Home Design Tips

When I started to design my home, I knew that I had to understand how space, light, colors, drawn patterns, surface 3D structures and their combinations would affect my perception. I believe that habit and popular knowledge lead to taking uninformed decisions and don't help people understand the world around.

For this, I've purchased a lot of finishing materials and have studied them for about 9 months; by "studied" I mean I've looked at them in all possible lighting conditions, and have touched them to feel their surface. I've looked at tens of catalogs with thousands of products, I've looked at thousands of images with various designs, and have done hundreds of simulations in design simulators.

In total, I've spent over 2'500 hours, spread over 4 years, searching, researching and planning for everything that could possibly be necessary in a home, with most of this time being spent at the computer. I have found everything online, researched them, but have bought things both online and from local stores.

This amount of time should not discourage you if you are not the type of person who would spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours trying to understand how various finishings affects mood, or developing from scratch the rules about how to create a custom warm white, or looking through thousands of images upon thousands of products, or looking through thousands upon thousands of images from photo libraries in search of photos to hang on walls.

I have always disliked white surfaces (like walls, flooring and furniture) because it's easy to see grime on them. For decades I had furniture covered with very dark and glossy wood veneer; I didn't like this either because it was too dark.

At the beginning of my efforts to design my home I wanted medium-dark parquet, medium-dark tile on the floor, medium-light tile on the walls, yellow-orange wall paint, and heavy wood patterns for the parquet, tile, furniture and doors. In retrospect, it was nuts, but all this was the effect of me disliking the fact that it's easy to see grime on light surfaces.

When I saw the samples in the showrooms, I was hooked. They looked beautiful. After a few months, my perception changed partially, so I ended up installing just the parquet and tile, but kept the walls white; the furniture was not planned for a few more months.

However, when I saw the parquet and tile installed, the look and feel was barely acceptable. Why? Because my perception had changed more than I realized, and I started to like having more light and less patterns. I actually ended up being annoyed by all the lines, long and short, straight and undulated, present in wood (imitation or natural).

I've swung back and forth between heavy wood textures and an aseptic white atmosphere, finally settling on a simple look but with some detail.

I've replaced the parquet and tile with a light tile, with little pattern.

I wanted dark and patterned floor and furniture until my perception changed significantly and I realized that having a light atmosphere is far more important than the disadvantage that some hair and dust would be visible. Another reason for choosing a light color for the floor was that I've found out about cement grout sealant and epoxy grout.

Design style

The most difficult part of my effort was to understand what I like most, not just what I like, because there were several design styles that I liked.

When you'll see yourself free to design your home, you might feel overwhelmed, going around without knowing what to do, so take the time to understand what you like on the long term.

In order to choose a design style for your home, you first have to discover what style you like most for the place where you are going to spend most of your time and life. You may think that you know what you like, but what you know is actually what you are used to, not what you like.

To understand what you like you have to be exposed to several very different design style, over a long time, preferably 2 years or more. You could end up liking several design styles, but you still have to choose a single one. Only at the end of this time you should take the final decision about the tile, parquet, wall paint and furniture material that you will use.

If you choose the finishes for your home quickly, based on your instinct, you are actually following habit, you are choosing what you are used to, not what you could like the most if you were exposed to a diversity of finishes for a long time.

One major question you should answer is if you want your home to feel empty / aired or cluttered / busy. If you lean toward empty then choose flooring and furniture with little structure and pattern, for example materials that look close to a solid color. If you lean toward cluttered then choose flooring and furniture with some pattern and / or structure, for example materials that look like wood or busy stone.

Expose yourself to different design styles by looking at many images, going to furniture stores, looking at how fancy shops are designed, and watching design and home rental shows. Don't try to replicate a view that you've seen, unless you have the same light (distribution) and space.

It may be possible to understand what you like by looking at your clothes, not the clothes that you're wearing in general, but the clothes that you really like to wear. If you like plain clothes, without pattern, grouped by tones of a single color, you would probably like a modern / empty / aired interior design. If you like busy clothes in terms of color and pattern, you would probably like a classical / cluttered / busy interior design. But you should really ask yourself: do I actually like these clothes, or am I simply used to them? Such is life, with tough decisions to make.

You could even find photos with design styles that you like and print them on a large format posters. Keep such posters up a few days or weeks, and see how your perception changes. However, be aware that most photos of interior design use fake lighting which makes them extremely good (and nothing like in reality).

Watch for any sign of tiredness that color, lightness, pattern (like the imitation of wood), structure (= the 3D aspect of the surface) and size (actually the limits created by the edges of surfaces) can give you. Be aware that such tiredness will be dramatically amplified by the large area where the material is going to be used. If you feel tiredness then use a different, simpler material.

The biggest obstacle in your path to create a good design is formed by your habits, the fact that you are used to the look of your current (and previous) home, holding various incomplete (possibly even outright wrong) beliefs, and maybe ignoring the fact that design preferences depend on the state of mind at a given time. The second biggest obstacle is the lack of determination to pursue your dreams.

Be aware that your personality and state of mind will affect what you choose (color, lightness, pattern, structure), but what you choose will also affect your personality, in time. You will have to chase your ever changing perception because you will adapt to the changes that you make, and then you'll want to make adjustments to the adjustments.

The design styles, colors and patterns that you like do change continuously because you, the space and the materials are influenced by the light's (be it natural or artificial) intensity and color, weather, season, personal and work events, and simply getting used to a specific look.

If you want to have a bright and airy home, choose south facing windows (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) and go with light colors and little pattern on walls, furniture and doors, in order to maximize the effect of the sunlight, light whose effect on the state of mind is fundamental.

Some people like minimalism, most famously known for the extensive use of white for walls, furniture and even floor. Minimalism is preferred because it stimulates the mind as little as possible, perhaps because it's too stimulated elsewhere (for example, at work). However, a minimalistic home may look too empty and give a hospital feel. To bring warmth but still maintain a serene, clean and aired atmosphere, warm colors, warm light, accent colors, shapes and patterns have to be used.

Accent colors are colors which are used for small areas rather than large ones, like the kitchen countertop and backsplash, tables, desk, chairs, bed headboard, curtains, bed and sofa covers, low hanging lighting fixtures, lamps, decorative pillows, vases with (artificial) flowers, bowls with colorful fruits and vegetables, designed objects, photos hung on walls and so on. Accent colors are enough to fill a space and give it contrast, contrast that some people are keen to have, by acting as foreground / conscious colors.

Some images with dark rooms may look great, but only for the short time that you look at them, at the small size of an image, not for your entire life, not at real size (= everywhere around you), and not in real light.

The submillimeter surface structures, smooth or with tiny bumps, matte or glossy, is more important than the pattern drawn on the surface because of the way it diffuses light. The way in which surfaces interact with light (= the way they look) is a major differentiating factor between cheap and expensive materials; while the surface differences may be subtle, they are crucial for experienced viewers; for example, lacquers and varnishes give wood a refined look. The less pattern there is, the less busy the surface feels and the more you perceive the play of the direct sunlight on the surface.

Try to be flexible in your choices:

Orientable light sources and lots of power sockets in many places allow you (or someone else) to later move furniture around.
If you start with minimal color and pattern on walls, flooring and furniture, you can later make your home look more cluttered by adding small and easy to change decorations with different colors and patterns.
You can always put some rugs on a floor made of tile or parquet, but changing the tile is a nightmare.
A stone accent wall may look very nice, but, should you ever get bored of its look, it can only be changed with great effort. A painted accent wall can be easily repainted with a different color. You can combine the two elements: a painted, brick accent wall.

Some examples of simple design styles: greige parquet and light diffusion, beige parquet and golden wood parquet. Search the Internet for "oak floor white walls", "white floor white walls", "white floor living room" or "scandinavian interior design" to see more images.

To see simulated environments, where you can choose from various predefined rooms and change their parquet and wall colors, use the room designers of parquet manufactures. You can find these easily by searching the Internet for "[Brand] room designer" (for example, "Tarkett room designer").

To make the final choice about what materials, colors, patterns and surface structures to go with, don't spend too much time with the simulated environments, or even in showrooms and shops, instead look at the physical samples in the place where they will be installed. Showrooms and simulators can easily mislead you because they have a very different light and space than what you have in your home.

The environments simulated on a computer screen are too small to give you a correct feel of what your home will look like, and the light distribution is usually fake, so they are likely to induce to you the wrong feeling; you also don't have the light and space used by the simulators. Still, no matter how good some samples look next to each other in reality, the simulated environments show the correct layout, geometry and how things work in context, so use them as well.

It's important to understand that no matter what you choose, you'll eventually get bored of the chosen look because it never changes. What you want to achieve is a look that you will like again when you come back from a vacation.

You have to understand how something will affect your perception after a while, not at the moment you see it. Concentrate on the general look, not on individual elements. Many things are meant to "pop", to get your attention immediately, but once the feeling of novelty wears off, they may become something that feels too busy to look at. Examples are glossy mosaics and printed images. On the other end of the spectrum, the lack of details (like color, pattern, shapes) may leave you feeling like you're staring into the void.

Once you understand what you like, you can work with an interior designer to design your home. Be ready to specify a budget for everything that you want the designer to do for you.

Ignore advice from people (especially sellers) who tell you that object X is beautiful, that it's better than object Y, that you should choose a certain thing so that you have contrast, and whatnot. Advice that doesn't put the objects into the context of your home is misleading.

Multidimensionality of well-being

Presumably, you've come here because you want to feel better in your home, so you want to understand more about what you should do in order to improve your home's design.

In terms of interior design, a person's well-being can be projected on several orthogonal dimensions. "Orthogonal" means that modifying the coordinates on one dimension doesn't affect the coordinates from any other dimension, that is, the dimensions are independent.

The dimensions are: space, light, stimulation. Both space and light do affect stimulation to some extent, and light does make space visible, so they are not orthogonal in absolute terms.

If you want to feel well in your home, all these dimensions must have coordinates. This means that your home must have:

Space, so that your home doesn't feel like a box or a hangar. Because it's extremely difficult to increase afterwards, you have to determine the space when the house is built, although for a home extensions can be built.
Light, so that your home doesn't feel like a cave or a surgery room. Light can be obtained either from the sun, which is recommended, so you need large windows, or from lighting fixtures. It's important to note that having more light doesn't make a space appear bigger, it makes it appear brighter.
Stimulation, so that your home doesn't feel like void / empty box or a crazy house. Stimulation can be obtained from the details like shapes and colors, and their interaction with light. Stimulation can be indirect / subtle or direct / intense. This can be achieved with accent elements like the kitchen countertop and backsplash, tables, desk, chairs, bed headboard, curtains, bed and sofa covers, low hanging lighting fixtures, lamps, decorative pillows, vases with (artificial) flowers, bowls with colorful fruits and vegetables, designed objects, photos hung on walls and so on.

To understand this multidimensionality, consider that you are inside a huge black box. What do you see? Nothing, it's just a black void; there aren't even stars above.

Now consider that windows are added to the box and the sunlight comes through them. You start to see the light creating reflections in the dust from the air.

Now let's say that the room turns white. You now see a gray void. It's gray because the room is so large that the sunlight can't fill the room.

Now the sunlight's intensity increases a lot. What do you see? If you are near the windows, you see so much light that it hurts your eyes. If you are away from the windows, you see still see a gray void, although a light shade of gray.

Now the room shrinks, windows are added to several sides, the size of the windows is increased, and lighting fixtures are added. You now see a white void, a canvas for future work. Good sunlight and properly designed lighting fixtures can create very nice effects on the walls.

Moving forward, the floor changes color and pattern, and becomes either wood or stone, whatever you prefer. What do you see? The beginning of a livable room.

Now furniture starts to appear. Colors pop on some walls and on furniture, photos are hung onto walls, objects pop up around the room, filling the space. You now see a home, a place where you want to be, a place which was created in the three dimensions: space, light and stimulation.

Perfect imperfection

In design, perfection is not important. Always go for what you like, not for perfection.

Here are some examples:

If you like the way solid wood looks like for a floor, go for it. Yes, it can warp in time, it can squeak when walked on, it can have a clear separation between planks. Go for the attraction, not perfection.
If you like the way an uneven wall surface looks like, go for it. Unevenness leads to a play of light and shadow that produces rich detail, detail that may feel like a work of art when compared to a flat wall.
If you like the way painted surfaces look like, go for it. Paint is softer than plastic / melamine and can scratch easier, but it's better to look at a large area with a color and texture that you like, even if it has a few scratches, than look at the same large area with a color and texture that you dislike, but with no scratches.

Imperfection is not a problem in design, but the belief that perfection is better than obvious attraction, is a problem.

White

Light and neutral colors are popular for interior decorating because they reflect the most amount of light back into the environment, creating the brightest homes, without having a mentally stimulating effect (like strong colors have).

The hallmark of modern design is as much sunlight and space as possible; obviously, not as much light as an operating room, or as much space as a hangar, we're in the context of a home. Still, the light distribution and the space layout are even more important.

The extensive use of light colors in a home produces a huge amount of light in the home due to the fact that the light which enters the home (from the outside, or from lighting fixtures) is absorbed by surfaces only to a minimum extent, and is rather reflected back in the space, over and over again, ending up illuminating even areas where light would not reach in a home which has, for example, a dark floor.

When matte, light colored surfaces are hit by direct sunlight they diffuse it and create a soft glow near them, glow which may extend to the entire room if the room is mostly light colored, creating a misty atmosphere (= lacking shadow harshness). Dense sheer / translucent curtains increase this effect.

White is not a single color but a set, just like red, blue, green are. You can find shades of white under the names: off white, warm white, cold white, dark white, dirty white, antique white, milky white, alabaster.

Here are some very light, warm colors with standard color codes, with an undertone that's balanced between yellow and red:

Warm white: NCS S0505-Y50R, S0804-Y50R.
Dark warm white: NCS S1005-Y40R, S1005-Y50R.
Very light gray: NCS S1002-Y50R.
Very light beige: NCS S0507-Y40R, S0907-Y50R.
Light beige: NCS S1010-Y40R, S1010-Y50R.

NCS colors are very intuitive for people because of how they are formed: [Blackness %][Chromaticness %]-[Pigment 1 name][Pigment 2 %][Pigment 2 name]. The hue, "Pigment 1 name" and "Pigment 2 name" can be the following primary colors: "Y" (yellow), "R" (red), "B" (blue), "G" (green). An "S" in front of the color identifies that it's a part of the NCS 1950 list. For example, for "YxR", the smaller "x" is, the more yellow the color's undertone is; the higher "x" is, the redder the color's undertone is.

White is neutral, it's a void of color, of stimulation, so it needs at least brightness (= the presence of a lot of light) to create stimulation. Black is similar, it's needs light to form shapes on it, to create some shine and sparkle.

Light beige has several advantages: it keeps the home light, it creates a warm atmosphere, it hides spots that get yellowish due to aging or bacteria. While it's true that bacteria should be cleaned, you should not have to do it every few days, on huge areas, because then you're living to clean.

For details, read how the eye perceives color.

Hospital look

The extensive use of white in a home (for walls, furniture and even floor) is usually associated with a hospital look, in a bad way. But in reality, the main reason for the hospital look is not the white, it's the empty space, a space devoid of anything.

For a home to feel comfortable, for most people, it must have its space occupied by colors, patterns, structures and objects, basically any geometry formed by light and shadow.

White does not fill space, it just maintains the emptiness of perception, and this may lead to the hospital look for a completely white home. However, for this look to occur, the space must remain generally empty, meaning that shapes, patterns, structures and objects must also be absent, and light has to be little or cold.

Think of a hospital room. What does it contain? It's a bunch of white walls, white colored tile, metallic beds with white bedsheets, with nothing to fill the space above the bed level.

Much of the hospital look is produced by the fact that pure white wall paint shows a blue-gray color, unless the room is illuminated by a lot of direct sunlight, because the color temperature of the light from shaded areas is high. Artificial lighting with a high color temperature (= with a blue undertone) is also extensively used, and the light also has a flat look, lacking directionality (like sunlight has). To reduce the hospital look, see how you can choose a warm white paint.

So, the problem is the extensive use of shades of cold white and the absence of photos hung on walls, elegant lighting fixtures, wardrobes, sofas, chairs, curtains, bed and sofa covers, pillows, tables, lamps, books, and so on.

You can warm up the look of a home by coloring the (sun)light which is reflected inside the home, with any of the following:

A warm white paint. This solution is the best because it works in all types of daylight (bright or cloudy).
A warm colored floor.
Warm colored sheer curtains on the windows (their color has to be intense).
Lightbulbs with a low color temperature, but these have to be switched on.

Do you need contrast in a home, like light and dark colors? If you feel the need to have it, then it's needed; it's similar to how little or how much contrast you like for your clothes. Less contrast feels more aired, less busy. However, having walls, furniture and textiles of the same color will likely feel like there's too little contrast, for most people. Adding colors (be they darker or more colorful), shapes, patterns and structures to a white box (= an empty home) fills the void; too few of them makes a space feel like an empty box.

Warm white

To eliminate the hospital effect that a mostly white home might have, it's crucial to use a warm white wall paint.

Virtually all pure white wall paints that are mass produced show a blue undertone indoors (and appear cold), especially in low lit areas, because they reflect light with a high color temperature. A white paint with such a blue undertone is also responsible for much of the hospital look.

The perceived color of a paint varies due to the color of the paint, to the color of the light (sunlight is not white), to the intensity of the light, to the weather, to the geographical location, to the season, to the nearby objects which reflect the light, to the structure of the painted surface, and due to the specifics of your eyes. You may be used to ignoring these differences, but the effect they have on how you perceive colors is huge even if you think that the color is "just white".

An overhang over a window casts a shadow in the room, which means that the sunlight that enters that room will have a high color temperature; this is because that sunlight contains more blue light scattered by the sky.

Some people are afraid of warm white because it reminds them of white with a green or yellow undertone, undertones which give a feeling of sick or old and decrepit. These undertones can be fixed by adding (more) orange in the white, to shift the undertone of the color toward orange.

Is there any reason to not use warm colored sheer curtains on the windows? The main problem of most colored sheer curtains is that they block more light than they need to; this happens because their color is too dark, even though it could be much lighter yet still have the same coloring power. Another problem is that in dark rooms they aren't as effective at coloring the light because there is literally too little light to color, and it's in such rooms that natural light is particularly bluish. Another reason is that when you look outside, through the windows, you would see the world colored by the curtain's color, although for those who like a warm atmosphere, this is not a problem. The bottom line is that warm colored sheer curtains are a very flexible and cheap solution to get a warm look for your home. Note that even curtains with a faint color have a dramatic effect, that is, light beige curtains are more than enough to get a quite warm atmosphere, you don't need red or yellow curtains. Be aware that beige, like any color, also has an undertone, be it more toward green, yellow or red.

For a shade of warm white which is designed to compensate the usual blue undertone of white paints, you have to use some warm colored pigments, like ochre and orange.

You have to make the warm white look good for most of the time that you spend in the home.

Pure white paint looks very good when direct sunlight illuminates it. Indoor, pure white paint looks cold because the lack of warmth means that the slightest blue undertone from the light with a high color temperature from shaded areas is reflected in the room.

