arthistorian's Profile

I like I love the overall feeling of the result (the clash of modern and traditional is powerful), but I would have favored a more timeless pattern. The coloring is beautiful. But in a few years anything with a deer or bird on it will seem as out of touch as anything with a sunflower on it.

There are aspects of the "before" that I prefer -- like the counter tops and the backslash, and the general simplicity of it all -- but the "after" looks, of course, more polished. But the space seems to have been polished to a degree of garishness that simultaneously uplifts and diminishes it. For example, the lack of metallic conformity among the darkness of the cabinet hardware and light fixtures in comparison to the stainless steel of the appliances and the chrome or nickle faucet presents quite a bit of discord in the space. It is over-decorated and not well-harmonized in general (the busy granite could work with another backslash I suppose). All in all it must certainly feel like a more livable space to the owners. Not at lot of admirable choices though.

Who wouldn't want to live in a luxurious hotel suite forever? You design queens need to come off it. Anyone can be an eclectic pack rat, but I don't see enough folks pulling off informed restraint.

That said, anyone who piles books up on a table, on a bench, or on the floor as an intentional design motif is 100% ridiculous. An ordered mess in a space like these is akin to holes in a new pair of $500 jeans... it's trying too damn hard.

With the exception of, I guess, three examples we don't actually see the illuminating aspects of the lighting. I can't begin to know how functional these examples are because nature seems to be doing the heavy lifting. Natural lighting is, of course, great for interior photography, but I wonder how many of these fixtures I would applaud given some familiarity with their functionality. As aesthetic pieces none of them seems to be impressively original.