Decorating and Design

The world of decorating and design is as vast and intricate or as rewarding and intuitive as you choose to make it. There is an abundance of tips and ideas available that relate to the modern d

Modern interior decorating does not have to be expensive and exclusively reserved for the wealthy. There are many affordable home decorating ideas that you can consider. To stimulate the process of generating new ideas, you can pick up a decorating magazine or visit a blog. Decorating blogs are particularly helpful, as they allow you to post comments, ask questions and exchange ideas with like-minded individuals across the globe.

Expressing Individuality through Decorating and Design:

Decorating and design styles are an extension of one's personality and character. How people interpret the types of decorating styles and how they adapt them to their own homes makes life interesting. You can learn a great deal about people by looking at how they have furnished and decorated the rooms in their homes.

Bedroom Design:

How people express themselves through the decorating and design in their bedrooms gives us an even more personal glimpse into their lives. The bedroom will usually be the last thing that people see before they fall asleep, and the first thing that they see when they wake up.

It is often fascinating to observe what people prefer to wake up to. Bedroom designs are often limited by the size and existing layout of the room. However, there are still many affordable options for decorating bedrooms in an appealing manner.

Decorating and design for children's bedrooms is fairly popular, as children tend to spend a large portion of their time in their rooms. Parents need to make sure that children's bedrooms are safe and that they meet the needs of the particular child.


Decorating and Design, Decor School


Finding Ideas for Decorating and Design:

Home decorating stores are superb places to find home decorating items, or to browse for ideas. Such stores typically receive new stock on a monthly basis, so you may want to visit them regularly. New arrivals will usually be placed in the window displays. By being observant, you will easily pick up new trends as they arrive.

Using Software in Decorating and Design:

Apart from intuition and previous experience, interior decorators can also benefit from using decorating and design software. This type of software can help you to visualise the end result before you physically start with a project. This is particularly helpful if you are a professional interior decorator and need to present proposals to a client.

You can download various free decorating and design software programs from the internet, or you can choose to invest in licensed software.
ecorating style.

Interior Decorating?

Interior Decorating refers to the decorating and furnishing of interior spaces in homes, offices, schools, and public spaces. It deals with all aspects of lighting, color, texture, paint, furniture purchase and placement, flooring selection and installation, fabric installations, window treatments, and accessories. An Interior Decorator is charged with applying or updating the finishes and elements that will be included within a room space.

Cake decorating

Cake decorating is one of the sugar arts that uses icing or frosting and other edible decorative elements to make plain cakes more visually interesting. Alternatively, cakes can be molded and sculpted to resemble three-dimensional persons, places and things.

Cakes are decorated to mark a special celebration (such as a birthday or wedding). They can also mark national or religious holidays, or be used to promote commercial enterprises. However, cakes may be baked and decorated for almost any social occasion

During the 1840s, the advent of temperature-controlled ovens and the production of baking powder made baking cakes much easier.[1][dead link]

Even though baking from scratch decreased during the latter part of the 20th century in the United States, decorated cakes have remained an important part of celebrations such as weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, showers and other special occasions.[1][dead link] Recently, cakes decorated with fondant have become extremely popular and resulted in several reality based TV shows across the country.

The rise in popularity could be due to fondant providing a smooth and elegant finish to a cake as well fondant's versatility when it comes to texturizing it.
Decorating a cake usually involves covering it with some form of icing and then using decorative sugar, candy, chocolate or icing decorations to embellish the cake. But it can also be as simple as sprinkling a fine coat of icing sugar or drizzling a glossy blanket of glaze over the top of a cake. Icing decorations can be made by either piping icing flowers and decorative borders or by molding sugar paste, fondant, or marzipan flowers and figures.

Fondant exists in many different colors, and its initial form is soft and easy to handle. In this form, cake decorators are able to mold fondant into many different artistic expressions. Many of these expressions are also taught in professional cake decorating classes. Fondant is primarily used to cover cakes, but it is also used to create individual show pieces for cakes.

Royal icing is a sweet white icing made by whipping fresh egg whites (or powdered egg whites, meringue powder) with icing sugar.[2] Royal icing produces well-defined icing edges and is ideal for piping intricate writing, borders, scrollwork and lacework on cakes. It dries very hard and preserves indefinitely if stored in a cool, dry place, but is susceptible to soften and wilt in high humidity.

Sugar paste is a substance used in cake decorating to create flower decorations. Marzipan is often used for modeling cake decorations and as a base covering underneath fondant.[2]

Professional institutes, such as Le Cordon Bleu, have begun segregating their cookery schools to create completely separate institutes, dedicated to cake-making.

Activities of the trade

Historically, the painter was responsible for the mixing of the paint; keeping a ready supply of pigments, oils, thinners and driers. The painter would use his experience to determine a suitable mixture depending on the nature of the job. In modern times, the painter is primarily responsible for preparation of the surface to be painted, such as patching holes in drywall, using masking tape and other protection on surfaces not to be painted, applying the paint and then cleaning up.[2]

Larger firms operating within the trade were generally capable of performing many painting or decoration services, from creating an accent wall to sign writing, to the gilding of objects or the finishing or refinishing of furniture.[2]

More recently, professional painters are responsible for all preparation prior to painting. All scraping, sanding, wallpaper removal, caulking, drywall or wood repair, patching, stain removal, filling nail holes or any defects with plaster or putty, cleaning, taping, preparation and priming are considered to be done by the professional contracted painter.

Before repainting, surfaces are usually cleaned with sugar soap (in Commonwealth countries) which usually contains sodium carbonate, sodium phosphate, and sometimes sodium silicate as an abrasive, though formulations vary. In the U.S.A. a similar compound known as TSP is used but some modern formulations do not contain phosphates due to environmental concerns.

Professional painters need to have keen knowledge of tools of the trade, including sanders, scrapers, paint sprayers, brushes, paint rollers, ladders and scaffolding, in addition to just the paint in order to correctly complete work. Much preparation needs to be considered before simply applying paint. For instance, taping and dropcloth techniques, sizes of brushes or rollers, material types or dimensions of rollers or brushes (there are different sizes or types of brushes and rollers for different paints), amount of paint, number of paint coats, amount of primer, types of primers and paints, certain grits and cuts of sandpaper, trim cutting (the act of painting with a brush on the outline of baseboard, mouldings and other trim work), wallpaper removal, and nail-hole filling techniques. Today many painters are attempting to break into the field of faux painting, allowing them more creativity and access to a higher end customer base.

In 2009 the National Institute of Painting and Decorating (NIPD) created the GreenPainters program, an initiative for improving the sustainability of the trade. This program has been successfully run in Australia and the US. In 2013 NIPD also created the first on-line training system for the industry, allowing painters to learn the trade on-line anywhere in the world.