Sunlight's color temperature varies a lot, from a shaded period of time during a sunny day, to heavily cloudy days. To make a home look warm during cloudy days, the wall paint has to compensate the sunlight's high color temperature. To do this, warm colored pigments, like ochre and orange, have to be added to the pure white paint.

The higher the sunlight's color temperature is, the more pigment has to be added to the paint. But the more pigment is added, the warmer would the home look when direct sunlight enters through the windows, making it look much too warm for comfort (especially in the corners and edges of the walls, where shadow leads to an increased saturation).

If you use too little colored pigment, the warm white paint looks like a washed out version of the color of the pigment (= a pastel), that is, it would have no depth, no presence and it would be easily washed out by light. If you use too much colored pigment, the paint looks too warm / saturated.

The solution to this dilemma is to add black pigment in order to make the paint look less saturated and darker, which means that the resulted warm white paint has a lower saturation and more depth which fills the white void of the initial paint. Black may also have an undertone, like white has.

You don't really need to add black pigment if you want a warm white. If you don't add black, the resulted color is a pastel warm white. Such a color can't be reproduced (from a combination of NCS colors) using white paint and pigments from different manufacturers, but the advantage is that the color becomes lighter.

Even though this kind of paint will give a home a warm look which is balanced for most cases, care must still be taken because the more pigment is added, the darker the paint becomes and this would make the ceiling feel like it's pushing down on you, so you would have to paint the ceiling with a different, lighter color (which would be yet another thing to take care of).

Why is it that a white paint which is colored and darkened with pigment is still perceived as white and not a warm gray? Mainly because the perception of color depends on the adaptation of the eye to the environment, and on the amount of light which illuminates the paint.

If the eye sees a single very light, almost neutral color in its entire field of view, it adapts to consider that color to be neutral. Also, the more light there is, the brighter the paint will appear, and beyond a certain brightness threshold, the paint appears white. The more pigment is added to the paint, the more light is required to make the paint appear white.

Since in the corners and around the edges of the walls, especially near the ceiling, there is usually less light than everywhere else, the saturation of the color is increased because the light doesn't wash out the color.

Don't try to reproduce the warm white color of any object, or of objects seen outside. The walls will not look like that no matter how much you try because it's a different light and a different scale of perception, tiny versus all around you, and what looks great on a small scale will look horrid on a huge scale. Besides, the materials themselves are different, so the colors will never look the same.

Custom color

This section is about manually creating a warm white to use as a starting point, by mixing several standard colors. There is no single correct color.

If a color is too light and has too little saturation, the paint with that color would be easily washed out by sunlight, making the paint appear pure white. If a color is too dark or has too much saturation, the paint with that color would not be perceived as white.

While the best pure white wall paint reflects over 90% of the incident light, if it's colored with NCS S0505-Y50R it reflects 81%. Still, numbers alone don't tell a story, so don't worry about this much. The difference is visible, but you are trading lightness for warmth. Still, on walls, the color is perceived very light.

A yellow or green undertone may give the white a sickly look, especially when lit with a light with a low color temperature, like incandescent lightbulbs have. Because of this, the warm white should have an orange undertone.

Make sure that the undertone (red or yellow) of the wall paint color matches with that of the floor and furniture colors.

The best way to compare colors is to first buy large samples for some standard colors that you prefer, and compare them to the colors of the objects that you want to buy, especially objects that will form large areas, like wall paint, tile, parquet, curtains. For examples of light, warm colors, see the examples from White. See Links for where to buy NCS color samples; buy the samples for NCS S0505-Y40R and S0505-Y50R.

You can make the custom color either by mixing together several buckets each colored with a standard color, or by averaging the pigment amounts of those standard colors. Mixing together several buckets requires you to buy a number of buckets which is a multiple of the specified number of buckets, and to mix them thoroughly.

Ask (the paint seller) what amounts of what pigments would the coloring machine use for a bucket of paint colored with the standard colors mentioned below.

For example, for the following standard colors, the manufacturer from which I've bought the paint, Tikkurila, uses the following pigment amounts (in milliliters), for a 9 liters bucket (with white paint). YX is a greenish ochre, OM is a reddish orange, CW is a light black; LRV means Light Reflectance Value, which is the amount of light that's reflected by the color.

NCS S0502-Y50R: YX 04, OM 05, CW 08. LRV 85%.
NCS S0505-Y30R: YX 17, OM 02, CW 03. LRV 84%.
NCS S0505-Y40R: YX 16, OM 04, CW 03. LRV 84%.
NCS S0505-Y50R: YX 16, OM 09, CW 07. LRV 81%.
NCS S0505-Y60R: YX 08, OM 12, CW 05. LRV 84%.
NCS S0603-Y40R: YX 08, OM 03, CW 10. LRV 83%.
NCS S0603-Y60R: YX 05, OM 07, CW 09. LRV 82%.
NCS S0804-Y50R: YX 12, OM 09, CW 12. LRV 77%.
NCS S1002-Y50R: YX 10, OM 10, CW 29. LRV 73%.
NCS S1005-Y50R: YX 23, OM 21, CW 30. LRV 71%.
NCS S1005-Y60R: YX 19, OM 27, CW 35. LRV 70%.
RAL 9001: YX 13, OM 6, CW 19. LRV 75%.
RAL 1013: YX 31, OM 3, CW 33. LRV 70%.
RAL 9010: YX 05, CW 06. LRV 84%.

Calculate the average pigment amounts for a bucket which is a mix of several buckets colored with standard NCS colors, like in the examples below. Warm whites (informal color codes):

White 967: (2 * S0603-Y60R + S0505-Y40R) / 3. This means that for every 3 buckets, 2 are S0603-Y60R, and 1 is S0505-Y40R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 9, OM 6, CW 7.
White 977: (S0603-Y40R + S0603-Y60R + S0505-Y40R + S0505-Y60R) / 4. This means that for every 4 buckets, 1 is S0603-Y40R, 1 is S0603-Y60R, 1 is S0505-Y40R, and 1 is S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 9, OM 7, CW 7.
White 1186: (S0603-Y60R + S0505-Y40R + S0505-Y50R + S0505-Y60R) / 4. This means that for every 4 buckets, 1 is S0603-Y60R, 1 is S0505-Y40R, 1 is S0505-Y50R, and 1 is S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 11, OM 8, CW 6.
White 1187: (S0603-Y40R + S0505-Y50R + S0505-Y60R) / 3. This means that for every 3 buckets, 1 is S0603-Y40R, 1 is S0505-Y50R, and 1 is S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 11, OM 8, CW 7.
White 1188: (S0603-Y60R + S0505-Y50R) / 2. This means that for every 2 buckets, 1 is S0603-Y60R, and 1 is S0505-Y50R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 11, OM 8, CW 8.
White 1284: (S0505-Y40R + S0505-Y60R) / 2. This means that for every 2 buckets, 1 is S0505-Y40R, and 1 is S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 12, OM 8, CW 4. This looks like a very light beige.
White 1286: (S0603-Y40R + S0505-Y40R + 2 * S0505-Y50R + 2 * S0505-Y60R) / 6. This means that for every 6 buckets, 1 is S0603-Y40R, 1 is S0505-Y40R, 2 are S0505-Y50R, and 2 is S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 12, OM 8, CW 6.
White 1287: (S0603-Y40R + 2 * S0505-Y50R + S0505-Y60R) / 4. This means that for every 4 buckets, 1 is S0603-Y40R, 2 are S0505-Y50R, and 1 is S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 12, OM 8, CW 7.
White 1295: (S0505-Y40R + S0505-Y50R + 2 * S0505-Y60R) / 4. This means that for every 4 buckets, 1 is S0505-Y40R, 1 is S0505-Y50R, and 2 are S0505-Y60R. For Tikkurila, this is about YX 12, OM 9, CW 5. This looks like a very light beige.

You don't really need to add black pigment. If you don't add black, the resulted color is warmer. Such a color can't be reproduced (from a combination of NCS colors) using white paint and pigments from different manufacturers, but the difference should be very limited, and the advantage is that the color becomes lighter.

Standard warm whites:

White 1643: NCS S0505-Y40R.
White 1697: NCS S0505-Y50R.

Let's call these colors "summer white", or "swhite" if you like, because they try to bring inside the warmth of the summer while remaining white. These colors match harmoniously with other warm colors with the same undertone, like greige, beige, gold and brown.

Summer whites are so delicate that a photocamera auto adjusts the white balance to compensate for the slight color cast, making the wall color appear like a cold white.

The color of my wall paint is white 977. If the home is illuminated by (direct or indirect) sunlight, the color looks milky white (slightly reddish in the shadowed areas), that is, it has warmth (without appearing to be colored). If it's cloudy outside, the color looks like a somewhat warm white, with shadowed areas showing a bit more color. If it's gloomy outside, the color looks like a pure white but without being cold. If only the interior light is on, the color looks like a very light yellowish beige; the light is a 3'000 Kelvin warm white. This color has a balanced yellow-red undertone in daylight, maybe a bit reddish, and a slight yellowish undertone in artificial light (3'000 K).

People who see the color for the first time (with plenty of sunlight coming in) say it looks like a very light cappuccino, or champagne, or cream, but I've gotten used to it (quite quickly) and for me it looks white with a tinge of warmth. Next time, to have more warmth / saturation, I will choose white 1186.

White 977 works well with my furniture whose color is NCS S1505-Y40R. The difference in undertone (the wall paint is more orangy) doesn't matter because the walls are very light, the furniture contrasts because of its much lower lightness, and the saturation of both is very small, so the undertone difference is lost to the eye.

Be aware that two NCS colors with the same hue don't (necessarily) have the same undertone. For a precise understanding of the undertone, look at the pigment ratio (OM / YX); even this is not necessarily precise due to how the eye perceives color at different levels of lightness and saturation.

The ceiling can be painted with any of these custom warm whites because they are light enough.

If you want your furniture to have the same color as the walls, but you can't paint MDF / wood with the same color as the wall paint, look for chipboard / MDF with a color that has about the same hue and even chromaticness, and with the same or a higher blackness, like NCS S0505-Y50R, S1005-Y40R, S1005-Y50R.

The minimum amount of (one) pigment that the coloring machines can disperse is usually 0.1 ml, but they are not precise at such a level, so you should work with more pigment than that.

For a can of paint, the dosing of a pigment may be imprecise if the amount is very small, but even for a bucket the dosing can be wrong due to random problems.

For a can, the pigment amounts are not always proportional relative to a bucket, most likely due to a need to more precisely disperse them in the can. To ensure that you always use the same physical color, for the same color code, never mix cans and buckets, or ensure that a can and a bucket have proportional amounts for each pigment.

If you increase the amounts of colored pigments, the saturation is increased, while the lightness is decreased; however, a significantly higher saturation increases the perceived lightness (because the eye is stimulated more). If you increase the amount of black pigment, the saturation and the lightness are decreased.

Perceptually, there may be little difference between various warm whites because the eye adapts to a very light, almost neutral color that fills its field of view, and sees just white; only the shadowed areas show a bit of color.

If you want a color with more presence, increase its saturation and decrease its lightness.

For homes with windows oriented toward north (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) or which are in shadow for a long time during the day, you might want to increase the saturation; the reason is that the natural light in such cases has a very high color temperature (= is blue), so this has to be compensated.

Ochre and orange are similar in the way they darken and color, so they can be swapped one for the other.

Light black can desaturate to perceptual gray an amount of ochre and orange about equal with its own amount. It's darkening capacity is similar to that of ochre and orange.

The amount of pigment required to affect the color with the same percentage (either for lightness or saturation) grows exponentially as you move toward 100% total effect. For example, if 10 ml of pigment would be required to darken the paint from 90% to 80%, then another 20 ml (not 10) of the same pigment would be required to darken the paint from 80% to 70%.

For pigments that have to be manually mixed with paint, a much higher amount is necessary because those pigments are much weaker.

Verify your warm white

Buy a can with your (custom) warm white paint. Be sure to scale the amounts of pigments to a can (from bucket).

Buy some large, rigid, foam (or cardboard) panels, the kind that is put under parquet. The size of a panel should be something like 50 * 100 cm (20 * 40 in). Paint one side of such a panel with the warm white wall paint. Make sure to apply a thick layer of paint in order to block the panel's color from showing through the paint. The paint has to be in excess. Let the panel dry for a few days, horizontally, so that the paint spreads well and leave no marks; the color will change during those days, becoming darker. The margins of the panel must also be painted.

Do not paint wall patches because the contrast with the existing wall color will make the test fool you.

Move the panel in your home, in shadowed areas, in light areas, in medium lit areas.

Look at the panel from the front and from an angle.

By looking at the panel you will only see how the paint will look like if you look at the wall from up close, not a general feel of how the entire room will look like (which would be lighter and colder in natural light, and darker and warmer in artificial warm white light).

The panel's warm white should look like a warm gray, not pure white, not light beige. If the panel's color is a clear light beige, direct sunlight will diffuse it out of the walls, and that might be too much for those who want warm white, not light beige, walls.

To see the difference between the warm white and pure white, look at how the painted panel compares to a sheet of white paper.

When you look at the panel, any other colors which are in your field of view (like the floor's color), especially the colors that are in the plane of the panel (like the panel's margins), dramatically influence how you perceive the panel's warm white, confusing you. Therefore, you should try to look at the panel while having in the background a surface whose color is as similar as possible (to the panel's color).

If the color of the wall behind the panel is pure white, or a color that's much less saturated than the warm white of the panel, the panel's warm white will look significantly darker and more saturated (than what it would look like when all the walls will be painted with that warm white). Basically, it will look like a dark yellowish gray rather than a warm white. This is due to the contrast between the warm white and the pure white.

If the warm white sample were painted directly on the pure white wall, the contrast would confuse you to the point where you would think that the warm white can't be right since it looks nowhere near white.

But it would look warm white if all the walls around you were painted with that warm white, because the eye adapts to a very light, almost neutral color that fills its field of view, and sees just white; only the shadowed areas show a bit of color.

For small samples, to have a better understanding of the final color, look at the sample with your palms around your eyes, in a way which creates a tunnel for your vision, blocking your peripheral vision, and try to defocus your view to be a bit in front of the sample. This will show you the closest look of the final wall color. This will not work properly for large samples, like a panel, because it shows less saturation than will be in reality.

The warm white will appear more colorful in the corners and around the edges of the walls, especially near the ceiling, where there is usually less light than in the middle of the walls. The warm white from the well lit areas of the walls will be washed out by the light, making its saturation appear much lower than in the corners and edges, making the paint look virtually achromatic. This is why you have to look at the panel in various places from your home. This is true only for very light colors since they show no hue in well lit areas; dark colors show a hue even in well lit areas.

The more direct sunlight there is in the room, the more color is diffused (= pulled out) from the paint into the room, so it's not possible have a paint color which works well for the entire range of possible lighting conditions from a home. It's possible to paint rooms with different colors, but it's still not a solution for all possible lighting conditions.

Taken as a whole, in the rooms where there is a lot of sunlight, the saturation will be high, that is, the color will be perceived more intensely, as if the air itself is colored, despite the fact that the well lit areas will look washed out. In the rooms which are in shadow, the saturation will be low, that is, the color will be perceived less intensely, as if the air itself isn't colored.

Let the paint dry for a day; the perceived color will change as the paint dries. If you are used with a cold, pure white paint, and especially if your home gets direct sunlight, prepare for a visual shock as the color may feel like it's glowing out of the walls; the brightness is also slightly reduced. Wait several weeks for your perception to adjust to the new color and brightness. The same happens to a photocamera, but instantly: the photocamera adjusts the color temperature and shows the walls as if they are painted with pure white.

The resulted color will depend on the correct dosing of the coloring machine, and on the manufacturer's accurate reproduction of the used standard colors (there are large differences among manufacturers, mostly due to the limitations of the used pigments).

The undertone of the glass of the windows and mirrors also affects the color of the wall paint. For example, Low-E glass may give a slightly green undertone to the light which comes through the windows.

Don't choose a too saturated color, because this is only meant to compensate the blue undertone that pure white paint shows with ease.

The resulted paint may appear white in the can, but don't worry, it will have a warm undertone on the wall. In fact, the color will look stunning in the can. The reason why this happens is that the thick and liquid paint permits light to penetrate deep in the can, and create a translucent diffusion that looks like warm milk. This means that the thicker the paint is on the walls, the better it looks when it's lit; however, this changed look is small when compared to the look from the can. The thickness of the colored layer is why painted surfaces look much better than melaminated ones, and why hand painted surfaces look very good - they have the thickest layer of paint.

Dark pigments have a much more intense effect than light ones.

Using only red pigment would turn the paint pink. Using only orange pigment would turn the paint pinkish. Using only yellow pigment would turn the paint greenish; (green) vegetation from outside amplifies this undertone.

A red pigment is several times stronger than an orange one (which is red mixed with yellow), and is therefore much harder to disperse properly (due to the very small amount required).

Since it's impossible to identically reproduce the paint color later, in order to be able to repair a small part of a wall which got dirty, make sure to purchase from the beginning more paint than you need.

After you get all the paint that you need for painting your home, it's strongly recommended to mix it all together in a single recipient, to eliminate any difference in the amounts of pigments from can to can (/ bucket to bucket). This way, after the first layer is applied on the walls, you can add more white paint or more colored paint in order to change the paint's color.

The coloring machine can easily disperse the wrong amounts of pigments, especially when dealing with very small amounts. Out of the 9 bucket tests that I've made, it has failed badly one time and catastrophically another time. The first time it has failed, once the sample patch was painted, the color was clearly wrong (or my understanding of pigment behavior was), so I redid that test; indeed, the new color did fit my understanding of pigment behavior, and the color was very much different than the previous test with the same amounts. The second time it has failed, virtually no pigment was dispersed in the bucket. It turned out that the dosing pipes were clogged.

Seeing undertone

Understanding the undertone of a color will in no way help understand how a warm white color would be perceived if all the walls around you were painted with it. To the contrary, it might even mislead you because of the many factors which influence color perception.

Normally, you can see the undertone of colors only by comparing them one against another. For this, paint some large panels, and put them side by side in order to be able to compare their undertones.

To better see the undertone of a warm white color you can proportionally increase the amounts of pigments (used to create the color) until you create a medium-lightness color; for example, multiply all the amounts of pigments with 10; you can also exclude the black pigment.

In the case of Tikkurila, the color of the paint from a can which contains the amount of colored pigments used for a bucket (12 ml of ochre and 9 ml of orange) looks like a fiery cappuccino in the can, like a dull cappuccino on the lid (if you've shaken the can when closed), and like a dull peach when spread on a white sheet of paper. The differences are due to the thickness of the paint in each case, and due to the fact that light reaches deeper in the liquid paint.

Adding white paint (to a colored paint) dilutes the amounts of pigments proportionally; this is the same thing as proportionally decreasing the amounts of colored pigments, for the same volume.

Below, you can see a simulated example of a dull apricot, the warm white resulted from dilution, and the pure white. The warm white can be simulated (from the apricot) with any image editor which can increase the lightness of an image.

Should I use a strong color for the wall paint in my make up room?

In a make up room, the practical problem about using a strong color is that it strongly colors the light from the room, and that light ends up changing the way you see yourself in the mirror.

For example, if the walls are painted pink, the light from the room would become pinkish and people with white skin would end up seeing their faces more pink than they are, more than they would be outside or inside elsewhere. This will make them change their makeup to look more pale, which in turn could make them look like ghosts in natural sunlight.

