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Interiors for the Modern WFH Professional

Working from home has been a challenge for just about everybody this year. Especially as a professional bringing your work home, it’s not always easy to find the space and sanctuary one needs to put in a full day’s work. Especially if you live with other roommates, or simply don’t have the space you need for a home office (like a whole extra bedroom), making an office out of your living room is not ideal. Because of this predicament, many have sought entirely new living situations and have packed up entire lives just to afford more space to work from home. But if moving apartments isn’t an option, and if you don’t have the time or resources for heavy construction, how can you craft a home office within your sprawling apartment affordably and swiftly? What options do you have?

Bringing the office home without compromising the aesthetic or functionality of your luxury apartment has been a constant struggle for any working professional this year. Let’s change that. Here are the top spatial solutions for your new work-from-home lifestyle.

Bookshelves

A smart, inexpensive (and cute) DIY trick is to buy (or use ones you already own) tall standing bookshelves or wall organizers as a series of wall partitions that, when combined, create a new space. Use this physical barrier to block off a section of a shared interior space such as a living room, or a corner of your bedroom- if square footage allows! You can use two or three of these shelving units to construct a square or triangle study, and though it’s not a soundproof solution, the visible barrier from the rest of the shared space is enough to feel focused. Next, fill the wall shelf or bookcase with books, knick-knacks, and sculptural pieces to further block off visibility. Consider adding medium-sized succulents or even hanging plants to the shelving unit for a nice pop of green and a natural air purifier!

a series of bookshelves with colored folders

Partitions

Of course, the most standard solution to creating a home office within your open floor plan is to install large Sliding Glass Wall Partitions or floor-to-ceiling sliding glass room dividers. With these flexible wall partitions from The Sliding Door Company, you can create entire rooms without construction or disruption! Because they offer innovative glass wall dividers ranging from sliding glass Barn doors, to Bi-Fold Doors, you can choose from a number of solutions and then customize your partitions to match the interior of your home! Plus, their team of professional installers will come and install your unique partitions in a matter of hours- not days or weeks. That means no moving apartments, no major remodeling, and no stress about creating your dream office. During these turbulent times, the best way to combat an overwhelming workday is to find space where it doesn’t exist!

Plants

People have been utilizing plants as spatial dividers for centuries, from lining pathways to planting “privacy plants” as a living solution to an outside fenceline. Now, we bring the plants inside to do the same. And in order to create the most ideal enclosed environment, you’ll need to invest in plants that have some height to them in order to achieve the visible obstruction you need for your home office.

Consider indoor plants such as:

  • Fiddle Leaf Fig
  • Albertina Banana Leaf
  • Madagascar Dragon Leaf
  • Bamboo Palm Slate
  • Mass Cane
  • Bird of Paradise
  • Cactus

After you bring your beautiful new plants home, arrange them in neat single-file rows to form a “living wall”. Give them enough space to grow and sprawl so their leaves aren’t knocking into each other. Then, make sure you understand how much water you’ll need to give each of them per week so that you aren’t over or under watering them. Then fill the inside space with your office desk, computer, filing cabinets, and whatever else you’ll want to feel like you’re in a fully enclosed office. Then sit back, relax in your new indoor/outdoor sanctuary, and enjoy the fresh air!

a plant

Now that you have the basics for transforming your home into a work-from-home haven, let the interior remodeling begin! For more info on the floor to ceiling wall partitions and Sliding Room Dividers from The Sliding Door Company, check us out online. Book a free consultation with one of our representatives and start your hotel transition today!

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Interior Design Push For a More Sustainable Future

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

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3 Major Interior Design Mistakes to Avoid

Working on the interior design of your home can be exciting and fun, but also complicated and even overwhelming at times. Your home is an expression of your personality and with interior design, you have a chance to create your very own sanctuary.

However, in order to design a home that you truly love, you need to know what not to do! Whether it’s simply adding elegant glass folding doors to your living room or completely revamping the entire home, this article will hopefully help you avoid making mistakes that can completely ruin the entire experience.

