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Start the New Year With a Long-Awaited Bathroom Remodel

Whether it’s for you, or for your significant other, making the long-overdue decision to remodel your home bathroom(s) is the best way to welcome in a new year. Why? Because bathrooms, like kitchens, are an integral facet of any home and should serve as a point of peace and sanctuary for us. Particularly during these unprecedented times, staying home more than usual has reminded us just how many updates and improvements we could stand to make on our homes. From kitchen remodeling to backyard landscaping, fresh paint, to furniture overhauls, this has been the year for home improvements for just about everybody. Updating your bathrooms, among other areas of the home, has a significant impact on your health, happiness, and your home’s future ROI.

Health and Harmony

Bathrooms are perhaps the most essential room in the house, aside from the kitchen. They are where we start and end our day, where we transform ourselves into a healthy, presentable version of ourselves for the world, and where we go to relax (hopefully!). For those of you who value alone-time and treating yourself to the finer things in life such as baths, pampering, and aromatherapy, the bathroom is the getaway sanctuary of choice, especially for those rearing children. Oftentimes, bathrooms are the only true escape away from a bustling home, needy family members and animals, and the general buzz of daily life. And what a perfect escape it is! Well, that is if your bathroom indeed sparks joy. Meaning that it’s updated, modern, comfortable, and clean. Unfortunately, most are unable to check all of these boxes! So, if you find that your bathroom is having a hard time meeting expectations, not to worry. We’ve got you covered with some bathroom remodeling hacks to improve and perfect your salle de bains.

Update the Framework

Sometimes all it takes to transform entire areas of the home is to simply update the framework, or the skeleton, so to speak. By replacing old, outdated doors, mirrors, and even the wall trim of your bathroom, you give the room an instant facelift, without the major cost and headache of involved construction. Select the perfect Sliding Pocket Doors and other sliding glass bathroom doors from The Sliding Door Company to modernize your bathroom with elegance and ease. Choose from countless configurations, handles, accessories, and even glass opacities and fine-tune the aesthetics to match your home and your desired look. Remove that old, thin wall-trim from your bathroom interiors and replace it with slightly thicker, fresh trim. To achieve that extra wow factor, make sure to paint them bright white so as to create a beautiful juxtaposition between the wall paint color and the starkness of the trim. Just doing these few upgrades will instantly update your favorite room in the house!

Freshen It Up

What’s the easiest (and quickest) way to update your interior environs while sticking to a budget? Fresh paint, of course! Start by picking a calming color for your bathroom, as you’ll want to feel as relaxed and at-ease as possible in your private getaway. Lavender, sage green, and light blue are all great colors for bathrooms. And if simplicity is more your style, go for a casual cream or a warm taupe. Then add in some meaningful framed art to the walls to add context and contrast. Next, sprinkle in a few outdoor elements to create artful intrigue to the space, such as a dried palm frond, or some Pampas grass in a pretty vase. Pick out some brand new bath mats and hand towels, et voila! You have a freshened up bathroom without spending weeks or months on this very necessary home improvement project. Light some candles, draw a bath, and let out that long-awaited “Ahhhh” you’ve been bottling up.

This New Year presents the perfect opportunity to update your interiors and scratch those “wants” off your to-do list. Give yourself (or your loved one) the gift of peace and tranquility in 2021 with a bathroom make-over. After the dust settles from your bathroom remodel, you’ll be ready to drink in the luxuriousness of a modernized oasis to relax and revel in. For more ideas, inspiration, and related blogs, head over to The Sliding Door Company, for all the best in residential space-saving solutions! From Bi-Fold doors to swing doors, wall dividers to suspended systems, The Sliding Door Company has it all! Schedule a free consultation with one of our showroom professionals and order your very own custom Glass Bathroom Doors today!

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Preparing for Winter Vacation

With the winter season quickly approaching, we can guess that this year may look a little bit different for the typical sunbird. With few options for international travel this season, most North Americans will be planning trips within the country to satiate the yearly travel cravings, all while remaining safe and risk-free.

