"When you live in a space that's orderly, you tend to conduct your day in the same way," she says. "What you wake up in, go to sleep in and what you spend your quality home time surrounded by really does affect your mental health and energy levels, and a lot of it is subconscious. Color, scale, space, air, and light affect how productive you may or may not be."
With over 20 years of experience, Dana provides interior and exterior design services to residential, commercial, and hospitality clients and can handle everything from a simple paint consultation to a full-blown new build or an addition. She ensures that all her designs are functional, beautiful, and up-to-date.
Although gray tones have been popular for a while, that may be changing. "I feel like things are warming up and turning a little bit more holistic and natural," she says. "Even in very contemporary designs, we're seeing a lot of live edge and rough sawn wood furniture and accessories and even chiseled edge countertops."
Dana says fun kitchen cabinet hardware, faucets, and light fixtures also mimic animals in the wild, so you'll now find deer and elk antlers in these designs. "Animal print is always in, but now it's more about the texture and not just the print or pattern itself," she says. "I think we're going to see a lot of textures and warmth, bringing the outdoors in more than ever before."
Here, she gives some simple tips on making the rooms in your home happy and inspirational.
Kitchen: Add a pendant light over the sink. Above most sinks is a small can light, but adding a pretty pendant is like adding a little piece of jewelry to an outfit.
Switching up your cabinet hardware is also an easy, relatively inexpensive change that can give your cabinets a different look. And always incorporate some live greenery on your countertop.
Living room/ family room: It's important to be cozy, so I advise clients to add accents like fluffy blankets that can be rolled up in a basket for easy accessibility. Leaving them out and visible gives that warm fuzzy feeling we all need at home. Choose things in your favorite color, regardless of whether it matches the rest of the room.
It's also very important to have the ability to dim your lights or have a candle nearby to create that soft, soothing lighting.
Primary bedroom: Many people love to have fans over their beds, but most are bulky. Replace it with a fandelier - it's a chandelier and a fan melded into one. They're quite beautiful, and whether you want a glamorous one with crystals or something more rustic, there are options for everybody. It's a cool and functional way to dress up your bedroom.
Think about doing accent wallpaper and incorporating an ornate or odd mirror somewhere in the space as well. It can give your room that special sparkle.
Home office: Bring those things you value in your "real" office into your home office. If you like coffee or tea, set up a beverage station with a Keurig or something along those lines. If you miss the snacks, keep a snack drawer, so it feels more like a place away from home. Having everything right at your fingertips is key so that you aren't headed to the kitchen, which can be a distraction from your workday.
Paint the office a color that wouldn't typically be found in the rest of the house. So something outside the color palette so that you feel like you're in this space separate from your home when you're in there.
Powder room: For a cute little bathroom, wallpaper is trendy. Something I'm doing more often is botanical prints. And not just an accent wall, but the entire thing.
Adding a fun light fixture can also really transform the look of the space. Something I do that makes a powder room a more exciting place to be is hanging a quirky but pretty piece of artwork.
Dana Vagnetti-Cardenas, an award-winning licensed interior designer and owner of Valia Design, a boutique interior design firm in Grosse Pointe Farms, believes that the look and function of a home influences one's mental state.
ValiaDesign.com.
You have to be licensed to be an interior designer; otherwise, anybody can be a decorator.
Why hire a professional? Somebody who knows what they're doing is going to cut your searching time dramatically.
Using an interior designer is also a huge money saver because they have the knowledge to specify the proper products, sizes and scales.
Dana manages and designs all projects; she doesn’t just come up with the design package but also follows them through to completion if desired by her clients.
The initial design consultation is the key time when she gets to know her clients and where she wraps her years of experience around a design plan that caters to what they like and need.
“What you wake up in, go to sleep in and what you spend your quality home time surrounded
by really does affect your mental health and energy levels, and a lot of it is subconscious.”
