14 hours Ago By Claire Young, Calgary Herald
Good design starts with crunching numbers, says interior designer Karl Lohnes. It comes with knowing some handy ratios for what really works visually. Take chandeliers, for instance, Lohnes says, honing in on mistakes people make with lighting during in his talk, the Top 5 Decorating Mistakes and How to Fix Them.
Lohnes presented on the Main Stage at the Edmonton Fall Home Show on Oct. 19 and 20, and at the Calgary Fall Home Show in September. Chandeliers add a sculptural element to a dining area.
The proportions of the rest of the room and furniture can enhance or detract. Lohnes offers some pretty simple numbers to land lighting that visually fits: measure the width of the room and give your lighting two inches of diameter for each foot of room width. A 10-foot wide dining area could take a chandelier that’s 20 inches diameter.
And the right height? Start with 66 inches off the floor to the bottom of the fixture. Once the numbers are crunched and the approximate size of the fixture is determined, Lohnes suggests grouping like with like to help create a sense of cohesiveness — a round fixture above a round table, a rectangular chandelier above a rectangular table. Celebrity contractor Bryan Baeumler, who also presented at the fall home shows, is also all about crunching numbers.
Budget numbers. Where are you going to spend your renovation budget, he asks. On things you want now or things that make you money in the long run? Baeumler uses the analogy of a boat with a hole in it — do you buy a pump to deal with the water sloshing around the bottom and then have to buy a life raft, or do you fix the hole and keep on sailing? His advice takes a page from how he observed people living in the Bahamas while he and his family lived there renovating a hotel and filming the popular show Island of Bryan.
Instead of taking out the largest mortgage possible and spending a long time paying it back, consider buying a less expensive home and then renovating it with things that save you money over time. Spray foam insulation, while a more expensive outlay initially than other forms of insulation, will save you more on every single energy bill afterward, he says, leaving you richer over time. More home projects on your horizon? Mark your calendars for the in January and the at the end of February.
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