Sarah Style

Sarah Richardson

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781476784380
• eBook ISBN: 9781476791760
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design General

From bestselling author, HGTV star, and Canadian design queen Sarah Richardson comes the interior design book of the decade. Ever wondered how to transform your laundry room from drab to fab? Your kitchen from prison to paradise? Your bedroom from boring to beautiful?Now you can, in this comprehensive interior design tome by design maven extraordinaire Sarah Richardson. Within these beautiful, full-colour pages and photographs, Sarah walks you through each room in your home, from the master bedroom to the kids' rooms, to the kitchen, the bathroom, and everywhere in between, showing you how to turn a house into a home—Sarah style.Featuring full-page design spreads with stunning attention to detail, Sarah Style is a cache of creative, unique ideas for transforming your living spaces. You can make your dream home a reality, and the inspiration—and complete know-how—is right here in this premier source for all things interior design!

THE

KITCHEN

I think of kitchens as gathering spaces for family. The kitchen is in high demand from sunrise through sunset, servicing every member of the family. It runs the gamut from mission control for organizing the household to an arts and crafts centre for the kids, snack station, wine bar, and computer portal. Not to mention gathering place, diner, and bistro. I’ve always felt that kitchens should be welcoming, not intimidating, and laid out with a natural ease and flow to deliver the functionality, design features, and efficiency you demand, yet also all of the comfort you crave and associate with home and family. My childhood kitchen was small, yet pretty objects were always on the windowsill — a vase, a lovely piece of glass, or pottery from a trip, and a glowing candle. Like a little curated gallery, the windowsill evolved over time and became an area of my mom’s personal expression, even within a small space. That evolution of personal expression was so important to me then, and still is now — especially in the kitchen.

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SILVER CITY CONDO

Condo kitchens aren’t known for their spacious proportions or functional layouts. Instead, they tend to be diminutive and dysfunctional, lacking in both counter space and storage capabilities. In many new buildings, the kitchens are so small, they practically come with a maximum-occupancy warning that can’t exceed one person. Since the party always happens in the kitchen, I love having a decent-sized space to work with. That’s the advantage of buying a run-down unit in an older building. This kitchen was in the wrong place, devoid of light, and cut off from the action in the living area, but by removing partition walls, it became a sleekly styled culinary oasis.

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CUSTOMIZE IT

I want it all. Always have, always will. Every project has its budget limitations, and they always add up faster than you hope. If a total overhaul of your home is on the agenda, you’ll need to keep your eye on the bottom line at every turn. To pull back on the budget reins, I based this kitchen on simple, in-stock slab cabinetry doors. Made of MDF, these doors already have a painted finish, so respraying them in a new smoky charcoal tone simply treats the original white finish as a base coat for a custom colour scheme at a fraction of the cost of a true custom kitchen.

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REFLECT ON IT

Putting a mirror in your bedroom, bathroom, or entryway may be second nature, but perhaps it never struck you as a necessity in the kitchen. Forget using it to primp and preen, and think about how useful a mirrored surface can be to visually enlarge a space or to draw in views and sight lines that you wouldn’t otherwise benefit from. Installing slices of grey smoked mirror in between natural-walnut floating shelves draws your eye all the way to the back wall of the kitchen and reflects the length of the hallway, plus it allows you to see what’s happening behind you while cleaning up at the sink.

STEP IT UP

Knowing how you cook and what your habits are is important when laying out your kitchen. If you tend to make a mess and leave a trail of dirty pots and pans in your wake, raising the height of your breakfast bar to hide your path of destruction from view is probably a wise move. Creating a raised bar also affords the opportunity to use the narrow bar for the display of pretty objects without fear of knocking them over when you’re in the throes of whipping up a feast.

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BUILD THE GREAT WALL

Since storage is a major concern in many condominium residences, it’s important to designate as much room as possible to well-thought-out storage solutions to help you conquer the inevitable clutter and keep things tucked away in their proper place. To accommodate the need for a stacked washer/dryer in the unit, a full-height, wall-to-wall installation of pantry cupboards was chosen to house the machines in one cupboard, with dishes and dry-goods storage in the next. Installing full-height cabinets will reduce your available counter space, but I compensated by extending the main counter run into the circulation/hall space, thereby creating additional prep space and a bar counter with seating for two.

SPOTLIGHT IT

Condo ceilings are known for being challenging, as they are usually a solid concrete slab that limits your ability to redesign your lighting plan and get the beams of light focused just where you need them. Creating a dropped ceiling will allow you to put pot lights and pendants wherever your heart desires, but it will also gobble up about 6 inches of ceiling height. Think about other sources of illumination that allow you to light up your workspace, such as these puck lights that anchor the ends of the open shelves and send a beam of light along their length.

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GET JAZZY

In my book, saving in one area naturally begets splurging in another. The frugality of using ready-to-install cabinetry for the cupboards led to the creation of a groovy graphic backsplash rendered in natural stone and installed with painstaking attention to detail. By combining rectangular white marble “bricks” set in a herringbone pattern with single strips of confettidot marble mosaic, a unique backsplash detail emerged that adds punch and pizzazz to the kitchen and elevates it way beyond average.

FAMILY-FRIENDLY KITCHEN

Filled with shiny maple cabinets and glossy black counters, the kitchen in this home presented a major personality conflict with its new owners — one that could only be resolved through drastic measures and a demolition crew. While some homeowners are flexible and could easily live with a multitude of style directions, others have a definitive personal style that permeates everything from wardrobe to interior design in a cohesive manner. This home belonged to just such a client. After dabbling with colour, the lady of the house had conviction and confidence that only a white kitchen with black accents would do. With whimsical accessories and lighthearted touches, this all-white creation provides the backdrop for a bustling family home.

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GO DINER STYLE

The casual ease of a simple diner meal is appealing for a few reasons. The durable finishes, classic white dishes, and unfussed approach to churning out tasty meals seems well connected to how we live at home. Every meal isn’t a production, and it’s definitely not fancy. So if relaxed and friendly is more your style than polished and sophisticated, take a page from the ready-to-serve stacks of chunky white dishes in the serving line of any diner and create the same look at home by le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Introduction
• The Entry
• The Living Room
• The Dining Room
• The Living/ Dining Room
• The Kitchen
• The Family Room
• The Bedroom
• The Kids’ Bedroom
• The Bathroom
• The Office
• Acknowledgements
• About Sarah Richardson
• Copyright