Ouch! We probably all look back around January 15th and take stock of that part of the holiday excitement that leaves its mark on furniture, flooring and who-knows-what-else!
Depending on your decisions way back at installation and completion of your Interior components, you may or may not have easy fixes, remedies and solutions for some unavoidable holiday wear and tear. Whether you were working with a professional Interior designer, or you personally made your best choices, there may be something that needs help after all the tinsel, bells and eggnog are history, for one more year!
Usually, from sales personnel and manufacturers there is a ton of advice to enhance maintenance and durability for upholstery, flooring in all its many modes, all other surfaces, accessories and equipment, and warranties galore! The trick is in knowing how to access the advice, locate warrantees – and remember not to experiment with “sure-fire, down-and-dirty quick” experimentation for solutions. The wrong chemical can ruin a pricey investment!
If you originally did have the help of a professional Interior expert when selecting the elements for your Interior environment, then you have access to the best resource for advice and assistance, if there was important damage. A great bottle of wine just flew out of the hands of a helpful friend or relative? The kids had too much and too many goodies that their stomachs rebelled? Bad weather did a job on the carpet by the front door?
Those are just some of the easy ones! There are other mishaps that occur with surprising frequency. A large, tall, good-natured friend chose a lovely side chair just not built for 275-300 pounds of football muscle! OMG! A sweet old octogenerian just had an OOPS? Too many relatives brought too many pets? Maybe that easy (meaning complex) sound system had too many experts trying to operate it… The list of possibilities is very long.
(Maybe that’s one reason why your Interior design team gets lots of crisis calls, come January!)
Prevention! Let’s consider that option! Consider your various guest lists. It is so easy to take some simple measures at the time of year when many of us open our homes and businesses to celebration! We have some events that may be rowdy, loud and rambunctious! You know, relatives and all the kids? (…and maybe their pets?) Other times it’s a beautiful formal dinner with the more sophisticated decór and the crystal glassware?
With unpredictable weather patterns, you have to be prepared to NOT have the option of the kids doing their highest energy stuff outside! (…with the pets!) And the contrast between a rowdy, fun-filled family gathering and a sparkling formal affair, begs planning, innovation and creativity – especially if it’s all on the same weekend!
For commercial environments, the challenges are different in tactics, but just as needing of an appropriate strategy! That’s because everything a commercial and professional enterprise does is part of their marketing image – like it or not! So, it’s smart that whatever that enterprise does, as holiday celebrating, is done with the firm’s image in mind. Paper plates on the edges of desks might be ok… but, sometimes, less is more! Improvise intelligently, in ways that still showcases your Interior in the style you want to project.
What are some simple ways to protect the integrity of your Interior space, while celebrating our holidays?
How about beautiful slip covers for extremely vulnerable furniture –ON for the boisterous partying, OFF for that formal gathering! And don’t forget that humble ‘tho mighty tool: coasters! Beautiful throw rugs can really protect beautiful carpeting. Again, ON for the high energy, OFF for the elegant!
Just like the negative possibilities, there are many small shifts you can make to both enjoy and protect your beautiful Interior! Can’t think of preventions OR damage solutions? Help is on the way!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with [email protected]. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at [email protected] or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.