For a make up room, you should go with a relatively neutral color, be it (a warm) white or gray, but avoid strong colors.

Choosing color

Choosing a color to use for a large area is impossible to do correctly just by using the samples from a showroom. Even interior designers, for example, paint an entire wall in order to see the actual color of the paint.

Subtle changes to the colors used for large areas result in huge visual differences. An example of this is when you change the undertone of the walls or floor.

In a showroom, you have just a few minutes to look at a sample, you see it in a limited type of illumination, in a different light than that from your home, and most importantly, the sample area is tiny.

When going in a showroom, bring your own colored materials / objects for comparison with color samples. Look at potential material samples in sunlight. Artificial light makes the surface structures look worse, and colors are particularly distorted.

If you look at a color next to another color, each of them influences how the other color is perceived, and both are influenced by the colors that you perceive with your peripheral vision.

Colors look darker and more saturated on large areas, except for very light and mostly neutral colors to which the brain adapts and it neutralizes (treating them as color casts that have to be corrected). Dark or saturated / intense colors look much darker and more saturated on a large area than they look on sample cards. The difference is so large that if you choose a color based only on a small sample, you will regret the choice when seeing it in an entire room.

In natural light, very light, almost neutral colors look lighter and less saturated on the walls compared to a small sample. This is because the eye adapts to the wall color as its white point of reference.

Even for grout, which is normally used just for some thin lines, the difference still matters because while the grout lines are thin, they are very long.

If you are used with dark flooring but choose light flooring for your home, your perception will adjust in time to the new contrast between the (presumably) white of the walls and the light color of the flooring, so that (in time) you will no longer think that the new flooring is too light. In other words, your perception scales to what you see most of the time.

Dark colors, with little saturation, may be more esthetically pleasing than light colors. This is because most objects would stand out against that color in the background since your eyes are no longer inundated by all the light that's reflected by a lightly colored background, and also because when a lightly colored object is viewed against a dark colored wall, effectively creating a color inversion, the eye better perceives the light object since this emits more light than the background, while the dark wall fades into the background of the perception.

Color inversion

Color inversion is a tool which can't miss from a successful design. A color inversion occurs when people have very different colors in their field of view at any one time. Color inversion is used because when two or more colors are perceived at the same time, even when they are on areas of opposite sizes (= large and small), the eye perceives the space as lively / non-monotonous. Without it, the space would look monotonous.

Color inversion is like eating chocolate and vanilla icecream or listening to Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman singing. It's synergy through contrast, creating a better result than the parts.

Normally, a good color inversion needs one color to be visually subtle while the other strong. For example, the colors have contrasting lightnesses (like black and white, brown and beige). Contrasting chromaticities (like saturated blue and pale blue) and contrasting hues (like mauve and beige) may also be present. Contrasting chromaticities may be present instead of contrasting lightnesses (like light saturated blue and light pale blue). All 3 characteristics (= lightness, chromaticity, hue) may be present at the same time, like in golden wood and cold white.

Small elements can also be very powerful. Examples are a saturated beige vase with strong orange-yellow flowers, and a black vase (perhaps speckled with a lighter color) with pink or red and white flowers.

Color inversions can be used either on large areas, or one color on a large area while the other color on a small area (which then works as an accent element).

A common example of color inversion is a golden parquet floor with light beige area carpets. Another one is a brown accent wall with white furniture (against the wall).

Color inversion is why, for example, small accent elements are enough to make a lightly colored home (with white floor, walls and furniture) look gorgeous, so long as the accent elements get in people's field of view from virtually all points of view.

Color inversion benefits from using an appropriate spatial separation. For example, while a carpet has to be right on the floor, it looks good that way because its purpose is to be on the floor. However, other decorations might look much better when they are far away from other objects. For example, flowers could look better in the middle of a room rather than next to a wall. This is not necessarily the case, it depends on other factors as well, but the general idea is that you should take notice of the necessary spatial separation between objects.

The inversion principle is also applicable to structure, texture and shape, where absence / smoothness is inverted with presence / structure / texture / shape.

Matte and glossy surfaces

Matte, light colored surfaces diffusely reflect light in all directions, creating a room which looks lit from everywhere, and a misty atmosphere. Glossy (and polished) surfaces exhibit some specular reflection.

Surfaces can have different types of sheen.

Matte surfaces look a bit like a wall, that is, they block the view, whereas glossy ones show some depth (like a mirror) and have a play of light which provides a pleasant variation. This is very visible in the case of furniture.

Glossy surfaces look luxurious, especially when there is a pattern under the surface, like polished marble, while matte ones look a bit raw / natural.

While glossy surfaces show pleasant light reflections, that can become tiring because there are speckles of light on the surface at every glace you give it. You just can't catch a break, especially on very large areas, like wardrobes. It's the same with mirrors, but at least mirrors really make you feel like the space has increased.

Glossy surfaces give a feeling of a bit more space (compared to matte ones), like a mirror does, especially on vertical surfaces, like furniture.

Glossy surfaces are a bit difficult to keep clean because prints are ever present, however, it's easier to clean grime from them then from matte surfaces.

Just like glass, glossy surfaces give a sense of cold, of a need to keep away from them.

It's true that glossy surfaces are less resistant to abrasion and that they show fingerprints more easily than matte surfaces, especially if their color is dark, but the color, pattern and the surface's interaction with light are much more important when making a choice, so the choice depends on what you like.

Sparkling, transparent particles mixed in (wall) paint can add some specular reflections which provides extra stimulation, and are similar to the specular reflections from wet paint.

Pattern directionality

If the pattern of a surface has directionality (= lines mostly in one direction), the look of the directionality can be affected by the position of the lines relative to the rays of light.

For example, installing the flooring with the lines in the direction of the light (= toward the windows) amplifies the directionality, while installing the flooring with the lines perpendicular on the direction of the light (= parallel with the windows) reduces the directionality.

For vertical surfaces, like furniture or wall mounted tile, the directionality is amplified when the lines are vertical, and reduced when the lines are horizontal.

Surfaces with 3D structures

If you are interested in creating an artistic look (= with character) for your home, you should look into surfaces with 3D structures.

Surfaces with 3D structures fill the space, creating an anchor for the eye.

Such surfaces can be made with:

Matte painted, brushed / etched wood. This has a slightly rustic look.
Hand painted wood, which due to the imperfect manual process involved looks a bit like a painting on canvas.
Milled MDF. This can be classic with a rectangle around the edge of each door and drawer, or can be modern with various grooves, or can be complex with multiple planes overlapping (where each plane has a curved edge, somewhat like frozen ocean waves).
Embossed MDF.
Perforated MDF (normally, used only decoratively).

Take into consideration that such structures gather dust, especially the horizontal lines, so be ready to do some regular cleaning.

Flooring

Ceramic tile (or stone)

Ceramic tile is far more durable than parquet, has no squeaky areas (like unglued parquet has), comes with more patterns (whereas parquet mostly has a wood pattern, which looks mostly rustic), keeps the feet chillier in the summer than parquet, is much easier to clean than carpet, and has a much lower emission of toxic fumes than laminated parquet. However, unlike parquet, tile can break on impact with rigid objects.

Porcelain tile is more durable than basic tile, but is also more expensive. Porcelain is actually a type of ceramic. Ask your tile installer to cut the porcelain tile (especially the high quality one) with a powered wet saw in order to minimize losses and get high quality cut lines.

Tile is a better choice if you have underfloor heating because it transmits heat easier than parquet and carpet, and this allows the floor and the air to warm faster.

While tile does feel chillier than parquet on the bare feet, both feel cold and can't match the warmth of carpet. Only where direct sunlight hits the floor, the floor feels warm. In any case, slippers make this irrelevant, especially if they have thick foam soles.

Tile is hard on the knees to walk on, so use slippers with thick foam soles. Slippers also protect from cold surfaces.

Parquet is slightly noisier (due to squeaking) than tile when walked upon, on its surface, but tile allows the sound to propagate deeper in the floor.

If you go with tile, for a modern look of your home, choose a large rectangular format, like 60 * 60 cm (24 * 24 in). A large format tile is not too large for a small apartment, no matter what friends will tell you.

If you choose a large format tile, ensure that the adhesive can be used for a large format (specifically for your tile's size); don't blindly accept the recommendation of the installer, read the specifications of the adhesive. Usually, only expensive adhesives can be used for a large format tile.

Some tile has many pattern variations from tile to tile, with some manufactures claiming that each of their tile (model) is unique.

Rounded (like a pillow edge) or beveled edges (cut at a 45 degrees angle) protect the tile from being chipped off when hit on the edges. Rounded and beveled edges give a more rustic and fragmented look to the room.

Straight top edges (cut at a 90 degrees angle) allow for a thinner (and therefore less visible) grout line. Tile with straight top edges looks more modern.

Rectified tile is tile that has been mechanically finished on all sides to much more consistent dimensions; such tile has straight top edges, or microbeveled edges, but never rounded edges. Generally, rectified tile requires a minimum grout line width of 2 mm, while unrectified tile requires a minimum of 3 mm. If you ignore the specifications of the grout manufacturer regarding the thickness of the grout line, the tile may look unevenly installed, with corners or edges sticking out.

Always install tile with grout, at least 1.5 mm wide, even if some installers recommend you to not use any. Without grout, the tile dimensional irregularities will become visible, space will remain between the tiles, grime would get stuck between the tiles, liquids can drip at the bottom of the tiles and create mold, you risk the tiles to break (especially during earthquakes), and it's very difficult to replace individual broken tiles. Really, nothing good can come out of avoiding grouting. If you have underfloor heating, it's even more important to use a grout line in order to allow the floor to expand and contract much more than ceramic itself. Also, tile manufacturers specifically say to always use a grout line.

Grime (like wet dust) and dark hair are more visible on light colored tile than on dark colored tile, but dust, fingerprints and footprints are more visible on dark colored tile than on light colored tile. Black surfaces, especially the glossy ones, are a nightmare to keep clean because dust and prints are ever present. The best overall colors to hide all sorts of unclean spots are medium gray or beige with some random / stone / wood pattern; warm gray or beige can better hide spots that are hard to clean and start to look "old" at some point.

Grime is also more visible on light colored grout than on dark colored grout, but dark colored grout may change its color toward gray due to water, soap and cleaning solutions, especially if used for the floor of a walk-in shower.

The quality of grout varies. Epoxy grout looks better, is more durable, is easier to keep clean than the average cement-based grout, doesn't need sealing to protect it against grime, and is nearly waterproof. Epoxy grout feels smooth to touch, while the cement-based grout feels rough. Epoxy grout is much more difficult to use and remove (to be replaced). While epoxy grout is very expensive (even five times more than cement-based grout), using a large format tile and a thin grout line results in using a very small amount of grout, so the final cost of the grout is small. Examples of epoxy grout: Mapei Kerapoxy Design.

A cement-based grout should be sealed (with a sealing solution) in order to avoid grime getting into it. Epoxy grout doesn't normally require sealing.

A cement-based grout is relatively easy to remove, while epoxy grout is virtually impossible to remove because it sticks so well to the tile that, if you were to try to remove it, you would end up with the tile scratched all over. This is why epoxy grout is very good for shower areas.

If you want to avoid grout because it gets dirty, look into colored concrete floors.

A grout whose color is contrasting to that of the tile is creating a fragmented look which makes the space feel busier and smaller. To avoid a fragmented look, choose a grout with a color similar to that of the tile, and a large format tile, like 60 * 60 cm (24 * 24 in) or 45 * 90 cm (18 * 36 in).

For installing tile over underfloor heating, you have to use a flexible adhesive. An example is Mapei Keraflex Maxi S1, which can be used for a large format tile and for a small grout line width.

The tile surface can be matte, polished or honed / satin (= between matte and polished). A honed surface is a great combination between the visual warmth of a matte surface and the play of light of a polished surface. A matte surface has no reflections (= it just diffuses light), a polished surface has clear reflections, and a honed surface has sheen (= has diffused reflections). Matte tile traps dirt.

Polished tile provides depth of shadows and a play of light due to the created reflections, a sort of a dynamic pattern which changes depending on the light and objects from the room.

Be aware that polished or honed tile is extremely slippery when wet, shows footprints, scratches and limescale more easily than matte tile, and can get matted over the years or decades. If you like to walk barefoot on tile, polished tile makes the perspiration from the soles more evident than honed or matte tile.

Like glass, polished tile can can give a feeling of cold by inducing a desire to keep away from its surface. Matte tile can also give a cold feeling because the bumps on its surface create specular highlights, and this makes it look like it contains glass particles.

Tile with a 3D surface structure is difficult to clean. A smooth surface is the most practical choice, in general.

Surface hardness, measured in Mohs (maximum 10), indicates the resistance of the surface to scratching. Mohs is a relative, (sort of) logarithmic scale. Absolute scratch hardness is measured with a device called sclerometer. A surface with a given Mohs can be scratched by a surface with a higher Mohs, but not by one with a lower Mohs; this means that granite might be scratched by stainless steel knives, depending on the exact Mohs of both. Here are the Mohs values for some materials: soapstone 1...2, finger nails 2.5, marble and travertine 3...4, window glass 5.5, stainless steel 5.5...6.5, granite 6...7, high quality porcelain tile 6...8, diamond 10.

The modulus of rupture, measured in Newtons / mm2, indicates the body's resistance to pressure. This is important when the tile is cut, during installation. Granite's modulus of rupture is 15...25 N / mm2, and for high quality porcelain tile it's 40...50 N / mm2, which means that (high quality porcelain) tile is much stronger than granite.

The surface abrasion resistance, rated as PEI (maximum 5), indicates the resistance of the surface to wear.

The surface of general indoor floor tile should have at least: hardness Mohs 5, abrasion resistance PEI 3. Mohs 6 and PEI 4 is better.

When ordering tile, be sure to include an extra 10...15% for loses. For a large format tile get at the very least 15% extra, preferably 20%, especially if you get porcelain tile (because this is hard to cut properly since it's very brittle, so many tiles would be usable only in part). For the tile skirting you need very little extra because few skirting tiles are incomplete. For example, I had nearly 20% extra and there were only two full tiles left at the end (because it was porcelain and it wasn't cut with a powered wet saw).

Porcelain tile can be so though that, for drilling holes in it, you need a drill bit with a special type of head. You must use a low revolution speed to drill with this.

Calculating the amount of spacers

Tile can be installed with spacers (= small crosses) which keep the grout line at the same width. However, because the tiles and the floor where they are mounted on are not perfectly flat, it's very useful to use an edge leveling system instead of spacers, at least for large format tile. A leveling system is made, for example, from 4 clips that are mounted near the corners of each tile, and keep adjacent tiles at the same height, providing exceptional floor evenness. Unfortunately, a leveling system is very expensive compared to spacers. Search the Internet for "tile leveling system" for details.

In order to install tile with a minimal positioning error (and have a consistently wide grout line), you need to use spacers; for brevity, we'll also include tile leveling systems under the word "spacers".

The amount of spacers has to be calculated per one tile corner. This is because every other corner of a tile is actually the corner (from the same position on the tile) of an adjacent tile. You actually need a higher amount (preferably with 10% more) because you are going to also use spacers for the far edges of the tiled area (since those tiles from those edges have no adjacent tiles further out).

For spacers (not the leveling kind), you need just one spacer per tile.

For the leveling system it depends on its type. More expensive systems, which can align the tile corners better, are put right on the corners of all four adjacent tiles, so a single piece is required per tile. Cheaper systems are put at a few centimeters away from the corner, so you need four pieces per tile.

The cheaper system actually requires two different types of pieces for each mountable item. One piece goes under the tile and comes out of it, and is shaped like an "L". The other piece from the pair is a wedge that goes in the "L" shaped piece. The wedges can be reused a few times, so you can, for example, buy just a third of the necessary wedges.

The price of spacers (not the leveling kind) is small and you can trust the seller with the amount that you need, but the price of a leveling system is extremely high and that matters whether the seller overshoots intentionally or by accident.

Should grout be level with the top of tile with straight top edges?

Some (rectified) tile has a microbevel (which helps the top edges not get chipped), and if the grout would fill the space from this microbevel it would chip away in time (because the grout is too thin there).

Also, it's a bit difficult to grout perfectly flush with the tile because the grout settles (= gets lower) in the space between tiles, so a bit a space will remain at the top of the tile. It's still possible to do this by allowing more time for the grout to settle before it's cleaned off the tile, else, after a few hours, it may sink a bit below the tile surface.

Is cleaning a lowered grout line more difficult? On one hand, it's more difficult to get grime out from between the tiles, but since the grout is lower it also can't be stepped on with dirty shoes / slippers / feet, and so it remains cleaner and doesn't get worn. So the cleaning effort is mixed.

(For tile with rounded or beveled edges it's not possible to have the grout level with the top of the tile because if it were then the grout would simply get chipped soon.)

Even though for tile with perfectly straight top edges it's possible to have the grout flush with the top of the tile, it still gets chipped away in time, I've seen it happening.

Regardless of your decision, make sure to explicitly specify your choice to the tiler before the grouting starts!

Details here.

Natural stone

Natural stone is best for people who prefer a natural look over strength. If you want beauty then choose natural stone, if you want strength then choose ceramic tile.

The stone's surface has to be filled with a special filler grout, but the filling is not perfect; this is especially true for travertine. The grout matches the color of the stone, so you can't actually say that it's been grouted. A sealant should be applied after installation to protect the stone from staining; the sealant has to be renewed from time to time, but some sealants claim to have a permanent effect.

An advantage of natural stone over tile is that if the stone chips, the exposed part underneath still looks like stone, although very rough stone.

The look of natural stone can be controlled with more difficulty, compared to ceramic tile, because the pattern in natural stone has a lot of variety.

Natural stone, is much softer than high quality porcelain tile. This means that natural stone is much more likely to chip, especially at the edges, so you may end up with a lot more but slightly better looking chipped areas, when compared to tile.

The softness of natural stone also means that it can break easier than porcelain tile, although some people think that this adds to the natural look of the stone. This is why natural stone doesn't usually come in large tiles (over 60 * 60 cm), so large tiles would break easier, but it's still possible to use thick slabs.

Honed natural stone is a great combination between the visual warmth of a matte surface and the play of light of a polished surface.

Natural stone can be cut with greater precision than tile (but this doesn't means that it actually is), so a narrower grout line can be used (since imperfections will not stick out as much).

If you go with natural stone, for a modern look of your home, for price considerations you can choose a medium format (instead of a large format), like 30 * 60 cm (12 * 24 in) or 45 * 45 cm (18 * 18 in).

If you decide to use natural stone, you should look up cross cut / contro falda, honed and filled light travertine. It's creamy, subtle pattern is beautiful for both modern and classical designs. It's important to choose cross cut because the other cut type, vein cut / in falda, is too directional.

Epoxy floor

An epoxy floor is not the same thing as an epoxy coating or an epoxy paint; their thickness makes the difference. The thickness of an epoxy floor is at least 2 mm; if it has less then it's called epoxy floor coating.

An epoxy floor is made by pouring several thin coats of epoxy resins on a floor and letting them harden.

An epoxy floor can incorporate (within its coats) an artistic design, either made with very large photographs or hand painted.