Outfitting Your Home for Short Term Stays

As a homeowner, you should consider the many financial fruits of hosting guests throughout the peak winter season. After all, people will find a way to travel, perhaps not to exotic destinations outside of the U.S.- but they’ll travel. In fact, the rate of national travel has surged in recent months, generating an unprecedented country-wide travel economy. That being said, this fall presents a perfect opportunity to gear your interiors up for the onslaught of winter vacation tourism before the season hits you at full volume! So, whether you’re in California or New York, Texas, or Tennessee, you can bet there will be another wave of tourism coming to your town soon! And with little indication of how long this pandemic will last, it’s a wise move to plan for the long-haul.

After all, short term rentals are an excellent way to bring in extra income without investing too much in the exorbitant cost of construction. With the right solutions and spatial planning, you can seamlessly create an entirely new closed off stay within your home, with virtually no major construction! Curious to hear more? Of course, you are.

Within the Home

If you aren’t planning on building an ADU to host your short-term travelers, making use of extra square footage within your home is an excellent choice. A great way to block off entire areas of your home and create separate rooms is to install floor to ceiling glass wall partitions. With so many options available through The Sliding Door Company, you can choose from countless configurations to achieve the aesthetic and convenience that you desire. Sliding glass wall partitions, sliding glass barn doors and opaque glass wall partitions come in varying sizes and glass opacities so you can tailor your partitions to meet your specific needs for hosting!

Outside the Home

If you have an unused shed, a garage, or any standing unit apart from that house, to consider converting the space into a passive income short-term stay is never a bad idea! To seamlessly build entire rooms within your ADU, install floor to ceiling standing wall partitions and seamlessly construct an entire floor plan within a day! The Sliding Door Company delivers and installs your glass partitions at no additional cost and gets the job done as quickly as possible- meaning you could be hosting your first guests in less than a week!

Covid Safety Precautions

Of course, existing within COVID times, it’s always important to maintain a clean and well-kept environment that is often sanitized and devoid of germs. Glass is an excellent solution for freestanding wall partitions, as it’s the easiest material to clean and disinfect. Unlike plexiglass or other acrylic alternatives, real glass is not porous and will withstand constant cleaning and harsh chemicals throughout the years. Especially when hosting a short-term stay, with multiple weekly guests, you’ll have to prepare for a lot of cleaning and disinfecting between stays. To save time and hassle, you’ll want to streamline the disinfecting process and make sure you have the tools you need to be successful. Sliding glass wall partitions?Your best asset.

Another thing to consider while hosting is to limit your exposure to an influx of new guests. It will be safer and more easeful if you can offer a separate entrance for your guests to enter and exit the unit. This way, you and your family won’t run the risk of coming in contact with more people than necessary, and your guests can feel safe and risk-free.

Keeping these details in mind, it should be a breeze to update your interiors for hosting this winter, all while staying safe! 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!

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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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Great Design Increases Quality of Life

Simply put, interior design is to thank for providing the heart and soul to any building, home, restaurant, office, or retail shop. Design and curation are an integral part of any space- yet attention to interior design can be vastly overlooked. Why is it that our spaces are so affecting? Well, the obvious answer is because it’s our relative environment. We exist in our known spaces every single day, so they should be as functional, joyful, and enriching as possible. If you’re like the majority of people out there that draw a blank when it comes to crafting your interior space- don’t stress. Outlined below are the top design trends, elements, and solutions to effectively craft a dreamy, luxurious and unique abode perfect for you.

Frosted glass sliding door divides modern office from the living room area

The Healing Property of Plants

The age-old human tradition of bringing plants indoors has had many varying reasons, understandings, and developments. Houseplants have somehow survived as a staple of any interior design scheme throughout many a fad, decade and interior trend. Of course, which type of plants are in style has changed and evolved with the times. One thing is for certain- plants are an integral part of human life. There’s a greater reason why we crave to have plants living amongst us in our indoors. Here are the top

five main healing properties of plants:

