sanctuary feel to your new study. If the space allows, you may even consider painting one of the walls to introduce a lively pop of color and emotion to your space. Luckily, the ball is in your court when crafting your idyllic home office.

Step #4: Sit Back, Relax and Get Back to The Grind

Now that your exciting “executive suite” is all set up and ready to be utilized, take a few moments to appreciate your hard work and soak in the freedom of a balanced work/home life. How rare it is, the opportunity to spend more time with your loved ones, enjoy your beautiful home throughout all hours of the day and work in your pj’s. To retire that daily commute and the tiring politics of an office environment and be able to just sink into your projects. So, take that necessary moment to feel gratitude for your situation, and then get back to it!

With the above tips and tricks, your new home office could be an absolute breeze to set up. For more inspiration and space-optimizing solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best glass wall partitions, sliding glass barn doors, and spatial solutions offered at The Sliding Door Company. Our in-store locations are not available during this time, so please do Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

Medical Screens, Partitions and Privacy

Interior Design Trends

modern office privacy space sliding for dividers

The importance of privacy and relaxing spaces within medical facilities and hospitals is becoming more and more substantial. Spatial separation and privacy are now valued and understood more than in previous years. The impact that the environment plays into the recovery time and the overall happiness of patients is undeniable. More and more studies are concluding that patients in medical centers require a certain amount of space, security, and respectful privacy during their healing in order to stay healthy and recover. Environment-induced stress can have extremely harmful effects on patients, delaying recovery and in some cases, worsening their medical ailments.

Medical Screens

Of course, a lot of the medical practices and related activities involved in patient treatment and care require privacy and solitude. For example, medical screening is typically a relatively quick process, that requires total privacy and patient trust. Medical screens help to make these testing/screening zones as comfortable and as private as possible, all while working within an overcrowded indoor environment. Pharmacies use medical privacy screens, sliding room dividers, and flexible frosted or opaque glass wall partitions to provide a privacy solution. Pop-up pharmacies or ones which exist in larger buildings such as a Rite-Aid, or CVS need to ensure their patients are getting the privacy they need when they need it, without requiring a trip to a hospital.

Partitions

The difference between a solid wall partition versus a semi-translucent or see-through glass wall partition is tremendous in the medical field. Whether a nurse, doctor, physician, or the patient themself, being stuck inside a hospital can be exceptionally depressive. If there is little natural light permeating through the facilities, it can often feel like you’re stuck inside a maze of illness and injury with little visible hope in sight. Bringing in more natural light, and granting patients the pleasure of enhanced visibility, can make all the difference. Integrating glass wall partitions, interior glass doors, and will help bring in and reflect light throughout rooms. Clinics and hospitals, regardless of size or stature, can tend to have a sad connotation attached to them, often feel as though they were built underground, these environments are the least conducive to recovery. Fluorescent lighting and limited visibility are exceptionally burdensome for those stuck inside. Increasing natural light flow is a great way to increase the quality of life within medical centers.

Privacy Matters

Though a lot of hospitals are oversaturated and burdened by our taxed medical system, there is no reason for patients to be existing on top of one another as we see today. Suffering from a medical condition, illness, injury or disease is already troublesome and stressful enough. Physically taxing, as well as mentally stressful, these patients don’t need to be wrought with more trauma. Privacy is a crucial component in rest and recovery. Without it, patient recovery will only delay turnover further and cause the overcrowding of medical facilities. By integrating increased spatial distinction throughout wellness centers and hospitals, we can expect to see faster and healthier recoveries. Wall partitions and floor to ceiling room dividers offer flexibility to be moved around or rearranged when needed, and require no major construction. The necessity to provide our sick with adequate privacy and a relaxing atmosphere is paramount at this point.

Due to current global health circumstances, we find it to be an exceptionally critical time to carefully consider medical center hospitals. The impending burden these facilities will experience calls for interior upgrades and conscious thought surrounds the success of patient recovery. The overall quality and design of these centers will play a large role in turnover time. With all of the above considerations and examples, hopefully, your medical center can blossom into a safe and inviting sanctuary for those in need of medical attention. For more inspiration and space-optimizing solutions, plan a visit to our closest location. Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!