Its main advantage is that it's seamless (= has no interruptions) within a room, since it's poured from wall to wall, so it's very easy to clean.

Epoxy floors are strong enough to be used in demanding industrial environments.

Epoxy floors must be installed by people who have experience with them.

Some people say that epoxy floor can be installed over tile, but a few people who say that this is not durable (even if the tile glazing is removed) and recommend against applying it over tile.

The realistic life expectancy of a professional epoxy floor is up to 15...20 years, so less than for tile.

An epoxy floor can't be fixed on a small part, it has to be fully redone. For tile / parquet, a single tile / plank can be replaced.

Walls can also be covered with epoxy resins.

Not all epoxy floor materials are equal. To compare them, check their adhesion rating, abrasion resistance, hardness, and impact resistance. See this for details.

Parquet (wood or laminated)

For flooring, anywhere outside the bathrooms, parquet is a good choice because it's much easier to clean than carpet, (if it's click-mounted then) it's easier to replace than (glued) carpet and tile, and is slightly less cold on the bare feet than tile.

Parquet would not usually crack or chip if something is dropped on it, like tile would.

Parquet absorbs some sound, so it makes a room's acoustic visibly better than tile does.

Pets can scratch parquet (with their claws).

For walking, there is little difference between the rigidity of tile and laminated parquet (which has a foam underlayer and is not glued to the base floor).

Parquet is hard on the knees to walk on, so use slippers with thick foam soles. Slippers also protect from cold surfaces.

Parquet which has a foam underlayer (= is not glued to the base floor) develops various spots where it squeaks when stepped upon.

However, parquet, unlike tile, especially the laminated parquet which is not glued to the floor, can reduce the effect of falls that small children experience from time to time.

Some people say that they prefer solid wood floors instead of melaminated parquet because the latter has to be changed from time to time and that costs money. True, but solid wood floors are 5...10 times more expensive to begin with.

Beveled edges are very useful for parquet, especially for the melaminated one, because without them it can chip off easily on the slightest unevenness of the floor. Beveled edges give a more rustic look to the room; all 4 beveled edges give the most rustic aspect.

If you choose to install parquet with beveled edges, you can also choose large planks. Standard planks have something like 120 * 20 cm, but large ones can have even something like 200 * 25 cm.

When ordering parquet, be sure to include an extra 10...15% for loses.

The planks which are installed one next to another should be installed staggered, with an offset of 1/3 of a plank in order to maximize their stability.

Carpet (or rugs)

Carpet feels warmer to the bare feet, is softer when stepped upon, is much easier to change (especially if it's not glued to the floor), is easy to put over (or take off) tile or parquet, its threads form a beautifully 3D surface structure, and can have a great variety of drawn patterns on it.

Carpet absorbs a significant amount of sound, so it makes a room's acoustic visibly better than tile and parquet.

Carpet, unlike tile and parquet, is not slippery (for the people walking on it), although itself can slide on the slippery floor below it. Carpet should have an antislip back; if it's not, it's possible to buy pads which are antislip on both faces, pads which are put under the carpet.

Carpet, unlike tile, can reduce the effect of falls that small children experience from time to time.

Unlike tile and parquet, carpet is soft on the joints (knees and hips).

Pets can destroy carpet (with their claws).

Carpet is more difficult to clean than tile or parquet; hard surfaces are much easier to clean than carpet.

Carpet traps humidity, dust and smells, and releases them later.

Carpet does not necessarily cause respiratory difficulties, as is widely believed that it does, at least so long as it's cleaned / vacuumed regularly. It may actually decrease the incidence of asthma and allergy. On one hand, carpet fibers trap dust and allergens, but on the other hand, bugs can easily find a home among the carpet fibers, and walking on the carpet may send dust into the air. For details, see Carpet, Asthma and Allergies - Myth or Reality. In my experience, carpet can't be cleaned well enough.

If your budget allows it, you should install either tile or parquet for the floor, and later add carpet where you feel the need for warmth and softness. If you later sell the home, the buyer can remove or replace the carpet easily.

The difference in the thermal comfort provided by the floor to the bare feet is given by the heat loss rate of each floor material, not by the temperature of the floor. The temperature of the floor is virtually the same for any type of floor material. Stone makes your body lose heat the fastest through the soles, while carpet makes your body lose heat the slowest.

Furniture

The big question is what material to use for furniture: chipboard, MDF, wood or plywood?

Chipboard is lighter than MDF and wood, holds screws better than MDF. Chipboard must be sealed (with ABS edging) when used in humid environments; even so, it can take far more water vapors than MDF before deforming. It's possible to have edging done with laser, which removes (virtually) any spacing between the board's surface and the edging band.

MDF can be milled to have rounded edges, can be painted (which means that it doesn't need edging). MDF must be sealed (with ABS edging or paint) when used in humid environments. MDF is mostly used for furniture fronts / doors, specifically because it can be milled, because the painted MDF has no edging, and because it's surface looks much better than that of chipboard. It's nice to be able to avoid edging because edging can get loose and gets dirty along its own edges (where the glue is visible). However, high quality painted MDF can cost even 10 times more than the average chipboard. MDF may crack when screws are screwed-in because its high density doesn't allow the material to compress too much when a screw pushes inside.

Lightly-colored melaminated chipboard / MDF usually looks like paper because the paper from the melamine is very thin, porous and there is very little pigment impregnated in the paper. These things together make the underlying wood chips show a bit through the paper when light hits the surface. For painted MDF or wood, there is a lot more pigment in the paint, and the paint isn't porous, so the light can't get through the paint as easily.

Chipboard and MDF, without proper support, can sag in time.

All the MDF and chipboard edges should be sealed with paint or edging in order to keep the toxins inside, even the edges which are not visible!

Wood is very strong, can be milled to have rounded edges, can be painted. However, it's far more expensive than chipboard, and can more easily get warped in humid environments.

Plywood is made of several sheets of wood glued together, which makes it behave like a stronger wood. Plywood can't be milled to have rounded edges, like MDF and wood can be.

If you like a clean look, make the entire furniture with the same color, whatever the material is, that is, including the backside and the drawer bottoms.

Painted MDF or wood looks much better than chipboard because of the paint's reflective properties (compared to the reflective properties of the colored paper from the chipboard).

The edges of the furniture's doors and drawers provide a regular pattern which compensates a bit the lack of a pattern in the furniture material itself, which is enough for people who like an uncluttered / empty, modern design. When painted, foiled or veneered MDF is used, it's possible to have edges milled to a high curvature in order to accentuate the pattern which partitions the space; handles milled directly into MDF can also be used to create even more pattern.

When you give your furniture drawings to a builder, specify the furniture size on the outside, so that it includes everything, like the thickness of the material and the height of the legs; mark the legs area / height clearly. For shelves, specify the height of the space between them, that is, without the height of the material.

It might be good to plan the furniture material so that you could later change the fronts, should you want to do so. This means that you should think that the color of the fronts could be different than the color of the rest of the furniture.

If you use edging, use thin edging (like 1 mm thick). You should apply edging to all the hidden edges in order to keep the chemicals from leaking out (of chipboard and MDF); you should use the same edging for all the edges, so that you can turn any board in any way, if there is a defect.

If you apply edging to all the edges, the total length (in meters) required is about equal with the area (in square meters) of the furniture material to use multiplied with 7 (for general furniture) and with 18 (for kitchen cabinets). This means that, for general furniture, you need about 40 meters of edging for each chipboard / MDF board (2800 * 2070 mm).

Each vertical wall needs legs to support it.

The furniture legs should have a (white) plastic bottom in order to avoid scratching the floor. The legs should have a screwing thread all around their inner periphery, that is, they should have no welding point to support the weight of the furniture (which, unfortunately, most metallic legs have).

The height of the legs should be 10...15 cm (4...6 in). This allows for enough space underneath to be able to clean.

In order to cover the furniture legs, you can extend the fronts and sides of the furniture down to 2...3 cm (1 in) from the ground. For the kitchen, you should let 5 cm (2 in) above the ground so that the toes can have room under the cabinets. The doors should be maximum 50 cm (20 in) wide, so that they would not hit your toes when you open them; 60 cm is the maximum acceptable for normal hinges. This also allows you to keep a clean line along the entire height of the furniture since there is no split between the doors and the plinth, and it feels like the furniture is floating in the air. Also, it's easy to clean under the furniture, once you open the (furniture) doors.

If you also want to extend the side panels, since these are load bearing, they have to sit on the bottom panel. Because of this, in order to cover the furniture legs, an extra panel has to be applied over the side panels, on the outside. These outer panels will be visible from the front because the doors can't cover them (since there are no hinges that can open that much).

Let at least 20 cm (8 in) from the top of a wardrobe and the ceiling; you need this space in order to be able to raise a wardrobe from the floor in its upright position.

Let 4 cm (1.6 in) of space between the walls and the wardrobes (at the back). Cut spacers from a wood beam, put them behind the wardrobes and screw them between the wardrobes and the walls. This space reduces the risk of mold to appear between furniture and walls, and if you screw through the back panel of the wardrobes, they will also keep the wardrobes in place in case of earthquakes.

The most common failure factor in furniture is the hardware, not the chipboard / MDF / wood, especially drawer runners, so invest in quality hardware.

The wheeled mechanism for sliding doors is much less reliable than hinges. Sliding doors can jump off their rails. Sliding doors take more time to open, and their weight requires more energy to move. Sliding doors allow you to open only half of a wardrobe at a time.

Hinged doors can be maximum 60 cm (24 in) wide, but sliding doors can be much wider (the wider they are, the heavier they are and the more time and energy they require to be moved).

There are several main types of furniture hinges:

Full overlay: These are generally used in wardrobes because a wardrobe is split in several boxes, and each box has a vertical board at each end. This means that doors with adjacent hinges always have two vertical boards between them, and this gives them enough space for this kind of hinge. These usually open about 100 degrees. These cover the vertical board on which they are mounted.
Half overlay: These are normally used to mount doors on the opposite sides of a single vertical board, which is generally used in cabinets. In order to make this possible, the neck of the hinge is wider (than in a full overlay hinge), and this pushes the door a bit inside the wardrobe (when it's open). These usually open about 100 degrees. This type of hinge should be used for a wardrobe with mirrors on the doors. These cover the vertical board on which they are mounted.
Wide opening angle: These are normally used in wardrobes which have drawers inside. These usually open about 170 degrees.

The furniture interior should be made based on purpose:

Hangers are good for: pants, shirts, T-shirts, jackets.
Shelves are good for: bed linen, in-home worn clothing, shoes.
Drawers are good for: socks, small items, maybe underwear (especially bras), cutlery, small plates. Don't make drawers for: shirts, pants, jackets or heavy objects.

Shelves are reconfigurable (can be removed, added, moved to a different height). Drawers give easy access to their back, whereas the back of deep shelves are difficult to access.

Drawers are the most efficient way to organize things because they can be pulled out for easy viewing, especially of the back, but they are also much more expensive than shelves and are difficult to clean. Drawers fit the most clothes since no hangers (that take width) are required. However, clothes that are put on hangers require less folding and are easier to see and take out, since they are not under other clothes. You can have drawers from the floor up to your sternum (below your chest), above this height you would not be able to see inside the drawers.

If possible, ensure that you have (at least) 3 wide (and thin) drawers in the kitchen, just under the countertop, for small stuff like cutlery.

The lip of the countertop should be at least 1.5 cm (0.6 in) in order to keep water from running down the front of the furniture beneath.

Hinges and drawer runners wear out, so furniture doors and drawers will slowly look and move badly (out of alignment).

Don't put heavy loads in drawers, or the drawer runners will deform and the drawer fronts will start to look crooked.

Soft-close drawer runners (like Hettich Quadro and Blum Tandem) move much more smoothly, and are much more error tolerant, than roller or ball drawer runners. Get them, preferably the type that opens the complete drawer, if you can afford them.

Pay attention to the specifications of the drawer runners! For example, in order to be able to use soft-close drawer runners Blum Tandem, the side panels of the drawers must be maximum 16 mm thick, and must extend below the bottom (they can't be flush with the bottom). There is a model for 19 mm, 563F, but it's availability is limited. Hettich Quadro glide-on drawer runners may be installed on flush base drawers, so the thickness of the drawer side panels is irrelevant.

If you have drawers inside a wardrobe, leave 9 cm (3.6 in) between them for hinges; between the bottom of the wardrobe and the first drawer, leave 12 cm (5 in). This accounts for the space required by soft-close drawer runners (like Hettich Quadro and Blum Tandem) that are mounted at the bottom of the drawers. Also, in order for the inside margin of the doors to not block the drawers from being pulled outside the wardrobe, add an extra board on which each drawer runner is mounted (so, you basically move the runners away from the sides of the wardrobe). Without this side board, the hinges must have a wide opening angle, angle which is incompatible with mirrors on the (outside of the) doors because then the doors would crash into the mirrors of the doors next to them.

Walk-in closets eliminate the need for complex furniture like wardrobes, which means no need for furniture doors, less wear and simpler cleaning.

The weight of mirrors (6 mm thick) that are applied on furniture is a bit higher than that of average chipboard (18 mm thick), and about equal with that of MDF. While there are 4mm thick mirrors, these are too thin for large doors. For example, a 220 * 40 cm chipboard door weighs about 11 kg, while a mirror of the same size weighs about 14 kg. This means that you need a lot more hinges on such doors (unless they are sliding doors). Blum recommends a maximum load-bearing of 22 kg for 5 hinges, so for such a door you need about 7 hinges (it's what I've used).

If you want to have mirrors on hinged doors (not sliding doors), you should ask an expert about special hinges for doors with mirrors; if you can't get those, just use half overlay hinges. This allows you to have the mirrors as wide as the doors themselves, while the space between the doors (on the side of hinges) is as wide and deep as a furniture board (18 mm thick). Full overlay hinges would require the mirrors to be narrower than the door with about 40 mm (1.6 in) on the side of the hinges; this much space is required because the top and bottom of the mirror (on the side with the hinges) is closest due to the door being curved that way. It's not practical to use hinges with a wide opening angle. Instead of making the mirrors narrower, it's possible to put a separating board between the adjacent wardrobe boxes; the thickness of this board should be at least twice the thickness of the mirror (plus the glue and the safety space in between the mirrors when the doors are open). Without this space, the doors would not have room to open because the mirrors from adjacent wardrobe boxes would touch one another.

If you have handles on doors with mirrors, make sure that: there is adhesive behind the mirror in the area of the holes for the screws, to keep the mirror from compressing when the handle is screwed in; also make sure that there is a soft plastic gasket between the handle and the mirror. From time to time make sure that the screws of the handles are a bit loose. You have to do this because the door may and will expand between the screw and the handle, which would put great pressure on the mirror in that area if the screws were not a bit loose, pressure which could snap the mirror. Don't do this only when you mount the handles, do it at least once a year, especially during the wet and hot seasons.

Non-smoky mirrors reflect a colder image of reality, usually tinted with green or blue. Smoky mirrors reflect a brownish image.

For handles, if the color of the furniture material is light and warm, matte nickel works better than chrome because it has a warm undertone (warmer than chrome and stainless steel, anyway), and creates a slightly retro-futuristic look.

Use knobs because they are small and pretty much invisible, and for mounting they (normally) require only a single hole. Because of the single screw, knobs can be easily changed at any time, since you don't depend on the distance between the (two) installation holes / screws of most handles.

Large chrome or nickel handles may give furniture a bit of a kitchen-like look.

If you integrate a clothing washing machine in the kitchen furniture, and you want the cabinet to have doors, make sure to include enough space. For example most washing machines are about 60 cm (24 in) wide, but the cabinet's outside width has to be at least 72 cm (29 in); you must account for the door hinges. Also, the depth from the front of the cabinet to the wall has to be at least 70 cm (28 in).

If you make large custom furniture, be sure it fits through the stairs and doors. For example, you might want to make a double bed foundation from two pieces instead of a single monolithic one, in order to avoid any risk that it would not fit through some area. Breaking parts of walls is not desirable.

Acrylic kitchen countertop

It's possible to make a kitchen countertop from a composite material made from powder stone, crushed stone, glue, and possibly acrylic. This type of material is very durable. These are usually known as solid surface materials.

Composite materials are expensive, but their main advantage is that the sink can be perfectly glued to the countertop, if the sink is also from composite, so that it's impossible to tell where either of them ends. The backsplash can also be perfectly glued to the countertop, if the backsplash is also from composite, and the connecting part can be rounded.

If, by accident, you wash something of metal, you leave it on the acrylic countertop and the metal rusts, you will likely be unable to wash the rust off the countertop. In such a case, either contact the installer to buff the rust off, or get an utility razor (which is a very sharp blade with a handle) and very gently peel the rust off; knives don't work (because the handle must be perpendicular on the blade in order to let you push the blade with force).

Concrete

Normally, concrete is used only as a structural material because it looks unfinished.

However, concrete can be used for flooring, kitchen countertop, sinks.

It's possible to give concrete a finish, by coloring it throughout or by staining or painting its surface (which gives the ability to create some surface patterns). The result is called "colored concrete" or "stained concrete". For light colors, use white cement / concrete (instead of the usual dark gray). A water-based dye creates a cloudy finish (= slight variations of brightness), while a solvent-based dye creates a uniform effect.

If you want to make your own custom color for a colored concrete floor, look into mixing concrete dyes with cement; use white cement to get a light color. As an example, for a pale beige color, you could use yellow oxide (0.7% from the mass of the cement) and red oxide (0.3% from the mass of the cement). Unless otherwise specified by the instructions of the dyes, mix the dyes with the water which will be then mixed with the cement powder; this way the dye will be well mixed into the resulting concrete.

The surface of the concrete which is colored throughout should be polished to create a clean and smooth finish.

Concrete which is colored throughout has to be sealed in order to protect it from staining. Make sure the sealant is either transparent, or has the same color as the dye.

The finish of concrete which is colored throughout lasts a lifetime. The finish of concrete which is stained / painted on the surface lasts maximum 20 years.

Concrete can be stamped in order to create patterned grooves. The result is called "stamped concrete".

It's possible to stain and stamp concrete to make it look like wood.

Concrete will crack in time, so be prepared to see cracks, even if you grout the cracks.

Install the concrete floor before you paint the walls so that the dust resulted from polishing the concrete doesn't end up on the wall paint.

If you want to get rid of tile grout even on the (bathroom) walls (tile), look into epoxy resin.

Textiles

Why use curtains: privacy (people from outside can't see inside), diffusion of light (the atmosphere becomes softer), sound reflections are dampened (which means better acoustics inside, especially with a hard floor like parquet or tile).

Sheer / transparent curtains block about 30% of light.

To see the undertone of an apparently white sheer curtain, fold it in several layers.

The thread count of sheer / transparent curtains can vary significantly, but a higher one means a more delicate fabric and this means that the eye is less distracted by the fabric's details, so it can concentrate more on the view outside the room.

Curtains with a delicate fabric knitting, where the fabric model is of sub millimeter size, is very prone to tear.

The absence of light in the bedroom improves the sleeping experience. Blackout curtains block all outside light from getting in through the windows; the only light which still comes through is around the curtains. There are also dimout curtains which block most of the light, but not as much as blackout curtains.