  • They recycle carbon-dioxide and in turn, release oxygen. This assists us in breathing and promotes fresh, healthy air in our homes.
  • They increase humidity indoors during a process called transpiration which decreases dry skin, colds, dry coughs, and sore throats.
  • They reduce trace levels of toxic vapors such as carbon monoxide and formaldehyde from enclosed interior spaces.
  • They make us feel in touch with our outside environment when being outdoors is not a viable option, especially in the cold and foul weather winter months
  • It’s been scientifically proven that the presence of plants actually improves concentration, reduces anxiety and promotes good memory

Intention Through Color

Take into consideration the colors that you are already stuck with… or rather, already enjoying. That is to say, look at your available furniture, wood pieces- such as tables and frames, and go from there. It is much easier to change a wall color rather than buy an entirely new set of furniture. Typically the goal is to create a cohesive juxtaposition between furnishings and wall color. For example, if you have loud, statement piece furniture in bright colors and patterns, opt for a more neutral wall color so as to not overcrowd and distract from your beautiful sofa, chair, table, etc. It works the same if you have neutral, toned-down furnishings. Consider livening up your space by picking a striking and emotive wall color to bring life and depth into your atmosphere.

Secondly, there are specific colors that cater to specific moods. Typically colors on the dark side of the spectrum- blues, greens, purples, and blacks are used to enlarge a space, offer sophistication, intrigue, concentration, and productivity. While brighter colors such as yellows, reds, oranges, mustards, whites, and pinks are employed to evoke energy, excitement, life, curiosity, and playfulness. Neutrals would be grays, browns, creams, and pale hues. Soft colors and neutrals are great for curating calming and relaxing spaces, or gender-neutral rooms.

Aim to be intentional when selecting color, after all, whatever you choose will have a substantial effect on the way you exist and enjoy each space.

Tasteful Art Curation

Everyone knows or should know, the value that good art adds to a home. When we walk into virtually any interior space, be it a restaurant, home or office, one of the first things we notice (subliminally or not) is the art. With this said, make a point to curate your space with art you love, not just art you can buy from a retail store at a discount price. Perhaps it will take months or even years to arrive at a collection you feel proud of. That’s the fun part- every time you buy a piece of art, in a sense, you’re memorializing your experience and the artist’s unique creative process. While some people craft their entire rooms based on one single piece of art, others use art to tie accessories and design flourishes together. To make the space feel considered and unique. Having art around you that you love will spark joy when you exist in that room, and may even provide a wonderful conversation starter.

Attention to Health and Wellness

This is something that many overlook while setting out to curate their interior environment. Attention to necessities such as abundant light, fresh air, plants, heat, spatial separation, and humidifiers all remedy the experience of existing in close quarters. An effective way to bring in and maintain more natural light throughout your home is to consider replacing unnecessary walls and restrictive doors with bi-fold interior doors. These glass bifold doors are almost exclusively glass, with little framing which allows for ample light to pass through and brighten up your interior space. A great replacement for average doors to the outside, these are stylish and unique- which creates interest and aid in your meaningful design.

Balcony sliding door with ocean view

Smart Accessories and Features

Implementing smart features throughout your home, as well as useful and intelligent accessories, will make your day-to-day more easeful as well as lower your monthly energy costs and carbon footprint. Introduce features such as Smart thermostats to regulate temperature from your smartphone, solar power-lit path lights, dimmer switches, and smart kitchenware and accessories. Things to reduce waste such as product savers like foam soap dispensers will make a big difference in the long run.

In addition to accessories, we recommend installing sliding pocket doors to maximize space and improve usability. Introducing a barn door room divider into your living room to effectively craft spatial distinction is a great way to add value and ease to any home. These sliding glass doors are a stylish and contemporary design that breeds rustic nostalgia and offers increased spatial separation where needed. Your home will feel accessible, updated and modern with these simple additions.

Person behind desk in home office with frosted glass sliding door

With all of these interior flourishes, touches, and creative considerations, hopefully you won’t be stumped the next time you set out to successfully create your ideal space. The Sliding Door Company has all the creative solutions you need moving forward making your home as comfortable and stylish as possible. For help on getting started, check out our website, go into any of our 26 showrooms which offer a myriad of design examples, accessory options, and customizable choices. Get in touch with one of our knowledgeable representatives by scheduling a free consultation and start the transformation today.