designing spaces Archives - A.Clore Interiors

We have written about indoor plants before and we all know that it is great to incorporate the outside indoors. While you’re scrolling on your Pinterest, you probably see lots of beautiful interiors filled with plants. Do you wish that was your room? Do you doubt that you could keep them alive? Well then this is for you; here are some low-maintenance plants perfect for beginners. Remember that with the chilly season right around the corner, it is important for your health to incorporate some lively green plants in your home! It increases your mood and improves oxygen levels.

Spruce up a space with a fresh bouquet

Snake Plant

This plant is specifically known for purifying indoor air by removing toxins such as formaldehyde, xylene, and toluene. In order to preserve water, the plant opens its pores and releases oxygen exclusively at night. This helps it to maximize efficiency in cleaning the air, as found in study conducted by NASA. It has a clean, modern look and can be small enough for tighter spaces, perfect to keep in a bedroom. This plant prefers medium-bright direct lighting and only needs watering every 3-4 weeks. But remember to increase the watering’s if sunlight is increased.

Air Plants

Tillandsia are adorably easy to take care of and can be displayed in the most creative ways. Whether they’re sitting clustered as a centerpiece or hung up on a wall, these plants will survive with almost no care. Our favorite way to use them would be in the shower. You read that right! Air plants make the perfect houseplant for a bathroom that receives plenty of natural light. The running water from your bathroom sink and shower helps increase humidity levels, which mimic air plants’ native environments, jungles. Just another reason to enjoy a long, warm shower. If you don’t keep them in the bathroom, just soak weekly in a bowl of room temperature water for 15-30 minutes. Shake excess water off afterward to avoid rotting.

Golden Pothos

This beautiful viney plant will shows off lush, white and green leaves, instantly enhancing your desktop. In fact, it is fondly nicknamed the ‘cubicle plant’. Wonderfully versatile, the pothos can be grown both in soil and water. This means you can creatively place and grow how you’d like! It prefers medium-low indirect light and only needs watering every 1-2 weeks, or when the soil is dry. Studies show it is also efficient in removing pollutants from indoor air, so you can breathe easy while you work.

Aloe Vera

We all know this is our mom’s favorite plant. It has numerous medicinal uses: reducing itchiness, soothing sunburn and improves digestive health. This plant is perfect to keep on a sunny kitchen window sill. They are drought-tolerant and actually prefer to be underwatered, so only water when dry. Not sure when to water? Wrinkles on the aloe’s fleshy leaves are a telltale sign.

Bird’s Nest Fern

And our last suggestion is, guess what? Pet-friendly! This unique plant has rippled leaves and grows out from the center. It would be the perfect addition to hang in your living room for all to admire. Plus, you won’t have to worry about it being dangerous for your fuzzy friends. This fern thrives in medium to bright indirect light, but can tolerate low indirect light. Water weekly, or whenever the soil is dry. But increase watering with increased sunlight.

Faux Plants

Of course, live indoor plants aren’t for everyone still. When we are designing a space and the client wants to incorporate faux plants, we turn to Stacked and Co. They’re an Orlando-based small business that always helps us deliver for our clients!

Click here for their website!

Here are some of the ways we use plants in the expertly designed spaces for our clients!

An outdoor feature plant wall paired with a beautiful center piece!

An elegant, floral arrangement.

Complete a dining room with an oversized floral centerpiece!

They can make a pretty nice backdrop to professional photos, too!

Open floor plans are what everyone is looking for right now. Understandably so, because they provide open sightlines, utilize square footage, and let natural light flood the room. With a family though, trying to use an open room utilized for different activities though can be too loud. Designating rooms to use in a large, long room can be hard though without the traditional walls to create these. Solid walls and doors can either take up too much space or ruin the openness perks of a room. Our favorite way to allocate space in a large area is with room dividers, specifically faux iron ones! These add personality with a unique pattern while allowing light and sight to continue throughout the space. Take a look at some projects we’ve done highlighting these!

iron room dividers between a lounge space and home office

Stylishly dividing a lounge space and home office.

Separating the dining and living rooms.

Other than their very functional use, faux iron dividers can easily add elegance to any room. In a formal setting, they’re the perfect addition of patterns to add an art interest. They can be mounted virtually anywhere you’re creative enough to think of; this includes ceilings, closet doors, or between wood paneling detail on walls! By adding function and design, they’ll upgrade the sense of worth in a simple room.

Our go-to place to get these items is through Tableaux® Decorative Grilles. (Instagram @tableauxgrilles) They offer a plethora of designs and colors to choose from, perfect for fitting each house’s style. Where do we most often use them? Because they’re great for seamlessly separating spaces, we often use them between a dining or cooking space from the living room next door. If a front door leads right into the living room, placing one between this creates the inviting feeling of an entryway while allowing light from the door into the house. With the ability to customize a lot, they’re easily usable in any space in many ways, really. Maybe you just need to connect a wall partition to the ceiling or close a large opening a little more, too. One of our favorite creative uses we found was creating a focal point to an expensive chandelier by adding detail above it.

Get creative and treat the ceiling as a 5th wall!

An added bonus: we see these on exteriors very often, too! They’re durable and fit in the nooks on exterior walls, hinting at a Spanish style, which does great on Florida homes. They can be the perfect addition to a boring front door’s side panels, too. Have a huge wall of windows? Add some oomph while letting light stream through with fitted iron for the top windows. Even using four square pieces as unique wall art can elevate the space. We’ve found that when effectively incorporated, these grilles will add a high-end feel to many homes. For more ideas, here are some others’ projects that we love using faux iron!