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by Robert Carlton, Rob

The window coverings that you choose can have a huge impact upon the home design of your windows and your room. This is due to the many different styles and colors of curtains that are available, as well as different ways that the curtains can be installed and hung. Accessories, like tie backs, can have a big influence upon how the curtains look as well. By learning more about the different tie back choices that you can consider, you can take a window from boring to exciting.
The most common ways that tie backs are used are as a low tie, high tie, middle tie, angled double tie, center tie, and a crisscrossed tie. These are the most common options that designers use in home design to give the curtains the right look and feel for the room. 1. A low tie is when the tie back is located at about 1/4th the distance between the floor and the top of the curtains. 2. A high tie is when the curtains are pulled back just above the centerline of the window area. 3. A middle tie is when the window coverings are pulled back right at approximately the middle. 4. An angled double tie uses two different tie backs to create a billowing effect. The first tie back is located in the high position and partially pulls back the curtains, while the second tie back is located in the low tie position and the window coverings are pulled back almost to the window casing. 5. A center tie is when the window coverings are pulled together in the window's vertical center at about 2/3 of the curtain's length. 6. A crisscrossed tie is used when two fabric curtain panels overlap each other. The outer curtain may be pulled to one side and the inner panel pulled to the other side.
Formal or Informal Window Coverings
Window coverings come in as many different styles and designs as people. With all of these different choices, however, they can still be separated into two main categories - informal or formal.
Draperies are normally found in more formal styled rooms. These window coverings are most commonly hung in layers and are found in formal rooms like dining rooms, living rooms, and more. One layer is normally a sheer fabric or lace that allows light into the room, but gives some privacy. Drapes are normally hung over the sheers and cover the window's trim and side casing and work to frame the sheers and add color. A third layer is sometimes used and this one is normally a valance that frames the top of the window. This formal window covering can hang to just below the window sill or they can hang all the way to the floor.
Other types of curtains are considered to be more informal. They can be one or two layers and are normally unlined. Whichever window coverings that you choose, they can help to add visual appeal and interest to your windows and your room.

Home design requires lighting as well as decoration to create comfortable and personalized living space. Home designers in the Houston area frequently partner with lighting and electrical experts like ILD because they know their services will only look better when placed in the best possible light. Home remodeling often requires advanced home electrical systems and circuitry work that only licensed professional electricians can perform. The intricacies and often complex color schemes of interior home design require specialized lighting controls and multiple layers of light to be completely revealed; and home exteriors and landscapes require specification grade home lighting systems and equipment to blend architecture and indigenous vegetation into a harmony of luminance that is both directionally focused and economically cost effective.

Home Remodeling

Houston home design firms often remodel and expand existing homes, creating new interiors and spaces that must be properly wired, grounded, and protected to comply with local electrical regulatory codes. If you are currently having your home remodeled, be sure to contact a certified electrical design firm who can partner with your home design firm to ensure that new home wiring is installed correctly and safely. Any number of steps may end up being taken by our team to safeguard the operability and reliability of your home electrical wiring. These upgrades may include a new circuit panel, new outlets, and dedicated circuits for sophisticated electronics, home theater systems, and major appliances that require an individual source of power to work correctly.

After completion of all necessary electrical panel upgrades, we recommend you take an additional step and invest in one or more protective measures to safeguard your home's access to uninterrupted power. During Houston area thunderstorms, tropical storms, and hurricanes, lighting can cause voltage to spike in homes throughout entire neighborhoods. This can destroy appliances and circuit panels if a whole house surge suppression system is absent. Investing in a surge suppression system protects your circuit panel, dedicated circuits, and power outlets that feed electricity to your entertainment, communication, and daily living systems. You may need more that this, however, if the power grid itself goes down in your neighborhood. A reasonable investment in an electrical generator will enable you to maintain power to your home so that you may continue to receive vital news and communication services if a major crisis knocks out the power in the city.

Interior Lighting

If you have hired an interior decorator in the past, you have already invested considerably in exquisite home design and beautification. Without the proper lighting, however, the full magnitude of your investment can be diminished by shadows or glare. Finding the balance between light and darkness is critical to showcase many of your home's unique designs and points of differentiation such as vaulted ceilings, trusses, coves, custom kitchens, dens, and guest bathrooms. Homeworks lighting controls installed make fine tuning your home's interior lighting design as simple as tuning a stereo dial or pushing a television remote. As a vendor of Lutron, AMX, and Vantage lighting controls and software, we can both program automated lighting sequences into various rooms of your home to correspond with specific activities, and we can give you one touch manual control over any luminaire or multiple layers of lighting within a room.

Consider the value that proprietary, hidden display and fine art lighting fixtures can add to your interior home design in places like private libraries, ornamental displays, gun racks, and antique cases. Knowing where to install these fixtures and how to precisely adjust them requires a blend of science and art. Using advanced photometric analysis software, our home lighting designers can render your interior home design in three dimensions and both calculate and illustrate the outcome of multiple lighting systems we can install upon your approval.

House Lighting

Make it a point as well to work with a lighting design firm that understands the disciplines of architecture and knows how to illuminate the exterior design of your home as an aesthetic unto itself. Without light, the beauty of your house remains hidden at night. Companies like Illuminations Lighting and Design know how to bring this hidden beauty to the forefront in a manner that will impress the entire neighborhood without annoying it. Only specification grade, US-manufactured lights are used in exterior home design lighting, and all of these fixtures now are being made with light pollution controls and reflectors that keep the light focused only on your house so your neighbors will be impressed—but never annoyed—by its presentation.

This can also be done very cost effectively in keeping with the principles of “Green Energy.” Most house lighting fixtures we use are low voltage and will keep power costs down and still put your home in the best light. Furthermore, because we take a less-is-more approach to equipment, we utilize photometric calculations and optimal angles to spread out more light with fewer physical luminaires.

Landscape Lighting

Landscape lighting unifies the illumination of your exterior home design with the geometry of Nature Herself. Low voltage, energy efficient fixtures will keep your power costs down and create safer environments for children and pets. If you work with a firm such as ILD who partners on a regular basis with reputable Houston landscapers such as Dawson Estes Landscaping, you can actually receive turnkey landscaping services that transform the landscape and the lighting all at the same time. Proprietary methods of environmentally friendly outdoor tree lighting and innovative path, garden, and patio lighting can make your home both a sanctuary for private times and a hotspot for weekend entertainment should you wish to throw an outdoor party. Even more importantly, landscape lighting systems can be automated to work on timers or turn themselves on or off according to exterior lighting conditions.

Best of all, if your home is protected by a home security lighting system, you can can have your outdoor lights linked to your alarm controls so that any intruder will be blinded by immediate, unexpected light at the same time the system signals the police.

Article Source : Pg. 49

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Both Robert Carlton & Russell Neal are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Robert Carlton has sinced written about articles on various topics from Food And Drink, Gardening and Family. Robert Carlton usually produces news stories on subjects similar to curtain track and country style shower curtains. His comments on