Mistakes are a part of life. We’ve all made them, some much more than others, and many of those mishaps turned out to be learning experiences and/or helped mold us into the fine person we are today. However, some mistakes are so everlasting that we should do everything we can to avoid them at all costs.

Especially when we can learn from the mistakes of others.

There are few among us today that would buy a house sight-unseen from an internet ad or that would accept cashiers checks for double the amount of an item for sale online. Why? Because plenty of people already made those mistakes and we now know better.

While interior design projects may not be as dramatic as getting ripped off online, there are still some mistakes that can stick with you for a long time.

So, let’s count down the top 3 interior design mistakes you should avoid.

Number 3: Impulse Buying

Just about everyone has fallen victim to a spur of the moment purchasing decisions that they later regretted. Redesigning the interior of your home involves multiple buying decisions and whether it’s due to excitement or a desire to “get it over with,” impulse buying should be done with care.

That antique beaded curtain may seem like the perfect replacement for those old fashioned partition doors, but you should probably keep the receipt just in case. Sliding wall doors and glass folding doors are so beautiful and stylish these days, they can completely transform the aesthetics of the room and eliminate permanent drywall barriers.

This doesn’t mean that you should bypass something that you really fall in love with, it just should go without saying that you should check return policies before purchasing.

Furthermore, have a budget and preliminary plan of action in place before you begin shopping. Measure the room and any doors you plan to replace, envision furniture and accessory placement, and select at least two showrooms and/or installers before making a final, educated, decision.

Buyer’s remorse is not a feeling you want to have to deal with during your interior design project, so always plan first and shop second.

Number 2: Let There Be Light

For most of us, there’s arguably nothing worse than living in the dark. However, when it comes to interior design, lighting is another aspect that is overlooked much more than it should be.

Room illumination has a huge effect on its tone and atmosphere. Adding additional lighting sources is one solution, but you should know that solely using overhead lighting can be a bit harsh. Table and floor lamps can offer a softer light source and you should consider adding a dimmer for the overhead lighting.

However, replacing old doors or non-load-bearing walls with suspended doors, bi-fold doors, or glass slidingroom dividers can completely transform your living space with lighting that showcases your lovely home. This type of interior design revamp gives you the ability to layer lighting like never before while adding a beautiful flair of style to your home. Additional benefits are that natural light is known to boost mood and even help people sleep better at night.

And the #1 Interior Design Mistake to Avoid is…

Scale!

Proportion is a mistake that all too many people make when it comes to interior design. The proper scale is a mixture of different shapes, sizes, and heights, so there’s a couple of things to keep in mind.

Putting too many small things in the room doesn’t provide the eye a place to land and gives the room an overall cluttered feel. Conversely, putting too many large, bulky items in a single room makes it look stuffed and smaller than it actually is.

If the room is too small overall, consider revisiting the number 2 section of this article. Adding additional light sources can help with scale perception, but, adding in glass room divider doors, space-saving stacking doors or suspended doors can completely open that space up and provide you with an entirely new roomwith no major construction needed.  You don’t even need to leave the house for a minute.

With proper proportion and scale, your room redesign is well on its way to providing you the sanctuary you are shooting for while ensuring that you get the absolute most out of the space.

The Mistake Free Choice

Avoiding impulse buying, ensuring that your space has plenty of proper lighting, and keeping an eye on a scale will ensure that you don’t fall prey to the most common mistakes. When you work with The Sliding Door Company, you can evade all three of them from the word go.

We have 26 showrooms located throughout North America and you can schedule a FREE consultation in order to ensure that you can make the most informed purchasing decision possible. Furthermore, when it comes to lighting and scale, we have an impressive selection of interior door solutions that are unrivaled for their simple sophistication and refinement.

With the experts from The Sliding Door Company, you’ll get a partner that works with you to customize the perfect plan. From the consultation through selecting from our ample selection of frame designs, glass types, and hardware, to the installation of your custom room dividers,sliding interior glass doors, closet doors, storage enclosures or bi-fold doors, our experts will ensure that it’s mistake-free and perfectly suits your style and space.

Check out our design center to get ideas and see how various customizations will actually look, or contact us today for your free consultation. The experts at The Sliding Door Company are ready to help make your interior design ideas come to life.