Designing Custom Furniture For Your Lifestyle
As interior designers, we don’t just design homes, we create lifestyles. With that said, the best kinds of projects - both for our us as interior designers and for the client - are always those that utilize custom furniture.
Behind the scenes of one of our workrooms!
A lot of people don’t even know that the opportunity to create custom furniture exists. Anything you imagine can be created for your home, and the process is not as complicated or expensive as it may seem.
We make things that are unique to the client, instead of the same thing you can buy that everyone else has. Often I build for people’s body types. For example, if someone is very tall I will make a sofa very deep. For families with children or pets, we do a lot of custom furniture using outdoor environmentally-friendly fabrics. These fabrics can be used indoors now, too.
We work with the best artisans in the business!
I often talk about what it is that makes a room feel comfortable when you walk in, and why certain rooms don’t work. One of the biggest reasons for this is scale and proportion. For that comfortable feeling, you must have the correct scale. Custom furniture is the most effective ways to get proportions perfect. Not to mention, you get to design and create exactly what you want.
A tufted velvet bed fit for a queen? Done. You’d rather a headboard with sconces as reading lights? All yours. No space for a TV on the wall? We’ll make it pop up out of the footboard.
If you can dream it, we can make it.
You may find a piece that looks beautiful in the furniture store, but if the scale is off in your house it will not look good when you bring it home. That’s why at Donna Livingston Design we always start out with a floor plan and a furniture layout. Everything comes from the proportions.
After we have the furniture plan, we start drawing up the design of the piece. When I was first starting out, I loved Regency style consoles. I would endlessly browse Sotheby’s auctions for inspiration to figure out exactly what I wanted. Inspiration can come from anywhere.
Once we settle on a design, we present fabrics and estimate how many yards we will need. A lot of times there will be special little things like wood legs that have to go to the finisher to be added to the sofa, or special nail heads, or a custom cord trim. All these little details are what makes something timeless.
If you’ve been thinking about doing custom furniture, this is your sign to DO IT! It is the best decision you can make.
Questions, comments, or inquiries? Want to find out how we can create the perfect lifestyle for you?
