interior design

Making Your Home Holiday-Ready: Easy, Inexpensive Ideas To Make It Both Safe & Inviting

As we write this, we’re in disbelief that the fall and winter holiday season will soon be upon us! Where did the year go? To help you ensure your holiday guests stay safe and feel welcomed this holiday season, we’ve put together a list of easy and inexpensive tactics you can start chipping away at now.

How To Make Your Home Feel Inviting To Holiday Guests

These small touches can make a huge difference in making your holiday guests feel special — whether they’ll be lodging with you for a few days, or just spending a few hours at your home:

  • Buy extra festive-looking boxes of kleenex at a big box or discount store, and place them around the house in bathrooms, guestrooms, and the kitchen for easy snagging by guests.
  • Purchase, at a discount store, a number of toss pillows with holiday designs, or in solid holiday colors like gold, silver, light blue, green, and red and place them on chairs and sofas throughout your home and on beds in guestrooms.
  • For both your bathrooms and guestrooms, create baskets that contain small toiletry items to make your guests feel pampered — you know the kind of baskets you see in restrooms at weddings. Include items like small scented hand lotions and soaps.
  • And speaking of soaps, shop big box or discount stores for hand soap with holiday designs or scents to place in bathrooms. While you’re there, snag a few pairs of comfy-cozy socks for individuals of all ages and genders, to place on the beds in guestrooms.
  • Seek out small white or red poinsettia plants or Christmas cactuses that are in bloom to place throughout your home, and in bathrooms and guestrooms.
  • Clear out and designate a drawer and space in a closet in any bedrooms in which guests will be staying so they know you took the time to prepare for their stay.
  • Use small baskets or bowls — particularly ones with a holiday design or color — to house a few snack items for guests, and place them on nightstands in bedrooms where guests will be staying. Related to that, consider placing small holiday figurines like elves or angels, or other holiday decorations, on nightstands and in bathrooms that will be used by guests.
  • Search online for the best deal for a collapsible luggage rack for guests to place their suitcase on when they arrive, and to make it easy for them to unpack.
  • Follow these tips from a fellow South Shore business (DME provider and expert in making homes accessible) to ensure your holidays are disability inclusive!

How to Keep Your Family And Guests Safe This Holiday Season

We’ve written a bunch of blog posts in the past about holiday safety and winter safety tips for your home. We recommend you review these each & every holiday and winter season to make sure your family and guests will stay safe:

The team of roofing experts at our South Shore roofing company is always available to talk with you about any of the following & more!: attic ventilation, attic air circulation; roof moisture, wall moisture, or ceiling moisture; ice dam prevention, ice dam removal; new home roof installation; and home roof replacement. You may find this past blog post helpful related to why your attic and roof may be wet on a dry winter day.

Never hesitate to reach out to our team of residential roofing contractors if we can be of service related to home safety measures or home challenges.

The team of experienced roofers at South Shore Roofing wishes all our readers and customers a very safe, healthy, and happy holiday season!

 

The In’s and Out’s of Interior Design: What’s Hot and What’s Not for The New Decade

While we repair existing/old roofs and install new ones all year long – hey, sometimes, for a variety of reasons, a client can’t wait for warm, sunny weather to be underway in New England – we find many homeowners and business owners don’t tend to think about replacing their roof when snow is in the air, ice is on the ground, or simply when the temperature is below 50 degrees.

Given the above, we thought our blog readers might rather focus on the inside of their homes and/or businesses right now. With that in mind, we did some research on, and all the consolidating of others’ thoughts regarding, “what’s hot and what’s not” as far as interior decorating goes for 2020. Keep in mind that these opinions about interior decorating trends are the opinions of design experts, not those of South Shore Roofing – we’ll limit our design suggestions to your home’s or business’ exterior!

So, as a new decade of design gets underway, what’s in and what’s out?

In

  • Colored cabinetry
  • Stoned counters
  • Patterned flooring
  • Ceiling treatments
  • Open floor plans, multi-use spaces, more-functional spaces
  • Bolder-colored & bolder-shaped kitchen tiles/backsplashes
  • Less is more – the number of decorative objects on display should be reduced, and rotated by season. This also means furniture that can serve as a decorative object is in. Another “in?” Industrial lighting, considered to be minimalist.
  • Mixing old with new – instead of one design style, the eclectic, Bohemian look is expected to make a comeback – vintage furniture should be mixed with more modern pieces
  • Authenticity – commercial and living spaces should reflect the many interests of the owner or renter
  • Faux furs and blankets for couch and sofa draping
  • Bar cabinets
  • Furniture with ribbed or channeled surfaces
  • Sustainable furniture & décor – purchasing and decorating with pieces that are expected to last a long time and that take into consideration where and how pieces were made
  • Green accents
  • Velvet
  • Geometric designs
  • Canopy beds
  • Four walls of wallpaper vs. an accent wall (see below) and flowered wallpaper

Out

  • In keeping with “less is more” being in, clutter is out
  • Dark wood cabinets
  • Anything grey or neutral-colored unless it has some kind of special texture or visual interest – this includes paint and furniture
  • Formal, single-use spaces
  • All-white kitchens, but black is back, so think about a black & white kitchen, instead!
  • Accent walls (one wall of a room is wall-papered)
  • Some faux things, but not all (see above) – faux finishes and plants are out
  • Neon lights
  • Bar carts

Of course, the above lists are just the interior design projections of a small number of interior designers. As noted under the “ins,” we believe authenticity is always “in” and decorating in a manner that reflects who you are, what’s important to you, and what feels comfortable and like “home” to you is always a great way to go! Still, as you think about refreshing your house’s or your office’s look & feel this year, you may find our lists a good resource, particularly if you’re updating your home to put on the market!

Regardless of whether a home or office design “refresh” is in the cards for 2020, we’re always here at South Shore Roofing to talk to you about what’s hot and what’s not as far as commercial roofs and home roofs go — not only trends in the appearance of your residential roof or business roof, but also what materials are currently thought (and we’ve experienced to be) best to ensure a long-lasting, high-functioning, durable roof. Whether you decide on asphalt, metal, rubber, TPO, or other options, South Shore Roofing can meet all of your residential and commercial roof installation needs. So, please reach out to our expert roofing contractors if you are considering repairing, replacing or installing a roof on Greater Boston’s South Shore!