Curtain folds make it difficult to see the beauty of the material. Think at how a bed cover or a couch would look if the material would have folds / wrinkles all over. You would only see the folds / wrinkles, not the material itself. Of course, to like a look without folds / wrinkles, you have to prefer simplicity over embellishments. When there are no folds, the structure / texture / pattern of the knitting or the printed model becomes critical for a good visual effect.

Opaque curtains without folds don't look neat when they are drawn to the sides, because the material has no predefined folds to follow and is too thick. Also, even though there are no folds created with pleats, there still are some small folds / bends because the material is not kept perfectly straight by anything. It's possible to get curtains that are mounted on bars / panels at the top, to keep them straight, but such bars are rather short (in order to allow you to draw the curtains to the sides of the walls).

Without folds, since you use / need less material, you either pay less or can afford to get more expensive materials; also, the curtains can be washed easier since there is less material.

Sheer curtains with pleats normally require a multiplication factor around 2.0...2.5. Opaque curtains only require about 1.8 because the material is thicker and would not look good with a higher factor. The multiplication factor is a multiplier which has to be applied to the length of the tracks where the curtains are mounted, in order for the curtains to make folds.

To have the bottom of the curtains off the floor, use a distance of 3...4 cm (1.2...1.6 in) between the floor and curtains. This ensures that there is enough leeway for unaccounted distances and for errors, ensures there is a consistent look of the bottom of the curtains, and accounts for uneven floors.

For each track, the length of the curtains has to be the same. Don't make the front ones longer.

Don't put weights at the corners of curtains; they'll only bang on the walls when the wind blows.

Textiles should be soft. If the opaque curtains have a 3D pattern, like crepe, and the pattern spans horizontally, they will not drape very well because the pattern stiffens the curtains horizontally, so the pleats can't form properly. This is especially a problem if you like a formal atmosphere, where neatness is paramount.

If for some window(s), for privacy reasons, you need a sheer curtain that's less transparent than the normal sheer curtain, but which also has to have the same color and pattern as the normal sheer curtain, you might want to use the normal sheer curtain folded in two. Having 3 tracks also allows you to use 2 tracks for sheer curtains and one for opaque curtains.

To check if a material's color matches your home, buy samples that are 1 m (3 ft) long. The width should be that of the material, like 280 cm (112 in). Test these in the place where you intend to use them, like next to windows.

Tracks

If you want to have curtains with folds, it's recommended to use two single-channel tracks rather than one double-channel track because the double-channel tracks have a too small distance between the channels. This small distance means that the opaque curtains and the sheer curtains rub on each other, and therefore one drags the other when moved, and also limits the space that each curtain has to flow nicely, vertically. If you use two tracks, you can change the distance as you like.

The S / wave pattern requires the largest distance between two tracks, like 12...15 cm (5...6 in), so that the curtains from the two tracks don't rub against one another when they are pulled along the tracks. The pleats pattern requires a distance of only about 8...10 cm (3...4 in).

Consider using 3 tracks:

One for sheer curtains (closest to the window).
One for blackout curtains (in the middle).
One for decorative semiopaque curtains (closest to the room interior). If you can't find blackout curtains for the middle, the two (opaque) curtain layers combined will act close to a blackout layer. However, make sure to check them on a window, because some materials are too thin to block sunlight even in two layers.

The advantages for 3 tracks are:

You have a lot more flexibility in choosing the decorative opaque curtains (from many more models), most of which don't have a blackout curtain. The blackout curtain will block the light from getting inside from the outside, while the decorative opaque curtain will create the visual look that you want.
To not be disturbed by the light coming from the outside, you can cover the windows with the blackout curtain.
To have a soft, romantic atmosphere during the day, you can cover the windows with the decorative semiopaque curtain in order to have some light come in from the outside.
It's possible to use the middle track for a second type of sheer curtain, like a denser or more colorful one, which you usually keep drawn to the sides.
It's possible to use contrasting colors (for the blackout curtains and the decorative opaque curtains) in order to create an accent element at the outer edges of the curtains.
You can later change the decorative opaque curtains.
It's easier to wash the decorative semiopaque curtain because it's thinner.
You can wash one set of opaque curtains at a time, so that you're never without opaque curtains on the windows.
The deeper space they occupy (in front of the windows) is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because of the extra space, the curtains have more volume and don't look as flat as with 2 tracks.

The disadvantages are:

The higher costs for both the curtains and the tracks.
The deeper space occupied (in front of the windows) by the extra track (plus the spacing between the tracks).

If you install 3 tracks, where the middle one is for blackout curtains, the distance between the tracks should be 12...15 cm (5...6 in), distance which is important for the two tracks that are toward the inside of the room. This is because blackout curtains are quite thick and occupy a lot of space when they are drawn to the sides. 10 cm (4 in) can work, but the curtains that come in front of the blackout curtains will not drape very well.

Personally, I have dark brown blackout curtains and very light beige semiopaque curtains. The semiopaque curtains are very useful during days with very intense sunlight, because they block a lot of sunlight and diffuse the sunlight that does get inside, all without making the inside dark.

Oeko-Tex certification

Textile manufacturers and their products can have Oeko-Tex certifications. These certifications are different things.

To be certified, a mattress must have a label (with green, orange and black text) stitched on it, label which represents the Oeko-Tex certificate. This label contains the text "Confidence in textiles". If the label contains the text "0904046.O", it means that the mattress is class 2 certified, meaning that it's not expressly certified as being safe for babies.

Oeko-Tex says that in order to get their certification it's required that all the components of an item meet the required criteria without exception (meaning, the outer material, sewing threads, linings, prints, buttons, zip fasteners, rivets).

If you want to verify that a manufacturer is not falsely attaching an Oeko-Tex label to their products, verify that their name is on the Oeko-Text website.

Windows

Large windows have a huge visual impact in terms of aspect and amount of light that goes through them, but since windows can't normally be increased in size, they have to be planned from the build phase. Still, if you can, get windows as large as the exterior walls; note that in this case the heating bill will increase visibly.

A large window, especially a wall-sized one, give homes a better look, is visually pleasing because it doesn't feel like a wall. It allows more sunlight to come inside and be better distributed throughout the room, it shows a larger part of the outside world, therefore minimizing the wall effect and maximizing the depth effect and the dynamic look of the outside. No matter how well a wall is illuminated, it remains a wall which shows no depth, no landscape, no movement, no dynamics of lighting.

Fixed frame windows, unlike the ones that open, are much easier to clean, last more because their gaskets don't wear through use, don't have small distortions through which sound gets inside, don't require insect nets (so they let more light through), require thinner frames (so they let more light through).

Homes which have windows that are for the most part oriented toward north (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) are much darker than those oriented toward south, if nothing blocks the sunlight. The color of the indirect sunlight that enters a home looks colder for homes oriented toward north.

When the floor of your home has a light color, you should not have direct sunlight during the day because that would hurt your eyes. Because of this, it's important to have overhangs over the windows in order to block virtually all direct sunlight, even during the winter when the sun is lower in the sky (so a deeper overhang is required to block it).

You should have overhangs over the south facing windows (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed), so that the noon sunlight can't enter directly into the house. The shadow of the overhangs should be long enough to reach just below the windows, at noon, during summer, but should not be longer so as to allow the winter sun to directly enter the house. This way, the house won't overheat during the summer, and your eyes won't hurt due to too much light.

If you have windows that are hit by direct sunlight for hours daily, during summer, and you can't stand the heat, you can buy glass which is coated to reflect a high percentage of heat. Such windows are usually known as "tinted windows". Tinted windows are not good for indoor flowers.

Tinted windows have a mirror effect due to which people effectively can't see inside the home even when standing right next to the windows (on the outside).

Tinted windows theoretically block about 40% of the sunlight, 60% of the heat, and change the aspect of the sunlight as if it's going through sunglasses, giving it a bit of a green or blue undertone (which is why you should avoid tinted windows unless you absolutely need them). High performance tinted windows block 30% of the sunlight, 60% of the heat, and don't tint the sunlight.

The Low-E coating applied to some windows blocks a high amount of heat without changing the color of the sunlight, so it may be unnecessary to use tinted windows. For example, a window with triple panes and double Low-E theoretically blocks 30% of the sunlight, and 50% of the heat, while a window with double panes and single Low-E blocks 20% of the sunlight, and 40% of the heat.

Clear glass windows theoretically block about 20%...30% of the sunlight, and 20%...30% of the heat.

These theoretical measurements are done at a 0 angle of incidence (= perpendicular on the glass), but in reality most of the sunlight comes inside at a high angle of incidence (because the sun is mostly high above the horizon), so a lot more sunlight will be reflected by the glass. During a sunny day, most of the light comes from above the head (forming a very high angle of incidence), but during a cloudy day, at sunrise or at sunset, most of the sunlight gets inside at a low angle of incidence.

During the winter, the sun is lower in the sky than during the summer, so more direct sunlight can get through the windows and less light will be reflected by the glass (due to the lower angle of incidence). As an example, a room with windows oriented toward south (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) gets over two times more light during the winter than during the summer.

As an example, in practice, for triple pane, tinted windows, sunlight is reduced to 38% at midday of sunny days, and to 70% during partially cloudy days. For double pane, untinted windows, the sunlight was reduced to 60% at midday of sunny days, and to 70% in late afternoon; a window screen further reduced the light to 47%, and to 57%. All percentages are relative to the amount of light which was measured with the windows opened.

It's important to understand that tinted windows will protect only from direct sunlight, not from continuous summer heat. This is because the heat will eventually sip inside through the windows and walls, especially if the windows are kept open for airing. Keeping windows open increases the temperature inside. For example, in the summer, at a mid-latitude, opening the windows fully in a standard livingroom increased the temperature with 1 Celsius compared to having the windows opened just slightly for airing.

How well does tinting work? In a home oriented toward south (but without direct sunlight) you can have 0.5...1 Celsius less than in a home next door with standard (double pane, single Low-E) windows.

While blinds would be more flexible than a tinted window, using blinds would make it impossible to see outside, when used, while the tinted windows don't have this problem. It's hard to decide what to choose, but at least the blinds and the window glass are easy to change.

Windows with triple panes should be installed only in very cold locations, like those with a north / south latitude beyond 60 degrees. Otherwise, they block too much light, and distort the light's color too much.

Triple panes can dramatically reduce condensation on the windows, inside the home, compared to double panes.

Windows with triple panes (and double Low-E) do reduce the heating costs, however, the savings are not worth the loss of visible light. In my case, living at mid-latitudes, with standard-sized windows (= not wall-sized), going from double to triple panes would reduce heating costs with about 7%. What may be worth is the reduction of heat from the sun if in the summer you have windows that are directly hit by sunlight for hours daily, and the slower heat loss during winter which leads to better thermal comfort.

For a home in a location which experiences freezing temperatures and has large windows, the window frames should allow for both double and triple panes, even if initially only double panes is installed. The reason is that later it may be discovered that double panes makes the home too cold, or there may be too much condensation on the glass, so the double panes may have to be replaced with triple panes. If the frame doesn't have to be replaced, it's much easier to make the replacement, and it would be cheaper.

Rooms which have windows that are for the most part oriented toward south (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) have much higher temperature variation than those oriented toward north. This is because on the south side even if no direct sunlight hits the windows, the air is heated by the sun and the air then transfers the heat through the windows. At mid-latitudes, I've seen a difference of up to 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the summer.

Here are the most important factors that you should take into consideration when choosing the glass for the windows:

U factor: the lower this is, the less heat escapes through the window from inside toward outside.
R factor: the higher this is, the less heat escapes through the window from inside toward outside.
Visible Transmittance (VT): the higher this is, the more light goes through the window from outside toward inside.
Solar factor / Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC): the lower this is, the less heat goes through the window from outside toward inside. The visible transmittance decreases together with this value.
Color render index: the higher this is, the less changes occur in the color of the sunlight; a low color index represents a change of the aspect of the sunlight as if it's going through sunglasses, giving it a bit of a green or blue undertone. Tinted windows usually have a low color render index (88%...92%), while clear glass usually has a high one (96...99%).
Acoustic insulation: the higher this is, the less sound goes through the window from outside toward inside. The acoustic insulation of triple panes is perceptibly higher (but not dramatic) than that of double panes.

Regarding the acoustic insulation, if you have double or triple pane windows and you hear some weak sounds coming in from outside, like they are channeled through some narrow gap, that you feel should not be heard, it's most likely because the window's frame is curved and the rubber seal can't seal the frame when shut, or the rubber seal has degraded significantly. You effectively have holes in your windows through which sound comes in and heat goes out. This may be fixable using the adjustment options available on the frame.

Isn't there too much sunlight inside with wall-sized windows?

It's possible, but even if, naturally, you do get too much sunlight (which is only during some moments of the day, anyway), you can control the amount of light with window blinds or shades, or even with the glass of the windows.

For example, in a room which has white wall paint, dark white flooring, has a standard sized window, is oriented toward the sun / south (opposite in southern hemisphere), has no overhang over the window and has the window fully open (or closed, in the winter, when the sun is lower), you can get an unbearable 4'000 lux even a few meters away from the window; 500 lux is pretty much the maximum acceptable if you want to stay in the room for a long time. At thousands of lux, the light's diffusion on the white wall paint is stunning, but you have to squint in order to keep the light's intensity bearable even for just a few tens of seconds.

Too much indoor light diffusion can hurt the eyes. Light diffusion can be produced by clouds, sheer curtains on the windows, a too light / white floor, or small windows, and is visible as a reduced contrast in the air, with blacks turning mushy. The same is true for reflections caused by glossy surfaces, especially a glossy floor. Light diffusion for the eyes is like walking on ice.

Windows that are oriented toward east and west let in sunlight when the sun is very low relative to the horizon, which leads to sunlight going horizontally through the entire room / house, constantly hitting you in the eyes as you move around. You can put (opaque) curtains on those windows, but what's the point of having such windows if you cover them all the time? They cost more than walls to build, and a lot of heat is lost through them (so heating cost you more).

All the sunlight that you can see in the room comes through the window, window which is generally on a wall (not on the ceiling), with an area around 1...2 m2 (11..22 ft2).

The amount of sunlight which gets through the window depends on the sun's position / angle relative to the window, which may mean that at noon there is, inside the house, for example, twice the amount of light from morning. Not only does this mean that there are hourly variations, but there are also seasonal variations because of the sun's height above the horizon.. For example, the sun might not even shine directly through the window, which means that only sunlight diffused from the ground, other buildings and by the dust in the air will get in. An overhang over the window may further limit the amount of sunlight (and heat, at the same time).

The window's glass reflects and absorbs a part of the incoming light. The higher the angle of incidence is on the glass (= the higher above the horizon the sun is), the more light and heat will be reflected by the window.

Where I live, in the summer, the sun is too high in the sky to be able to directly shine in the house for long, with south-facing windows (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed). This depends on the latitude of the location: the closer you are to the equator, the higher the sun is at noon. East-facing and west-facing windows can get very good direct sunlight because the sun is much lower near sunrise and sunset.

Sheer / transparent curtains block about 30% of light.

White wall paint reflects about 90% of the light at every diffusion, and at each diffusion it remains less and less of it (you have to multiply the reflectiveness).

All the direct sunlight is concentrated near the window, on the floor. If you were outside the window, facing the sun, you would see the full direct sunlight. Inside, the direct sunlight that comes through the window is diffused multiple times on the floor, walls, ceiling and by the dust in the air, over the room's entire area. Since light is diffused in the entire room, you can't see everywhere the same intensity like in the place where the light directly hits the floor or wall.

You can measure the actual illumination with a luxmeter.

It's possible to make a basic test using a smartphone's light sensor. While it's not accurate enough to measure absolute values, it can be used for comparison. On a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, go to the phone pad and type *#0*# to open a test application; there, tap the "Sensor" button and then the "Light Sensor" button to open the light measurement app.

During some clear, sunny days, inside some rooms with white walls, I measured the following values at 2 meters (7 feet) away from the window:

1'000 lux. The window was toward the south / sun, open, in an empty room with white walls and floor, with no direct sunlight. With the window closed, there were only 300 lux. The window had triple panes, Low-E and was tinted.
2'100 lux. The window was toward the south / sun, open, in an empty room with white walls and floor, with no direct sunlight. With the window closed, there were only 1'100 lux. The window had double panes and single Low-E.
30 lux. The window was toward north / away from the sun, closed, in a room with dark floor and furniture, with an overhang over the window. The window had double panes and single Low-E.

With the sensor directly toward the sun, you can even measure over 150'000 lux.

More than 1'500 lux inside a room is immediately uncomfortable for the eyes. Try to keep the daily maximum illumination close to the windows under 500 lux.

The difference in the illumination between the south and north oriented rooms will not feel as dramatic as the numbers show because the eye adapts to the available illumination (with little quality degradation when the difference of illuminations is not large), and because looking toward the windows will make the eye notice the illumination which is outside not inside (and the light outside is the same no matter the orientation of the windows).

Open space

In modern design, there is usually no wall between the kitchen and the diningroom or livingroom.

This is done in order to maximize the space because, at least in apartments, the two rooms are rather small taken individually, but, when joined together, appear bigger because each room's furniture can extend into the other. As walls are added to create rooms, the resulted space looks exponentially worse; of course, there are functional (= non-visual) reasons why walls are added and rooms created.

Another reason for joining the rooms is to get multiple windows to light the joined room, especially when the windows are not wall sized. You might think that if all the windows were on the same wall it would be the same amount of light lighting the (same amount of) space, but the fact that the light is coming from multiple directions is a significant improvement because the distribution of light is much more important than the amount of light.

The newly created space and light will significantly affect your mood and lifestyle. Before joining the rooms, in the morning, you were perhaps going in the kitchen for a quick breakfast, wanting subconsciously to get out from the small cave-like room as quickly as possible. After creating one big room, you may find yourself slowing sipping your tea or coffee in the middle of a huge space, maybe lying on the sofa, while basking in the morning sun.

Light and space are the most important things in designing a home; although, the light distribution and the space layout are even more important. Because it's extremely expensive or nearly impossible to fix them afterwards, it's important to get these things right from the beginning.

For space it's important to have few larger rooms rather than many smaller rooms.

For light it's important to have large windows, multiple windows that are well distributed (like on opposite sides) on the walls of a room, and flexible artificial illumination (with orientable light sources).

A good reason to keep the livingroom and the kitchen separated is if someone sleeps regularly in the livingroom.

Think hard about removing the wall between the kitchen and the livingroom. It's true that the smell of cooked food would spread in the livingroom, and that you may hear the refrigerator and even the water heater (pump), but the result is worth it (at least for those who use little heat for cooking). Think hard to what you think the bigger problem is: the open space or the cooking?

Removing walls may require a permit from a government agency. Normally, only walls which don't provide support for the building (that is, are not load bearing) may be removed.

The kitchen look

Think hard about the look of your kitchen, especially if you join the kitchen and livingroom to create an open space.

Should it look like a kitchen, distinct from the livingroom? Do you want to create a separation based on functionality? Do you want to sit in the livingroom, turn your head toward the kitchen and say "well, there's the kitchen"?

The classic kitchen look is impersonal, separate from a living area, it's meant to tell people that they should cook there and then move on to other areas of the home. Do you want it to look like that?

