Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: How to Use Colour in Exterior Lighting

Coloured gels are perfect for illuminating either still or moving water in sophisticated London garden designs. Our interior design consultancy often recommends fibre optic cables with colour wheels for truly stunning high-impact luxury. My interior design team will look to our local urban environment for inspiration. For example, London’s celebrated Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square was recently restored in 2009. The new pump system can jet arcs of water up to 25 metres into the air. The LED lighting system was designed to match the colours of the 2012 Olympics logo, together with fibre optic heads that can change colour. Our London-based interior design consultancy will use the same ideas and themes for our clients, helping them embrace the magnificence of colour while simultaneously allowing them to explore and understand the versatility of their redesigned outdoor spaces.
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Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: Illumination for Special Events

Today’s London jet set are used to attending fabulous parties with breathtaking surroundings and spectacular illumination. But how to replicate this feel for a London garden party on a summer evening? Today’s top interior design consultancies are expert in designing your outdoor spaces for a sense of drama, mood and excitement. Coloured light is often a great solution in this regard. Our London interior design consultancy will recommend coloured filter gels on low-profile uplighters to act as soft wallwashers. To build the elegant party feel, we often move to the fresher blueberry-apple region of the colour wheel, perhaps adding some raspberry and banana for interest and drama. Our London interior design consultancy also recommends colder snow-blue illuminators to recall the magical effect of moonshine for trees and shrubs.

Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: Lighting a Garden for Safety

Focused indicator lights (often LEDs) are a great safety addition to your garden. If you live outside London and own a large country mansion, these lighting options may be near-essential because the countryside gets so very dark at night. Our interior design consultancy will recommend installing these indicators in the ground or beneath an outdoor guardrail to show visitors where exactly a path leads. If your garden has local water features, the twinkling, sparkling look will be breathtaking when reflected in the glassy stillness of a pond or pool. Our London interior design consultancy will recommend coloured LEDs for modern designs and white low-profile uplighters to illuminate garden features such as urns, planters or architectural stonework.

Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: Illuminating Outdoor Bridges

Our most sophisticated London clients will call our interior design consultancy seeking truly unique and fabulous solutions to their indoor and outdoor design challenges. A recent trend has seen the installation of bridges as special features over still water in the garden. Our London-based interior design consultancy will use one or more bridges as actual design instruments in larger gardens – bridges can either connect spaces, or serve as classic borders to fragment a large area into various zones. Our goal is always to create a magical look and feel – one fabulous approach involves installing sparkling illuminators, patterned like stars, underneath the arc of a bridge. Some London interior design consultancies will even recommend special effects lighting to create atmosphere and build mood, drawing the eye towards an appreciation of the textured bridge surface even when seen from a distance.

Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: Outdoor Swimming Pools

Modern Londoners seeking the ultimate in luxury design often request an outdoor swimming pool to be installed either in their garden or on a roofdeck. Our interior design consultancy will normally create a blue-inspired lighting scheme to emphasise this special feature. At nighttime, the swimming pool’s aquamarine tint will glow to create a stunning and luxurious effect. Even if the pool will only be used seasonally, our interior design consultancy may recommend setting the illumination fixtures into the walls of the pool, beneath the water level, using a custom blend-cross scheme that combines bright and shaded zones for added interest. Low-voltage halogens are perfect, as are fibre optics – both come in low-profile recessed options. Our London-based interior design consultancy can recommend suitable options if our client desires a more engaging colour environment; we might suggest the installation of a remote-controlled colour selection disk in front of certain of the illuminators. This allows the homeowner to select colours on demand or use an auto-rotating program – perfect for a London soiree or evening garden party.

Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: How to Illuminate Garden Pools

Today’s discerning Londoners crave luxury and sophistication not just inside their homes but also outside, in the garden. Our interior design consultancy will receive requests for Asia-inspired stillwater pools to be included in garden redesign projects. The goal is often to build a unique atmosphere – contemplative, peaceful, harmonious. Our London-based interior design consultancy will often focus on custom illumination schemes to enhance the residents’ feeling of luxurious relaxation. Sediment-free water is best for this purpose – one golden rule is never to illuminate pondwater from below, as this will only emphasise the muddy and roily appearance. In the case of ponds, our interior design consultancy generally prefers to avoid the use of artificial illumination altogether. Without submerged lighting, the pond’s glassy surface will look fabulous – in the daytime, it will reflect blue skies and sunshine, while at night the pinpricks of starlight will glisten sublimely.

Sometimes our London clients are art enthusiasts or collectors who already own sculptures that are suitable for outdoor installations. In such cases, our interior design consultancy may combine such a sculpture with the water feature in order to create a unique zone of interest. Uplighting from underwater spotlights or side-lighting from the shores can be truly stunning.

Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: Understanding Water Rills

Water rills are common in Andalusia, Spain, where they connect the famous water terraces within that region. However, today our most detail-oriented London clients are requesting rills for their garden redesign projects! Our interior design consultancy will create shallow step-pools of water that connect one pond to another. We like to use fibre optics at either side to illuminate each step and create the illusion of a tape-band of illumination that can be truly breathtaking. The light can be artificially tinted by choosing a coloured rill base. In common with other luxury-focused London interior design consultancies, we will normally install pebbles and small stones to create a delightful interplay of illumination and shade.

Secrets of a London Interior Design Consultancy: Illuminating Waterfalls

Our interior design consultancy sometimes gets invited to create dramatic illumination effects for garden waterfalls. The most exciting schemes involve the lighting fixtures being positioned immediately beneath the falling water. Lighting specialists at our interior design consultancy in London will carefully position all spotlights, placing them at multiple points along stones or fixture zones. This helps make certain that the water will appear to be magically illuminated, as if from within. Our discerning London clients crave high-impact solutions. We like to use lights that are powered by extended wiring, so that we can fine-tune all positionings only after the exact waterfall performance is finalised.

Notes from a London Interior Designer: Designing for an Aviary

A few days ago I got an interesting email from a regular reader of this London Interior Design blog. The lady explained that she is moving into a historic London home and her family has gone to great lengths with the restoration work to ensure that the house retains its traditional look and feel. The family loves birds, and as a result they need one of the bedrooms to be an aviary! They wanted my interior designer advice on how to include some comfy but easy-to-clean furniture that birds aren’t going to want to use as a perchpoint but that will still allow the family to go and enjoy time with the birds. I recommended some comfortable fabric-free furniture made out of Perspex, but with a traditional contoured arc shape. The look is very “interior designer” but the birds aren’t going to find a perch-hold on that glossy surface. If you have any suggestions on other options, feel free to write in the comments!

Notes from a London Interior Designer: In Love with Technology

Today’s interior designers regularly work with clients who crave the latest in technological wizardry and high-end entertainment engineering. And this means that we have to keep fully up-to-date with all the latest developments in the space. We need to understand the latest flat-screen TV technologies, including the new 3-D TV standards and accompanying audio and video equipment. My London Interior Design Consultancy works with lighting technology specialists to make sure we stay abreast of the newest computer-controlled lighting scene creation and manipulation systems. Even home automation is rapidly gaining traction with some of London’s most discerning homeowners. As an interior designer, it feels like I just never stop learning!

Notes from a London Interior Designer: Exciting Plans for 2010

Looking back on 2009, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the fantastic people who have supported Global Interior Design with engineering and contracting services, ideas, collaborations and guest contributions, taking our London based Interior Design Consultancy to a new and exciting level. As interior designers we were also fortunate to work with a fabulous list of master craftspeople and design subspeciality experts - personalities and perspectives who will be back with more value-add contributions for our clients in 2010 and beyond. Part of our growing portfolio of design solutions and consultative services is our branded full-capability “Design+Implementation” service, which spans every possible area of your home that you could imagine – from interior to exterior, including interior designer talent to re-envision every room in your home, plus conservatories, terraces, front porches and gardens. 2010 will see an avalanche of new offerings from Global Interior Design and our partners. Exciting times! Thank you for being part of our journey.

Notes from a London Interior Designer: Garden Waterfalls

As I’ve written many times before, today’s top interior designers don’t only design the inside of your home – our work extends out into the garden, terrace and front porch as well. As springtime approaches, many people are thinking of garden redesign options, and one of the most fabulous approaches to making your garden magnificent involves installing a miniature waterfall. These come in many forms, from minimalist cascades to more nature-orientated options, creating thin see-through shrouds or tumbling chaotic falls of water. London's Most Experienced Interior Designers will help you comprehensively explore water features at this time of year, regardless of whether you have a more compact urban garden or the expansive rolling acres of an opulent mansion.

Notes from a London Interior Designer: Multitasking

London’s top interior designers today are highly-qualified multitalented professionals … it’s not just about pretty fabrics and gorgeous furniture any more (although those certainly remain as important as ever!). Today’s design professionals need to understand flooring, structures, plumbing constraints, heating systems, security features, electrical outlets and much more besides. One of the most important parts of an interior designer’s job is integrating so many different components into a coherent whole, and this can be one of the most creatively and technically challenging and complex elements of the profession. To do this effectively, the best London Interior Designers will work with a team of professionals – everyone from administrators to lighting designers to structural engineers. The quality of this collaboration often directly impacts the final results!

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Outdoor spaces are supposed to reflect personal characteristics and sentiments just as much as interiors. Interior design companies rely on garden lighting to reinterpret and reflect an indoor concept. A garden filled with meadowgrass and wild flowers will be more random and not as focused as a minimal design. This requires a more random stylistic effort on the part of the Interior Design Company, with modular illuminators that can be repositioned as blossoms fall and seasons shift. A London roof garden in the Japanese style may work well with focused illumination, perhaps to accentuate a water column. Formal lighting is best in these cases. In more urban London gardens, shrubs and bushes are often combined with architectural plants for stylistic purposes. In these cases, interior design companies will incorporate hidden up-lighters to great effect.