Pandemic Trends You Should Know

Interior Design Trends

For many, this past month has been a rollercoaster of emotions, confounding circumstances, economic turmoil, job instability, and too many unanswered questions to count. And in general, life as we know it, is beginning to shift. The rapid evolution of how we use and understand our contemporary world through the lens of modern technology has been exponentially sped up by the repercussions of this novel Coronavirus. Shelter-in-place mandates and home quarantines have left all of us in consideration of our collective future after COVID 19. Which aspects of this unprecedented moment will remain, and which behaviors and dependencies will be left for the history books?

Many foresee a general mentality shift towards many of our most human experiences. Perhaps environmental sustainability carried out in small actions during day-to-day life, increased reliance on technology, more online ordering, altered social interactions, awareness of our human impact on air quality, a reduction in daily commuting and a general sense of pragmatism towards climate change could all be interesting byproducts of this time. With so many people asked to work from home, as well as a heavier-than-usual reliance on computers, cell phones, and online ordering, this pandemic has caused many to adopt technology faster than they might have under normal circumstances. Predictions are buzzing about an increased desire and acceptance in freelance work, working from home and developing a minimalist schedule. Below are our top three predictions for general life coming out of this global crisis.

Death of the Daily Commute

One of the most undeniable by-products of the Coronavirus outbreak has been the incredible air quality transformation seen surrounding most major cities. With an unprecedented reduction of atmospheric pollution and ground-level smog in the past month, this atmospheric improvement supersedes any time prior to this event. Satellite images depicting clear spots over major cities and places of heavy industry such as China, Vietnam, and parts of the U.S., have left our heads spinning. With the obvious global impacts of millions in the workforce commuting daily, there’s no argument that we have been one of the leading contributors to air quality since the widespread adoption of the daily commute. We see this awareness becoming a catalyst for change, and leading towards more sustainable forms of transportation. Increased use of city metros, municipal buses, rideshares apps, and alternative forms of transportation such as bikes and electric scooters will hopefully become the new norm.

Home Offices

One of the most realistic industry predictions coming out of the coronavirus pandemic is an evolution towards working from home. While the initial mentality surrounding working from home was leaning towards negativity, there has since been a fresh perspective and silver lining collective realization. Many are now adopting a less is more mentality, and understanding the inherent benefits and savings associated with working from home. With that said, there will likely become a movement born out of this pandemic regarding the newfound desire to work out from under the confines of an office. Home offices and an increased start-up market will call for the use of home glass wall partitions, office dividers, stylish office accessories and spatial solutions that will seamlessly fit within a home and be consistent with the home’s given interior design. We might see more people turning guest bedrooms into usable spaces and increasing the value of their homes by turning them into working environments.

Increased Use of Digital Platforms

Novel reliance on technology has been our most effective saving grace during these troubling times. With so many stuck at home and in the confines of an indoor environment, human interaction, business, shopping, even food-ordering have all been reduced to an online existence. While this transition was inevitable in the sense that our global economy has been heading in a digital direction, this expedited reliance on the internet was realized so effortlessly which could indicate lasting impacts. Coming out of this pandemic we see an increase overall of technology reliance and a continuation of online ordering in a way that did not exist before the crisis. This will mean that companies who fall short in understanding the need for digital marketing and media will scramble to get themselves up-to-date and put themselves on the digital map so to speak in order to survive. People will most likely retain the majority of quarantine-influenced app downloads for food ordering, online entertainment, service apps, and dating/social apps. Because people were pushed to quickly understand how to these new apps, this could guarantee their user success. The question is now which businesses will thrive and which may not survive coming out of these uncertain times.

For more inspiration and space optimizing solutions, don’t hesitate to check out the best glass wall partitions, sliding glass barn doors, and spatial solutions offered at The Sliding Door Company. Our in-store locations are not available during this time, so please do Visit Us Online to browse our online viewing catalog and Enjoy A Free Consultation from one of our team members to actualize your vision today!