If you want your kitchen to fit transparently in an open space and invite you to stay around, design your kitchen as you design your livingroom, avoiding to use distinct tile, avoiding a stone (imitating) countertop (especially those like speckled granite), avoiding stainless steel appliances.

Walk-in shower

A walk-in shower is a space, usually in the bathroom, where people can take showers, and where people can step in without having to raise their feet more than a few centimeters / inches.

To be comfortable, a walk-in shower should have at the very least 120 * 80 cm (48 * 32 in). If the shower has a separating glass (to keep the water in), this should be at least 90 cm long, but preferably at least 120 cm. If the shower has no separating glass, water will spread at least 150 cm away from the shower head, so it's best if the shower area has 180 cm from the wall.

Try to avoid having glass around the shower because it's a nightmare to clean. If you don't have a lot of space and you need to keep the water inside the shower area, use normal walls all around the shower, and keep only one side open (= no door).

To store the soap and shampoo, the shower should have a niche that's recessed in the wall, since it's easy to clean. It's best if it's recessed rather than protruding, since a protruding one is a very big risk if someone slips (and could potentially hit the corners with the head).

The floor of a walk-in shower has to be sloped toward the drain, in order to allow water to drain. For efficient drainage, the slope / pitch has to be 1%...2% (about 0.6...1.15 degrees), meaning a 1...2 cm vertical drop for each 1 m (0.125...0.25 in for each 1 ft) of shower floor. The slope has to be the same for the entire area that will receive water, like from the farthest wall of the shower to the drain.

If the shower is used by someone with limited mobility, the slope should be less than 1%.

Most drain manufacturers recommend a slope between 1% and 2%.

My shower has a 1.5% slope.

The floor of a small shower should be separated from the rest of the bathroom floor with a slat, to keep the water contained within. This could be made with tile or with a composite material, or even plastic.

Slip resistance

For safety reasons, floors which can get wet regularly or are sloped, like in a bathroom, must be matte.

If the tile has an antislip rating at least "B" (for the DIN 51097 wet bare foot test), it means that it has a grip that's excellent for people who may slip (like children or elderly); "A" is a lower rating, "C" is higher and is normally used in industrial environments.

Tile with a "B" or "C" antislip rating has much better antislip properties than tile without it, but its 3D surface structure makes it difficult to clean.

While the average acrylic bathtub meets the standard requirements for bathtubs, it is in fact very slippery (as you may have actually noticed in your own home) because it doesn't meet the standard requirements for antislip surfaces and is nowhere near the "A" antislip rating. You can find more details here.

Tile can be made more slip resistant with antislip treatment solutions. Search online shops (or the Internet) for "non slip floor treatment", "antislip floor treatment".

Some people say that mosaic tile is antisplip, no doubt because they think that since the grout has a rough surface, and it forms a dense mesh on the mosaic, then the floor becomes antisplip. This is not the case, and in fact the rounded edges of the mosaic's small tiles allow water to fill the grout line, which together with the roundness can form a ramp that can throw people off their feet. Add to that the fact that it's an absolute nightmare to clean that much grout.

For the floor of my shower, which is 90 cm (36 in) wide, I've used 90 * 45 cm (36 * 18 in) tile, which requires very little grout.

Thermal comfort

Thermal comfort is linked to temperature, but also to heat transfer, heat distribution, and air currents. Remember that heat moves from areas with higher temperatures toward areas with lower temperatures.

The temperature in a home is not stable, it's constantly modified, and can both increase and decrease rapidly in the same area, therefore influencing how fast the human body loses heat.

The same temperature, inside a home, is felt very differently in the summer and winter. In the summer, the air outside is warmer than that from inside, so the heat transfer is from outside toward inside (through windows and walls), and therefore the body loses heat slower.

In the winter, the air outside is colder than that from inside, so the heat transfer is from inside toward outside, and therefore the body loses heat faster. However, if a room gets direct sunlight, it will warm the room's air and the body will lose heat slower. This is why, for example, being outside in freezing temperatures can feel warm if your body is hit by direct sunlight, and once the sun is covered by clouds, you start feeling the cold.

Consider when in the winter the heating system is working and heats a room. At that moment you lose heat slowly, you can feel warmth coming toward you, embracing you. When the heating system is not working, the room is getting colder, you lose heat faster, so you feel the heat escaping from your body.

The purpose of heating a room is the comfort of people, but the way in which the heating is done results in different types of comfort. Aside from the heat's transfer speed, the heat's distribution is crucial for comfort.

When the heat's transfer speed is high, the heat tends to be better distributed in the room, that is, the temperature drop off, as you move away from the radiator, is flatter, which means that the temperature is more equally distributed in the room.

In the case of a classic wall radiator, the heat is concentrated mostly around the radiator, and drops fast as you move away from it. The reason for this is not the heat's transfer speed, but the small area of the radiator, which means that the radiator's temperature must be very high (compared to the temperature of the body).

Think how good it feels when, during a cold winter, you come home from outside and go straight to the radiator. But if you move away from it, you feel cold because the heat is mostly concentrated around the radiator.

To make things worse, heat moves quickly toward the ceiling rather than going horizontally throughout the room, and this results in the ceiling being much warmer than the floor.

You may have heard the advice to never put anything (like clothes) on a radiator. The reason for this advice is that the clothes would increase the thermal resistance, which in turn would amplify the temperature drop off with the distance, which in turn would decrease the thermal comfort for people.

In the case of a parquet floor with underfloor heating, the heat is mostly concentrated around the radiator (= floor) and drops fast along the height of the human body.

Stone transfers heat much faster than wood, so the temperature drop off is flatter for stone, and this means that there is a better thermal comfort along the height of the human body, for an underfloor heating system with a stone / ceramic floor.

Uneven heat distribution leads to less comfort which can lead to a desire to increase the temperature which would lead to greater energy costs.

High temperatures feel better when the air humidity is low rather than when the air humidity is high. Homes oriented toward north (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) have the highest humidity levels.

Heat sources which create hot air currents, like fan heaters, may dry your eyes, which in turn may cause headaches. This is because such air currents are much warmer and much more dynamic than the air which is heated with radiators. The larger the area of the radiator is, the better the comfort is; for underfloor heating, the area is the entire floor.

Underfloor heating system

Underfloor heating warms the entire floor with the same temperature at the same time. This, in turn, warms the air more homogenously, from the floor toward the ceiling, which means a lower and more stable loss of heat at body height, which means better thermal comfort.

In an experiment, the temperature at 250 cm (100 in) from the floor was the same as the one at 50 cm (20 in), so the heat distribution is exceptionally good.

With wall radiators instead of underfloor heating, the upper part of the room is warmer than the bottom with several Celsius because the warm air from the radiators immediately raises above the cold air, and stops at the ceiling, pushing slowly toward the floor.

Because of this, and because the feet are immediately warmed by the heat source, the thermostat can be set at a lower temperature (1...2 Celsius / 2...4 Fahrenheit) than should be set for a heating system based on wall radiators.

Tile is the best flooring choice if you have underfloor heating because it transmits heat much easier than parquet and carpet, and this allows the floor and the air to warm faster.

Underfloor heating can give some warmth to tile and parquet in the cold season. However, you will generally not feel warm to the bare feet because the thermostat would stop the heating before the floor is actually warm.

This is because the temperature of the floor can be maximum 27 Celsius for wood / laminate / vinyl and 29 Celsius for ceramic / stone (but is much lower most of the time), while the body's temperature is 37 Celsius, so a huge difference.

Worse, if the thermostat is in a room which receives direct sunlight, the sun will warm the room with several degrees above the temperature set on the thermostat, so the heating will be mostly off while direct sunlight gets inside.

Only where direct sunlight hits the floor, the floor feels warm.

Slippers make this issue irrelevant, especially if they have thick foam soles.

During a cold winter, your soles may freeze if the floor doesn't have underfloor heating, even if you wear slippers with thick foam soles, although this depends on the floor's insulation. This effect doesn't occur if the floor has underfloor heating because the floor's temperature is higher.

The difference in the comfort provided by the floor to the bare feet is given by the heat loss rate of each floor material, not by the temperature of the floor. The temperature of the floor is virtually the same for any type of floor material. Stone makes your body lose heat the fastest through the soles, while carpet makes your body lose heat the slowest.

For an underfloor heating system, if you want to use a gas heater then choose one with condensation (and run it at a low temperature, 45 Celsius). The efficiency of a simple gas heater can be around 90%, while for one with condensation it can be 96...98%; for an electrical heater, the efficiency is around 99%. Ignore any salesmen talk about efficiency over 100%; that's a "normed efficiency" which ignores the heat lost through the exhaust.

Since warm air raises at the top and cool air sinks at the bottom, an underfloor cooling system might not be very effective because it would cool the air at the bottom of a room where the air is the coldest, not at the top where the air is the hottest. The water temperature must be above 16 Celsius in order to avoid the appearance of condensation; also, the humidity in the house should be below 60% (and above 40%).

It's possible that the underfloor heating raises the dust from the floor into the air. If that happens, just vacuum the floor or wipe it with a wet mop, once a week.

Gas or electrical heater?

Let's clarify a critical thing which most people don't realize and salesmen exploit. The amount of energy required to heat a given space, in given conditions, is the same regardless of what fuel is used to produce that energy. The difference between the efficiencies of turning electricity and gas into heated water is less around 10% (in favor of electricity), when the gas heater is an instant one.

An underfloor heating system or a radiant panel system can give you better thermal comfort for the same consumed energy by heating more the lower parts of a room, where people are, rather than mostly the upper parts like radiators do. This means that you can lower the room temperature (and consume less energy) and get the same thermal comfort.

Where I live, electricity is 3 times more expensive than gas (per kWh), so the only sane source of energy is gas. In such a case, the heating cost would be huge compared to the rest of the electricity and gas costs.

If you get the gas price quoted per cubic meter, just divide that by 10 in order to get the approximate price per kWh. If you get the gas price quoted per cubic foot, multiply by 3.

You may see ads for electrical heaters, ads which say that these are more efficient than gas heaters. While this is true, the difference is simply insignificant when you consider a fuel cost difference of up to 300%.

Air as insulation

Air has a very low thermal conductivity and this makes it a very good thermal insulator. You may be confused how this is possible considering that outside you're surrounded by air, yet it's very cold in the winter. The reason is that the air must be trapped in order to provide insulation. The air outside is free flowing, so any heat you lose to it gets lost immediately with the air movement.

Examples for this are: windows with several panes, hollow bricks, aerated concrete, polystyrene and basaltic fiber. All these materials are very good insulators because they trap a lot of air (compared to materials which don't trap air, like concrete).

In fact, if you want windows that have better thermal insulation, look for those that are thicker. For example, triple pane windows has a thermal conductivity which is about half of the thermal conductivity of double pane windows because they amount of air is double. It's also possible to get windows with more space between the panes, therefore trapping more air, and therefore providing better thermal insulation.

Heat pumps

Heat pumps are of interest because they consume less energy to heat the same space, compare to a gas heater. But how much would they cost people who use them?

A heat pump's advantage depends on the cost of the electricity and of the heating which would be used instead (of the heat pump, like gas heating).

A heat pump needs to consume 1 kWh of electricity in order to produce about 4 kWh. If the alternative heating method is gas, if the price of electricity is 3 times higher than that of gas (per kWh, like it is where I live), then the heat pump heating would already cost the equivalent of 3 kWh in gas heating (to produce 4 kWh), which is a cost efficiency of 75%, which gives a cost saving of 25%, which is very far from the promoted cost saving of 70...80%. This means that a heat pump is cost effective only with electricity generated from renewable sources (like the sun).

If you factor in the cost of the ground drill, of the heat pump and of the solar panels (to produce "free" electricity), the total upfront cost is likely the same as the standard heating cost for 20 years, after which the equipment will have to be replaced.

If you have the money to spend on this kind of expensive equipment, it's more cost effective to spend it on (a lot) more thermal insulation (which also has a much longer lifetime and reliability).

Air conditioning

Air conditioning is a simple way to maintain thermal comfort during the summer. However, it consumes an amount of energy similar to heating during the winter, at least in temperate areas.

An air cooler consumes tens of times less energy, while a simple fan consumes a hundred times less energy, so they are much more efficient in terms of energy consumption, but they don't actually cool the air, they just change the way in which the air temperature feels. For some people, this change can be enough, but for some it isn't.

An air cooler is a fan which passes the air through a wet membrane. If the water tank has ice cubes in it, the water and the air will be cooler than the surrounding air, so the air temperature will be felt as if it's much lower than that of the surrounding air. A disadvantage of an air cooler is that it increases the air moisture, so they should be used only in dry areas.

The bigger the blades of a fan are, the more air it can move at the same noise level as a fan with smaller blades.

Is a fan enough to cool you during summer? It might be. Think at how you feel, during the summer, when you ride in a car / bus with the windows open. If that's enough to make the heat bearable then a fan would also be enough.

Lighting

Fake lighting

In virtually all the images with designed homes, the most important thing that most people are not aware of is the distribution of light, especially the direct sunlight. Specifically, this distribution is non-central and non-flat / non-homogenous, usually coming from multiple sources, from opposite sides.

These images lie to the viewer to the greatest possible extent by using the light from a very specific moment in the day (when it's the most flattering), by using photographic flashes which give a tremendous amount of light (compared to what the eye can see in a home), by using a greater exposure time than the human eye uses in similar conditions (this gathers a lot more light than what the eye can see in a home), by using various natural and artificial illumination techniques that people do not normally use in a home, by warming the colors, by intensifying the colors, by adding clarity (to remove the natural muddy look from environments that have no direct sunlight).

In fact, while many of those great magazine photos may use only natural light, they can be exposed for several seconds, while the evening shots are exposed for tens of seconds, which can end up being hundreds of times more light than the eye can see. More importantly, this compresses the entire image toward the bright side, pushing the shadows up, reducing them dramatically, fact which is visually appealing. The same is done in fashion photography, which is why the models look so good, virtually perfect.

All these tricks fool the viewer into thinking that those homes are much better illuminated and that this is how those homes would look like when seen in person. They would not. In fact, most would usually look bland or even bad, with dark areas and harsh shadows, cold, and only those with really good interior lighting design would look good enough (but still not like in the photos).

You can simulate the increased amount of light by passing a photograph (that you know is normal) through a photo editor, and increasing the exposure with 1...4 units (/ stops of light); each unit represents a doubling of the amount of light, so 4 units means 16 times more light.

In environment simulators it's even worse than in photos because they don't render shadows realistically (they are softer than in reality), so they set unrealistic expectations. Simulators add light where in reality there isn't any, like far away from windows, and smooth the light's distribution in order to showcase the sold products rather than show how they look in reality.

Light colors used on large surfaces reflect most of the light back in the room, therefore making the room brighter. A very dark floor dramatically reduces the amount available of light (by reducing the reflected light). However, if you don't have enough (sun)light, it just wouldn't be enough to change a dark floor with a light one. Still, the most important factor is for people to feel comfortable in their homes, not the amount of light, and for many people this means having a home which looks warm.

Play of light and dynamic range

With standard illumination (= low brightness, central lighting fixture) in a room, the eye feels as if there is some sort of fog in the room.

Lightbulbs with a narrow illumination angle (= the angle of the emitted cone of light), maximum 45 degrees but preferably below 30 degrees, positioned near walls and furniture create cones of dense light (on the walls and furniture).

Because the same amount of light is emitted in a smaller space (= in the cone of light coming from the lightbulb rather than all around it), the density of light of such lightbulbs is higher than the density of light of normal lightbulbs. You should be aware of this when you read in various places over the Internet that low voltage illumination systems give a higher quality light than line / high voltage illumination systems. The perceived quality of light has nothing to do with the low voltage, but with the higher density of light.

The eye likes to see a high density of light, but not an excessive one (that is, it likes to be stimulated, but not excessively), one where white is seen as being white (not light gray) and black is seen as being black (not dark gray). Generally, indoor lighting is perceived as uninteresting and having a muddy look because it doesn't provide a high density of light.

The eye also likes to see a high dynamic range, but not an excessive one. The dynamic range is, in basic terms, the ratio between the highest light intensity and the lowest light intensity visible at the same time.

You can see this when the sunlight coming through partially opened horizontal or vertical window shutters creates bands of light and shadows on walls and furniture.

The less pattern and 3D surface structure there is which are directly hit by sunlight, the more clear will be the dynamic play of light, and you may even be able to see on them the movement of the air heated by the sunlight.

Glossy and polished surfaces (like furniture and tile) provide a play of light due to the reflections they create. This acts like a sort of a dynamic pattern which changes depending on the light and objects from the room. However, just like glass, glossy and polished surfaces give a sense of cold, of a need to keep away from them.

The distribution of light is much more important than the amount of light, especially the direct sunlight. To understand this, consider that the amount of light reflected by a cloudy sky is only a bit smaller than the amount of light reflected by the clear sky opposite to the sun at noon; the whiter the clouds are, the more light they reflect. Everything looks dull under a cloudy sky because the color temperature is very high (= is blue), there is no source of intense light to capture the attention of the eye, there is no dynamic range, there is no play of light and shadow, that is, everything appears lit with the same amount of light. During a clear day, the light looks warmer, and the sun beams act as a focus point which captures the attention of the eye.

The amount of light is much less important than its distribution because the eye adapts to the available amount of light (with little perceived quality degradation when the difference of amounts is not extreme).

Artificial light can't easily reproduce the distribution and diffusion of the natural light which comes through the windows. Therefore, artificial light usually creates harsh shadows and specular highlights on some materials (even textiles). You can, however, orient the lightbulbs from a home toward the walls and furniture, to have the light diffused by them. In this case, the colors of the walls and furniture are very important, because they alter the color of the light which they reflect back in the room.

If you are interested to know why white paper diffuses light while a mirror reflects it, read this.

Color perception

The perceived color of an object is a composition of the color of the object, the color of the light (which illuminates the object), the intensity of the light, the weather, the geographical location, the season, the nearby objects which reflect the light, the structure of the object's surface, and the specifics of your eyes. You may be used to ignoring these differences, but the effect they have on how you perceive colors is huge.

Light has color. Sunlight contains contains all possible colors, to different degrees. Some light, when viewed directly by the eye, may be perceived achromatic because it contains the colors which put together with certain intensities stimulate the eye such that the brain considers it achromatic and of the highest lightness, that is, what people call white. But light itself is not achromatic, only its perception is. This happens because the eye has adapted to daylight along many millions of years, and it now considers daylight to be the neutral point.

When the same light is viewed indirectly, that is, when it's reflected by a surface, the color perceived by the eye depends on the light's color and on the surface's color (and also on the intensity of the light).

White looks achromatic / neutral outdoors because the eye has evolved (since the beginning of life on this planet) while being exposed to a specific type of sunlight, with a specific spectral power distribution. If you would take an object which appears white on Earth and go look at it on a planet whose sun has a different type of light, the object will no longer appear white. This is because color is perceived as a composition of the color of the object and the color of the light which illuminates it.

The correct expressions are "direct light is colored", "direct light is perceived achromatic", "achromatic surfaces are perceived white with various undertones". The expression "light is white" and "pure white" are examples where the simplification of language leads to confusion and lack of understanding.

The color of the light is given by its full spectral power distribution, or simplistically, by its color temperature.