London Interior Design Companies

In the same way that Interior Design Companies have experienced monumental transformations in recent decades, garden design has similarly evolved in myriad ways. Today’s modern London garden is often fairly urban - with minimal plant and flower arranging and more of a focus on landscapes and features. Your interior design company can specify computer controls for water systems like ponds, fountains and waterfalls to drown out the noise of busy London streets. The ability of water to reflect light will complement designs that bathe the side of a building in a soft warm glow, perhaps with well-lit steps and lighting from within bushes or rockeries. Some modern interior design companies will even offer the ability for the resident to modulate the light levels to build atmosphere, or to showcase different elements from summer to winter.

London Interior Design Company

Interior design companies that also specialise in lighting design can transform a simple garden into an outdoor room that will feel welcoming all year round. The aim is to focus on interesting elements - like a vine carrying blossoming flowers or a set of ornamental shrubbery boxes. Even London’s smallest gardens or roof terraces can enjoy a touch of magic when an Interior Design Company gets to work on a new scheme.

All too often, Londoners will forget all about their garden at night. But a garden lighting concept envisioned by a professional interior design company will showcase a residence, generating engagement and animation inside, drawing the eye towards the windows and creating a sensation of openness. A garden should be enjoyed whatever the hour.

London Interior Design Companies

It was in the 1750s and onwards that interior design companies in England first began to think about how to incorporate Greco-Roman styles into their work. This movement was prompted in part by new ruins in Rome and exciting excavations in Pompeii. Interior design companies - especially some of London’s top names in design - had been busy working in the Rococo style. The new Greco-Roman interpretations counterbalanced the Rococo ornamentations, reflecting a more authentic vision of natural forms. This new style influence came to be known as the Neo-Classical. It is characterised by Palladian capitals, pediments and stonework. Marble features heavily. London Interior Design Companies today will often choose Neo-Classical furniture pieces for their firm, clean geometries and forms.

London Interior Design Companies

Your interior design company can help you illuminate your garden fountain. Light can help bring focus to the fabulous properties of water, magnifying the twinkle of a modest garden nozzle or a grand and gushing waterfall. Qualified interior design companies will even show you how to create artificial moonshine that will cascade down through foliage. In London mansions, lighting is often used to celebrate outdoor entertainment, where it can transform a basic alfresco dinner into a summertime event to remember.

Compelling garden illumination requires a tranquil harmony between what is lit and what is unlit. Some of the best London Interior Design Companies specialise in creating a wide range of atmospheres for your garden, from calm retreat to operatic excitement.

London Interior Design Company

Gardens can be so beautiful - but gardens that are illuminated by an Interior Design Company can become even more fabulous. Creatively-lit gardens allow us to luxuriate and enjoy these spaces well after nightfall and regardless of season (although the London rain showers may keep us indoors from time to time!). When an interior design company imagines a new scheme for a garden, whether grand or modest, whether historic or modern, lighting should be the first order of business. Just as with indoor spaces, illumination can change our perspective by improving textures, adding colours and building mood. Your interior design company will also take any necessary practicalities into account - light will help brighten up steps and make outdoor walks safer, even in less prosperous London boroughs.

London Interior Design Companies

Since the last post was about glass shelves, I thought I might discuss how our interior design company illuminates solid shelves as well. There are several options, from micro-scale, recessed low-voltage downlights to petite track lights that feature miniature garland lamps. I know of some London Interior Design companies that will arrange these to build wells of illumination around certain objects when the bulbs are spaced far apart. Other interior design companies will prefer to create a uniform wash of light by positioning the bulbs close together in a semi-continuous line. I even know of one London interior design company that has used this kind of track at the rear of a shelf to silhouette a favourite possession, to very nice effect.

London Interior Design Company

A great technique when illuminating glass shelves is to use a single downlighter that will project light downwards through each shelf to create atmosphere and impact. Our Interior Design Company used exactly this approach for a project last year. The shelves in question featured a prized collection of historic London glassware. Our interior design company positioned the downlighter such that the glass items glittered beautifully without casting any shadows on the shelves below. We had a few solid objects to take care of as well (some old sporting awards from a well-known London university). We positioned these so that they would capture only a tiny percentage of the illumination, allowing the rest to spill down. The client was very pleased with how our interior design company’s scheme showcased her treasured possessions.

Interior Design Company London

A great technique when illuminating glass shelves is to use a single downlighter that will project light downwards through each shelf to create atmosphere and impact. Our Interior Design Company used exactly this approach for a project last year. The shelves in question featured a prized collection of historic London glassware. Our interior design company positioned the downlighter such that the glass items glittered beautifully without casting any shadows on the shelves below. We had a few solid objects to take care of as well (some old sporting awards from a well-known London university). We positioned these so that they would capture only a tiny percentage of the illumination, allowing the rest to spill down. The client was very pleased with how our interior design company’s scheme showcased her treasured possessions.
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