The lower the color temperature is, like 2'000 kelvin (same as a candle), the more red the light's perceived color is. As the color temperature gets higher, at 2'700 kelvin (same as the incandescent lightbulbs), the undertone gets orange. Higher, at 4'000 kelvin, the undertone gets more balanced between red and blue, that is, looks more neutral. Finally, even higher, at 6'500 kelvin, the light's perceived color gets bluish.

On Earth, the sunlight's color temperature varies depending on the longitude, altitude, time of day and atmospheric conditions: 2'000 kelvin - sunrise and sunset, 3'500 kelvin – an hour after sunrise and before sunset, 4'300 kelvin - early morning and late afternoon, 5'400 kelvin - summer noon excluding sky at mid latitudes, 6'000 kelvin - overcast sky, 6'500 kelvin - summer noon including sky at mid latitudes, 7'100 kelvin - light summer shade, over 8'000 kelvin - average to heavy summer shade. The sunlight above the Earth's atmosphere has 5'900 kelvin. Moonlight has 4'100 kelvin.

White has shades, even though it's generally known to be colorless, and these are simplistically identified by a color temperature. There are cool / cold whites (with a blue undertone) and there are warm whites (with an orange or red undertone). The reason for this is that even presuming that you can see an ideal surface which reflects all light (= white), what you then perceive is the color of the light.

The light's color is perceived according to its color temperature, color rendering index and intensity, or more specifically, its absolute spectral power distribution. But the sunlight is hundreds and even thousands of times more intense than the light from lightbulbs, which means that the eye perceives more red outdoors (than it perceives for the same color temperature used in interior lighting).

The less intense the light is, the less red is perceived by the eye because its red and blue color receptors respond differently at different light intensities, which is known as the Purkinje effect. In interior lighting it's necessary to compensate this difference with a light that has a bit of red or orange in it, that is, which has a lower color temperature. For details, also see this.

This is the reason why the lightbulbs which are being sold as having a daylight color appear to have a bluish light, unlike sunlight during a sunny day which looks warm (= has an orange undertone). These lightbulbs don't actually produce a light with daylight characteristics, they don't mimic it.

A surface which emits light, like a lightbulb or a computer display, has an emissive color which can never be pure white because light always has color. At most, it can be a white with an undertone.

A surface which doesn't emit visible light has a reflective color, that is, it shows a color depending on the light that it reflects. A surface can fully reflect every single speck of light (/ wavelength) that it receives, and is considered to have a pure white color. However, in terms of perception, this surface is achromatic, not white. For the surface to be perceived, it has to reflect light, and since light has color (more specifically, it has a color temperature), the surface is perceived as having different shades of white, meaning, it can appear to have a cold or warm white undertone.

The color of the light which enters in a room is a combination of the color of the direct sunlight (which is orangish, has a low color temperature), the color of the sky (which is bluish, has a high color temperature), and the color of other elements from the environment (like vegetation).

The color temperature of the light in shaded areas is higher (= bluer) than the color temperature of the direct sunlight because the (color temperature of the) light scattered by the sky represents a much higher percentage from the total light (from the shaded areas), and the light scattered by the blue sky is quite bluish.

Outdoors, in full sunlight, an achromatic (/ pure white) paint appears perfectly neutral and looks amazing (with its blinding brightness). However, indoors, in shaded areas, since the indirect light's color temperature is higher (= bluer), the same paint appears bluish (and therefore cold).

A room with windows oriented toward north looks colder than a room with windows oriented toward south; for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed. Consider a house with windows oriented toward south. The south wall of the house receives the maximum amount of sunlight because there is nothing between the sun and the wall. Even when no direct sunlight goes through the windows, there still is a lot of sunlight reflected by the ground; we consider that the color of the ground is not cold, but brownish. In this case, the sunlight scattered by the sky matters less from the total amount of light which gets through the windows, so there is little blue in this light, meaning, this light is warm.

Now consider the north wall of the house. This receives the minimum amount of sunlight because the house itself blocks the sunlight from hitting the ground in front of that wall. Some sunlight is reflected in the house by the ground near the house's north wall, but most of the light which comes through the north windows is sunlight which is scattered by the sky, so there is a lot of blue in this light, meaning, this light is cold.

If (a lot of) direct sunlight illuminates the room, the color of the sunlight has preponderance over the color of the sky, so the room appears warm and cozy. If no direct sunlight illuminates the room, the color of the sky has preponderance over the color of the sunlight, so the room appears cold and distant. This is why designers recommend to use warmer colors in rooms with windows oriented toward north (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed).

Some people don't know the physical reason for this, so they recommend to use cold colors in rooms with windows oriented toward south. This, however, is incorrect because a room appears to have a warm look only if direct sunlight illuminates it. The problem is that even rooms with windows oriented toward south might not get enough direct sunlight to make the atmosphere feel warm.

For people who like a warm look for their home, shades of warm white or other warm colors will look better than cold colors.

Even if a room does get direct sunlight, it only gets it for a short period of interval, interval which depends on the time of the day, on the latitude and altitude of the location, on the weather, and on the season, that is, it depends on all the factors which influence the position of the sun relative to the room's windows. For example, the sun gets closer to the horizon the closer you get to the Earth's poles, or the closer the middle of the winter is, in which cases more and more direct sunlight can get into the rooms oriented toward south. Overhangs over windows may block a lot of direct sunlight.

A cold white color can be compensated by using lighting with a low color temperature (which has an orange undertone), but, if it's possible, it's better to replace it with shades of warm white.

Color perception is dramatically affected by the surrounding colors from your field of view. This is because the adaptation of the eye occurs at its periphery (not at the center, as you might expect). This is why watching TV in a dark room leads to eye exhaustion: the periphery of the eyes sees dark and adapts to it making the eyes more sensitive, while the center is now too sensitive for all the light coming from the TV. The same thing happens if you read books with light over the book, when in a dark room.

A higher saturation increase the perceived lightness of a color because the eye is stimulated more.

In order to have a good understanding of the color of a small area, look at the area with your palms around your eyes in a way which creates a tunnel for your vision, blocking your peripheral vision, and try to defocus your view to be a bit in front of the area.

If the eye sees a single very light, almost neutral color in its entire field of view, it adapts to consider that color to be white.

When you choose the colors for your home (or for individual rooms), it's best too see how much direct sunlight it gets. As a general rule, choose warm colors for the rooms with windows oriented toward north. That's it! There is no complement like: choose cold colors for the rooms with windows oriented toward south. If anything, the colors for the rooms with windows oriented toward north should be warmer than the colors for the rooms with windows oriented toward south.

The color on well lit areas of the walls will be washed out by the light, making the saturation appear lower than in the corners and edges, making the paint look virtually achromatic. In the corners and around the edges of the walls, especially near the ceiling, where there is usually less light than near the floor, there will be a bit more saturation.

In a very low lit room, the eye perceives objects as being darker than in a well lit room, but it also perceives colors less saturated, that is, the colors appear shifted toward gray.

To look good, all colors need light, in particular, warm sunlight. However, darker warm colors maintain their warmth better as it gets darker outside.

Colors are viewed at their best when a lot of (sun)light illuminates the room. Think at how the (sand on a) beach looks like during a bright day - stimulating / awesome, and how it looks during a cloudy day - dull. The difference is not given by the weather, but by the light's distribution and color temperature, both changed by the clouds.

The dust which gathers over the years on the wall paint also makes white turn slightly gray.

Before looking cold, colors have more leeway the more saturated they are compared to white / gray.

Because of all these things, choosing colors is a compromise between how they look during bright days, cloudy days and evenings.

The more saturated a color is, the more tolerant it is to other colors which reflect in it and taint it. That's why white gets easily tainted by green vegetation. A brown color, for example, would require a lot more green to be reflected on it in order to look greenish. This is why people like dark and intense colors, especially in dark places like bars and restaurants. During cloudy days, or when there is little sunlight in the home, such colors aren't (visibly) affected by the blue-gray undertone that the sunlight with a high color temperature casts around. Such colors are comfort colors, colors for bleak light. The reality is that colors are not the problem, the light is, but since you can't control natural light yet you can control color, it's best to use color to get the look that you need.

You can see here how the environment looks like when lit with light of various color temperatures.

The Kruithof curve correlates color temperature and light intensity, from a visually pleasing point of view.

For more details, see white balance, color vision, D65.

Light diffusion

Matte, light colored surfaces diffusely reflect light in all directions, creating a room which looks lit from everywhere, and a misty atmosphere, which for some people means too little contrast. Glossy surfaces exhibit some specular reflection.

Too much indoor light diffusion can hurt the eyes. Light diffusion can be produced by clouds, sheer curtains on the windows or a too light / white floor, and is visible as a reduced contrast in the air, with blacks turning mushy. The same is true for reflections caused by glossy surfaces, especially a glossy floor.

Lighting fixtures

The lighting for a home should be done with LED lightbulbs with a color temperature of 2'700...2'800 kelvin and a CRI of at least 80; the CRI approximates the quality of the emitted light, 100 being maximum. If you like a more neutral / cooler light, you can go up to 3'000 kelvin. If you like a cool / bluish light, you can go up to 4'000 kelvin. The color temperature in kelvin, the intensity in lumens and the CRI should be written on the lightbulb boxes.

The lower the CRI is, the more tinted the emitted light will be, and it will, for example, create a greenish atmosphere. Normal household lightbulbs have a CRI around 80. Quality lightbulbs have at least 90.

Most lightbulbs have a color temperature of either below 3'000 or above 4'000 kelvin, but if you look at the Kruithof curve, for the recommended interior lighting around 100...200 lux, the most pleasing color temperature is about 2'700...3'000 kelvin. Halogen lightbulbs usually have 3'200 kelvin and CRI 100, but they have a very intense light (which is why 3'200 kelvin doesn't look cold) which works for showrooms, not homes.

A classical (= incandescent) lightbulb of 100 watts has about 1'500 lumens. Ignore what the lightbulb manufacturers write on the boxes of LED lightbulbs as equivalent in watts; by their equivalence, a 100 watts incandescent lightbulb emits under 1'000 lumens, which is not real.

It's important to be consistent with the color temperature of the lightbulbs in your home, so that your vision would not be forced to adjust back and forth between the different colors of light.

The quality of the light of LED lightbulbs varies enormously. Cheap, low quality ones usually have a slightly greenish color cast.

The most flexible solution for a modern home is to use spotbars which have several orientable lightbulbs on them. Lightbulbs with a narrow angle of illumination, 40...45 degrees, are preferable because their light can clearly sculpt forms of light and shadow on surfaces, due to the higher density of light in their small cone of light. To actually form light cones on walls, the lightbulbs must have an angle of illumination of less than 25 degrees.

Pay attention to the base / mount of the spotbars because a lot of spotbars have a great design but their base / mount looks horrid.

The most flexible solution is to use tracklights. However, this is a very expensive solution, and is not very good for residential use due to how the tracks divide the ceiling.

Recessed (= in ceiling) spotlights give the ceiling a very clean look, which is very useful when there are a lot of light sources, and can be used to create subtle shapes on the ceiling. They can also have orientable lightbulbs.

For flexible illumination which includes a low, a medium and a high level of intensity, mount wall sconces and ceiling lighting fixtures, and use multiple power circuits that are controlled by separate light switches / buttons. If you later decide to have a single switch, it can be done, but you can't later split a single circuit in several ones.

Use a separate power circuit for the sconces. For large rooms, use two power circuits for the ceiling fixtures. If you think that the light coming from the wall sconces is not enough, mount some ceiling fixtures near the walls and over specific areas (like a table / desk). The ceiling lightbulbs for each power circuit should be distributed throughout the room in order to provide a good light distribution.

Wall sconces can create the best cones of light on the walls where they are mounted on, especially those with light that exits through both the top and bottom. You could even pair sconces next to one another, but using more than two looks too busy, although you could have three where the side ones have a lower light intensity (creating smaller cones).

Different types of wall sconces can emit light downward, upward, or both ways (creating double light cones). Each type can create interesting lighting effects. Wall sconces that emit light downward should be mounted at about 150...180 cm (60...72 in) from the floor.

For a comfortable low light atmosphere, use wall sconces and table lamps, that is, use lighting fixtures that are in the lower part of the room because that is the most used and needs to be lit, and also so that the light remains concentrated in a few spots rather than being equally diffused throughout the room. The lightbulbs should have a color temperature between 2'000...2'700 kelvin, preferably a variable color temperature between these values (like smart lightbulbs have).

Never use (just) a central lighting fixture. If you do use a central fixture, keep its intensity relatively low compared to all the rest.

Don't use a lighting fixture above the bathroom mirror because it creates very harsh shadows below your eyes and nose, making your face look tired or like you're wearing creepy makeup. Fixtures around the mirror, especially on the sides, are fine so long as you're not bothered by the low hanging lightbulbs which emit light directly in your eyes.

Fixed light sources with a wide illumination angle, which illuminate the floor, give a bland light to a room, so prefer orientable light sources.

Install the orientable lights at about 30...60 cm (12...24 in) from walls, furniture, curtains and artworks. Recessed spotlights look much better than spotbars when positioned close to walls, even closer than 30 cm.

Put lights near windows in order to illuminate the curtains; make sure to take the depth of the curtains into account.

Distributing lightbulbs with a large angle of illumination equally on the ceiling creates a flat light which is less pleasing than what you can get from lightbulbs that have a very narrow illumination angle, especially if they are close to the wall.

Use lightbulbs with a narrow illumination angle, preferably below 30 degrees, to be able to create cones of dense light. Light has a density which is calculated by dividing the number of emitted lumens to the angle of illumination. The higher the density is, the clearer the air and the objects in its path look. If the density is low, the air and objects look murky, like they are in a fog. If the illumination angle is too small, it's not good for general illumination because the light is too concentrated in a small area, or it requires a lot of such lightbulbs.

Use lighting fixtures that allow you to replace the lightbulbs. GU10 lightbulbs usually have fewer lumens than E27 lightbulbs, so you'll have to buy more (if you are used with E27 lightbulbs).

The longer a lighting fixture is, the more likely it is that it will encounter an uneven ceiling, so after installation a large space would remain between the ceiling and one of the long ends. Before you buy long lighting fixture, check the ceiling with a long level.

Because it's difficult to find lightbulbs with the color temperature that you desire, you can mix lightbulbs that have 2'700 kelvin with lightbulbs that have 3'000 or 4'000 kelvin, until you obtain the desired effect. The problem is that this mixed light isn't consistent, that is, there will be areas where the low color temperature will be mostly visible, and there will be areas where the high color temperature will be mostly visible, although I've tried this and it can even look interesting due to the variety; if the lightbulbs point in the same direction, the problem disappears.

If the wall paint is a light color, use small, white lighting fixtures with white lightbulbs in order to make the illumination system unobtrusive and give the room a clean look.

Light intensity

The light intensity should be about 200 lux (for floor area), which means 200 lumens per square meter, but you can go up to 400 (if you have multiple power circuits, a dimmer or smart lightbulbs). The lightbulbs should be labeled 2'700...2'800 kelvin.

For a comfortable night, the illumination should be 50...100 lux; the lightbulbs should be rated at 2'000...2'700 kelvin. It would be best if this kind of illumination were achieved with wall sconces and lamps, not ceiling lighting fixtures, so that the light remains concentrated in a few spots rather than being equally diffused throughout the room.

The intensity for a bathroom should be about 300...400 lux.

The light distribution of the lightbulbs with a wide angle of illumination, for the same total lumen output, is perceived very differently than the light distribution of the lightbulbs with a narrow angle of illumination, so don't compare their quality. With a narrow angle of illumination, the light is concentrated in smaller areas.

However, there is no need to have this amount of light for every square meter of your home, just for the areas that need to be well lit. A very dark floor dramatically reduces the amount available of light (by reducing the reflected light).

Multiply the lumens per square meter with the area of a room (and divide by 10 if the area is in square feet) in order to see how much light (in lumens) you need for the room, and ultimately how many lightbulbs you need.

For example, for a room with an area of 20 square meters (220 square foot), you need maximum 20 * 200 = 4'000 lumens. Check the specifications of the lightbulbs to see how many lumens they emit. If a lightbulb emits 400 lumens, you need 4'000 / 400 = 10 lightbulbs.

Each lightbulb should have about 200...400 lumens, so that you need many lightbulbs that you can distribute around the room. Generally, such an LED lightbulb consumes less than 5 W.

If your ceiling is much higher than the standard height (of about 250 centimeters, 100 inches), and if most lighting fixtures are on the ceiling, you may have to increase the amount of light. Test with how much, don't do it proportionally, because the light's distribution in the room is much more important than the amount of light. However, the look of the light may be murky because the density of the light decreases with the square of the ceiling's height (relative to the standard ceiling height).

A nightstand lamp should have a lightbulb with 600...800 lumens. It's best that a nightstand lamp illuminates upwards and around, not just downwards. Despite this high number of lumens, the room will look much darker than if the lightbulbs were on the ceiling, because the light doesn't spread out that much in the room.

Dimmers

Using a dimmer is a great way to make your lighting more flexible by allowing you to lower the intensity of the light to create mood lighting. It also spares you of the trouble of having several switches which operate different power circuits that switch on / off different lighting fixtures.

A dimmer is a special kind of light switch which can change the voltage that the lighting fixtures get from the power line. This in turn changes the intensity of the light emitted by the lightbulbs.

A dimmer can have a normal switch right next to the dimming switch, or can have just the dimming switch.

The dimming switch can be a wheel, a lever or a dual button. Once turned, moved or pressed it changes the voltage up or down.

The advantage of having a normal switch together with the dimming switch is that you can use the normal switch when you simply want to illuminate the room with the full light intensity of light, and use the dimming switch only when you need to lower the intensity of the light to create mood. If, for example, the dimmer would be just a wheel, you would have to fully rotate the wheel every time when you want to just "turn on / off the lights".

When using a dimmer, it's critical that all the lighting fixtures (including the lightbulbs) which are linked to the power circuit operated by the dimmer are compatible with dimming.

Make sure the dimmer works with your type of lightbulbs (for example LEDs).

Make sure that the total power (per circuit) supported by the dimmer is not exceeded by the total power of the lightbulbs that are on the power circuit that's controlled by the dimmer. For example, if the dimmer's total power is 60 W (75 VA), and a lightbulb's power is 5 W, you can have maximum 12 lightbulbs on that circuit. If a dimmer is rated VA instead of W, for LEDs, then multiply the VA value with 0.8 to get the W value.

There may be a maximum number of lightbulbs that a dimmer could work with. Most LED dimmers can work with maximum 10 lightbulbs.

Smart lightbulbs

For better light control, you can use smart lightbulbs that are remotely controlled, are dimmable (to reduce their luminosity), can vary their color temperature (to show warmer or cooler shades of white), and can even show non-white colors (commonly known as "RGB" lightbulbs).

If, due to costs, you have to choose between RGB lightbulbs and variable warm-white lightbulbs, choose the variable warm-white lightbulbs. RGB color has limited use, but a color temperature that can vary between 2'000...3'000 kelvin is very good for a comfortable low light atmosphere.

Make sure you understand the features of such systems, as their prices vary with the features. Also make sure that you buy lightbulbs with the screw that the lighting fixture requires.

Smart lightbulbs are likely to have a lumen rating for all the installed LEDs, but the LEDs for white may have only half of that rating.

An example of such a system is Philips Hue. While they are all remotely controlled and dimmable, the other features vary with price. They also have a remote control which allows you to avoid having to use their bridge and a smartphone, but this can only control 10 lightbulbs, and it also lacks the control capabilities that the bridge has. The remote control is not infrared, so it doesn't need a direct line of sight.

Eglo Connect is a system similar to Philips Hue, but with a few advantages: is much cheaper, doesn't require a bridge (= simpler and cheaper), has a remote that can control the color (with low precision, but it's there), a lightbulb remembers its last settings when it's turned off and on from a hardswitch (while a Philips Hue lightbulb defaults to white, but their app has a setting to change this). The disadvantages are: the lowest color temperature is 2'700 kelvin (while Philips Hue can go down to 2'000 kelvin), the yellow color has a green tint.

You can also find smart lightbulbs controlled with an infrared remote control, which are much cheaper and secure (since they don't require a network connection or a smartphone), but their functionality is more limited.

It's recommended to turn the lightbulbs on and off from a hardswitch. Otherwise, they remain constantly powered (even though they don't produce light), so their lifetime is reduced.

Tracklights

Tracklights may give the ceiling a (too) busy look, and a more industrial than elegant feel, especially if the tracks are near the walls. In a home, tracks divide the ceiling in a way which lacks elegance.

Tracklights with many lightbulbs of a low brightness (rather than few lightbulbs of a high brightness) allow you to orient the lightbulbs in many directions, but also to add or remove lightbulbs in order to increase or decrease a room's brightness (and even move them from room to room).

Multiple tracklights can be joined (with special connectors) to form a single, longer tracklight. On some tracklights, the lightbulbs can be switched on / off from several power circuits, circuits which can be switched on / off independently; make sure to check the tracklight specifications for this option.

Each lightbulb can be assigned to be switched on / off from one of the power circuits, by turning a dial on the lightbulb's mount, which makes it possible to form several groups of lightbulbs which can be switched on / off independently. The lightbulbs from a group don't have to be in line (= one after another), they can be mixed with the lightbulbs from the other groups. This dramatically reduces the need to have dimming, since there can be several levels of intensity of light which is well distributed in space. You can find more details here.

A tracklight can be cut to a shorter length, to fit in any place you need it.

Cleaning

Dust

The dust in a home is made of textile fiber / lint (from clothes, bed linen, curtains, bed and sofa covers), hair, fur (from pets), soil particles (from outside), soot and pollen; dead skin is a small component.

Soft materials, particularly soft cotton, are likely to create a lot of fiber dust.

Most dust is made from textile fiber which drops when you move around textiles that haven't been washed a few times. Some textiles are so bad that if you were to wet wipe the floor every day with a napkin, the napkin would get covered with fiber of the color of the textiles; this is especially true for large, soft textiles that are moved often, like bed linen.

I've had bed linen which was making in a day more fiber dust than normal bed linen makes in a month. Similar with clothing.

Electrostatic mops

If you have hardfloors and no rugs, the fastest (and very efficient) way to dry-clean dust / lint / hair is with electrostatic napkins. For the floor, there are mops with replaceable electrostatic napkins, while for furniture there are electrostatic wipers. On Amazon, search for "electrostatic mop" and "electrostatic wiper"; look at "Swiffer".

After swiping the floor with an electrostatic mop and gathering a large amount of dust, washing the floor with a wet mop produces very little dust, so the electrostatic mop is very efficient.

When an electrostatic napkin gets loaded with dust, it can no longer trap dust, so you should replace it.

Electrostatic is actually a misnomer because the napkins aren't electrostatic. In reality, the structure of the napkin allows it to act like thousands of microscopic hooks that catch on to dust.

To remove lint off textiles, use a sticky roller. You'll be amazed how much lint is removed this way from what appears to be clean fabric.

Steam cleaners

Professional steam cleaners are able to dislodge grit from ceramic, grout, laminate and wood. Steam mops are not powerful enough.

A steam cleaner only needs water, no cleaning solutions, yet it still disinfects the cleaned surfaces because of the high temperature of the steam. This means that it's much healthier since there is no detergent to emit toxic fumes.

It's recommended to use distilled water, else the minerals from the water could clog the steamer's pipes, just like it happens in washing machines. However, the effort to find it, and the cost of distilled water might be too much to be worth it.

A steam cleaner can only clean the surface of grout, not deep inside it.

Some steam cleaners can clean various types of surfaces (including glass), both horizontal (like floors) and vertical (like windows).

Be careful! Steam is very hot since it's basically boiling water, heated over 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit).

You need good ventilation so that the steam can get out.

Before using a steam cleaner on a floor, clean the floor the classic way, else the steam would just move the dirt around the floor.

Here and here are examples of cleaning with a steam mop.

Wall-hung decorations

If you want to decorate a room and make it feel livelier, you can hang on walls any of the following:

Outline prints as: direct printing on the front of a slab of transparent acrylic glass, and volumetric / 3D text.
Printed images.

Outline prints can fill a wall space without making it fill busy, and without harshly delineating a zone (like image edges do). You can get ideas from the signage industry; to build the pieces, look for companies that work in this industry.

Outline printing on acryl

Direct printing, of text and drawings, on the front of a slab of transparent acrylic glass (plexiglas) provides a very airy feel to a room (because of the transparency of the print support).

Depending on how airy or busy you want this to look, change the color of the outline to be either close to that of the wall behind, or strongly contrast with it.

If you're a sci-fi or fantasy art fan, you can create volumetric character, gear and spaceship cutouts. If you want to stylize the art, in an image editor apply the following effects on an image you like: pencil sketch, outline, or edge detection + invert colors + pencil sketch. Take take to a graphic designer to create a stylized version which can be milled into polystyrene, foamboard or MDF and then painted.

If you want to use text, see if you like any of these quotes.

Volumetric / 3D text

Volumetric / 3D text, graphics included, provides a very airy feel to a room because it has no opaque support, and it's either glued to the wall or hung on thin metal slats.

Volumetric letters can be made from various materials, like: wood, MDF, (extruded) polystyrene, plastic, foamboard, acrylic glass (plexiglas), metal (aluminum, brass). They can have virtually any shape, size, thickness and color, and they can be lit with LEDs or neon gas.

Depending on how airy or busy you want this to look, change the color of the outline to be either close to that of the wall behind, or strongly contrast with it.

Such text will gather dust at the top. If the text is glued on the wall, dust will create a shape around it, and any attempt to clean it could easily soil the wall paint.

If you want to use text, see if you like any of these quotes. My favorite quotes are:

One day you stop philosophizing and start building
Taking you where dreams are made of stars
Upon a frozen sea of stars, a ship is sailing in eternity

Printed images

You can print images on foamboard (/ forex, a kind of plastic), acrylic glass (plexiglas), metal (aluminum), canvas, paper, and wood.

Online printing services provide good quality and let you pick any size for the foamboard prints, up to about 150 * 100 cm (60 * 40 in). For larger formats (like 300 * 100) check with local companies that provide prints for the advertising industry.

For images printed on foamboard, they have a hanging system with round screwing clamps which are mounted around the top and bottom edges of the foamboard panel. This system looks very good, doesn't require holes in the image, and allows you to easily replace the image (even with images of different widths). This system also allows you to mount it at various distances from the left and right edges of the foamboard panel, should you need it in order to avoid drilling the screw holes in cables and pipes that are in the wall. A visual advantage of the system is that, because it keeps the image well separated from the wall, it gives the image some volume on the wall, which works very well in the case of edge-to-edge printed images.

I've printed the same image on various materials (except paper). For me, foamboard shows the best quality, by far; while foamboard doesn't have the best durability, that's not a concern I have.

Printing images on foamboard provides exceptional quality, moisture resistance, and light and thin prints (which allows you to store many prints, so that you can change the displayed ones from time to time).

While some people may prefer canvas prints because of the 3D surface structure of the canvas, the structure is not large enough to matter, and is not visible from over 1 meter (= 3...4 feet) away. However, canvas is much cheaper than foamboard.

If you want your home to have a modern look, the images should not have an empty (white or black) border around the image itself, and should not have a frame. However, there should be a few centimeters between the wall and the image, space which gives volume to that area.

While there are other surfaces on which images can be glued or printed, like doors and desks, doing this will make the room look busy, and changing them later is costly or very difficult.

How large should the printed image be?

A wall-hung image should not dwarf its surroundings, in particular what's under it. There should be a scale match between the size of the image and the size of wall or object right next to it. The image's size can dwarf its surroundings if the image details are few, and its colors are similar to those from its surroundings.

For example, above a double bed with nightstands (which can make the width exceed 300 cm / 120 in), the image's size should be 90 * 60 cm (36 * 24 in). A bigger size would make the bed appear too small, and the details and colors of the photo would be too visible.

If you know how many pixels the digital image has in width, divide that by 4 to get the maximum width of the print in milliliters (or divide by 100 to get the maximum width of the print in inches).

What images to choose

Be very careful what images you choose to hang on walls. They have to fit in the room's design style, so the colors, the scale and amount of the details must fit with the design style. This means that when you look at the images on the computer, you have to consider them in the context of the room, regardless of how nice they look separately. For this, use 3D simulations.

Wall-hung images are meant to act as accent elements, so look for images that are light, colorful and have many small details. While light and colors make pretty snapshots, the images should display a geometric esthetics that makes them works of art.

Dull colored images make a room look airy, while lots of strong colors make a room look busier and impactful. Since the images are meant to be accent elements that fill an existing airy space, it might look like you should go for lots of strong colors. However, little color is actually needed to warm a space, so there is no need to have too much color; or, if you choose lots of strong colors, you might want to reduce the number of details.

It's extremely difficult to find images that contain all the elements that make them a perfect fit for your home, so you will have to compromise on some criteria.

Examples

To see or create images that you can print and hang on walls, visit online AI art generators and image printing services. See the Links section for links to such services.

The advantage of creating images with an AI art generator is that you can easily match the style and colors to match with your home.

Save the images you like; you might want to categorize the images in subfolders.

Use a photo editing software to process the images and see if you can achieve the look that you want.

Paintings can be processed with Paint.Net's "Surface blur" effect; the larger the resolution of an image is, the more you have to increase the parameters. This effect will remove the coarseness of brush strokes from a painting, but without removing clarity, creating a soft yet crisp result. This effect is particularly good for watercolor paintings. Artistic images can also benefit because this effect stylizes them.

Printed furniture

It's possible to print images on furniture, either on a small or large scale. However, doing this would most likely lead to very expensive furniture with a very busy pattern, this presuming that you can even find an image which has a quality that's high enough for the large size of a furniture panel.

For decorative purposes, you should keep the furniture pattern simple and instead use:

Images hung on walls.
Veneered decorative panels.
Accent walls created with paint, stone or wood.
Decorative panels with structured surfaces.

Audio and video

See this for details.

Home scenting

What fragrance should you use to scent your home? There are home scenting fragrances, body fragrances, aftershaves and anything similar.

Each type of fragrance has disadvantages. Home scenting fragrances are mostly sweet or have a generic floral scent. Home scenting and body fragrances are very intense and persistent. Aftershaves have man-only scents and may be difficult to move into spray bottles or bowls because the opening of a bottle of aftershave might not have a removable undercap, or it might be too small to allow the liquid to be poured (it will only drip).

If you have a sensitive sense of smell, avoid putting the fragrance into a bottle or bowl from which it's constantly released, so avoid fragrance dispensers (especially the electrical ones). It's better to put a fragrance into a spray bottle and spray it occasionally. Be careful if you do this with an intense fragrance: spray very little of it, just one fizz here and there; alternatively, mix the fragrance with water in order to dilute it.

Before you spray the fragrance on any surface, you should test it on a small area because the component oils may stain that surface.

Spray the fragrance on textiles (like curtains, sofas, chairs) and on artificial flowers, from up close (less than 10 cm / 4 in). These will release scents for a long time, but this is a problem if you then realize that you don't like the scent, so first make you sure you like it.

If you prefer a strong and continuous scent, put the fragrance in a bottle or bowl and don't cover the opening; to increase the intensity of the scent, put reed straws in it. You can decrease / increase the amount of diffused fragrance by decreasing / increasing the number of straws from the bottle / bowl, or the diameter of the opening of the bowl. The higher the fragrance evaporation rate is, the more intense the scent will be in the room.

You can also decrease the amount of diffused fragrance by mixing the fragrance with water. The more water, the less intense the smell becomes.

The evaporation rate of some types of fragrances can be slow. If you put these in a bowl, the diameter of its opening should be about 10 cm (4 in). Placing the bowl at a height above 150 cm (60 in) means that the cloud of evaporated fragrance is as close as possible to your nose.

The evaporation rate of a fragrance can be about 100 ml per month, which can become quite expensive.

Keep in mind that you should scent your home, not make it stink. For me, the scent of home fragrances is too intense even in the original bottle, open, with no reed straws in it.

Electrical dispensers may cause respiratory irritation, and even headaches, because they dispense too much fragrance at once, while straws diffuse much less but continuously.

Candles may emit toxic fumes, so they should be used only for short times.

A "spicy" fragrance has an astringent / aseptic smell like the dentist's office (where clove extract is used). Lavender smells a bit like mold. Argan smells a bit spicy, but there are some products which prominently say that they contain argan oil, yet they smell sweet. Tiare flower smells like exotic heaven; to me, tiare fragrance smells a bit like sour cherry confiture when it's being made, so like sour cherry and sugar (confiture has a lot more sugar than standard jam).

Security

An indoor alarm system should have as many of the following features as possible: videocamera, night vision, microphone, battery (to prevent thieves from cutting the power), 4G (to prevent thieves from cutting the Internet connection), motion and sound detection and notification (through SMS, email), mobility (so that you can mount it only when needed, like when you are away from home), power cable (to avoid changing batteries too often).

A smartphone with an alarm software has all these features, except night vision.

You can also use a GSM alarm system. Such a system can send SMSs and even call you if they detect motion or a sensor trigger. You can also call the alarm to hear what happens in your home.

Entrance doors

If you want to buy a metallic door, make sure that the door has the security classification 3; 4 is also possible for homes, but it's most likely unnecessary. Doors with such a security classification are usually called security / armored doors.

Installing an armored door at a location where the thieves could (easily) enter through a window is obviously pointless.

An entrance door should have a sound insulation rating of at least 32 decibels. A high quality door would have at least 42 decibels; such a door is a good choice if it opens into the livingroom.

High quality cylinders (the place where the key goes into) are Evva MCS, Abloy Protec, Ikon W10. What you choose depends on what you need.

If you need to be as sure as possible that nobody gets inside your home without your knowledge, Evva MCS is the most secure choice. There are no known public cases of people being able to lockpick such a cylinder. The keys use magnets, so they can be copied only with very specialized equipment, and they have no grooves to clone (even if the thief has physical access to the key). By default, this cylinder can be snapped (but a separate snap protection module is available), so it's not the best solution to protect against thieves who don't care if you know that someone has broken into your home. Such a cylinder may cost half the price of the rest of the door, so an alarm system may be a more cost effective choice.

There are no known public cases of people being able to lockpick Abloy Protec, but its keys have grooves that can be cloned (if the thief has physical access to the key).

All cylinders that require a key to be inserted into them are susceptible to being jammed by inserting glue or a wood splinter into the keyhole. This way, thieves can force you to buy a new cylinder until you can no longer afford to buy unbreakable cylinders. In such a case, instead of buying a cheap, breakable cylinder, search for a motorized cylinder that requires no key (and uses RFID cards).

Various

The average budget for everything that goes into a finished home, like furniture and appliances, is (as percentage from the home's price):

20%, for basic quality finishes.
50%, for high quality finishes.
Above 100%, for luxury finishes.

Homes with windows oriented toward east are good for early risers, while those oriented toward west can give your great sunsets. Those with windows oriented toward south (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed) are good during most of the day (except for sunrise and sunset).

Don't buy things because somebody (usually a their seller) tells you that they've seen those things in other people's homes and look beautiful. You need things that look beautiful in your home, and for that they need to fit in the overall design, not look good on their own or in a showroom or in someone else's home.

For decoration, there is a wide variety of artificial flowers which look natural. Since artificial flowers don't fade, they cost less than natural flowers, in the long run, and there are a lot more types available (at any time of the year) which can give you much more creative space. Colorful fruits and vegetables, placed in colorful bowls, are also good and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

Darkening a space too much makes the home feel like a cave. Good lighting can make a dark space look good, but artificial light doesn't have the properties of sunlight, especially its directionality, and, most importantly, during the day the eye is expects to receive more light than during the night, so even a well illuminated dark space feels odd.

For a modern bedroom look, suspend the nightstands on the bed's headboard. The top of the nightstands should be below the top of the mattress, so that anyone falling (on the bed) doesn't hit its edge and corner. The headboard should be wide enough to cover the bed and the nightstands; its height should not exceed your shoulders when you sit on the bed. The nightstands should be thin, for example, they should have just one drawer.

If you intend to mount the nightstands on the wall so that the headboard width spans the mattress and the nightstands exactly, the distance between the nightstands should be equal with the width of the mattress plus 15...20 cm (6...8 in). This might sound excessive, but I've initially left only 5 cm (2 in) between each nightstand and the mattress, and there was no space left in between. Since the nightstands are aligned with the sides of the headboard, they can't normally be moved further out without becoming visually misaligned with the headboard. I ended up mounting them a little bit outside the area of the headboard (to be able to easily push the bedsheets in between the mattress and nightstands).

Home ventilation should be done by opening wide a window in each room, for 10 minutes, in order to remove the humidity, gases released by the materials, and dust. Opening the windows just a bit for a long time forces the walls to cool, so you loose a lot more heat and may increase the potential of mold.

Choose the electrical appliances according to the reviews of other people, not according to brands. For reviews, search the local online shops, the international online shops, and the Internet at large.

When you measure the walls to see how thick should be the door frame, make sure to include anything that would later be put on the walls, like tile (include the adhesive as well).

Metal can normally be painted only with RAL colors. This is because electrostatic painting, which is used for durability, is done with powders which come colored from the factory; manually mixing powders leads to uneven coloring. This is a problem because you have virtually no control over the very light colors, since there's very few of them and the warm ones have a greenish undertone.

Doors whose hinges are mounted in the middle of the door frame, depth wise, can open only 90 degrees, not 180.

Non-rabbeted doors (= doors which are closed inside the door frame) have hidden hinges and look much better than rabbeted doors (= doors which are closed over the door frame). These can open close to 180 degrees.

Don't use rotating door knobs because they are awful for the wrists. Use normal door handles (that are pressed downward).

When buying electrical appliances, make sure that their doors can open in the place where they are supposed to be. For example, make sure that the door of the fridge doesn't hit any object while it's being opened.

Install 2 power circuits for the bathroom lighting, one to use during the day and one during the night (when you don't want a lot of light which could keep you up for hours).

Install a shower head near the toilet bowl so that you can clean the bowl easily. If the head has a sprinkler system (like showers have), the water pressure will be high enough to create a splash back, which you don't want to happen from the toilet; if you reduce the pressure, then there isn't enough pressure to clean the toilet, so it's best to use a head without a sprinkler system.

Square toilets are about as comfortable as the round ones, and offer solid leg support than for both those who sit and squat on them. The lack of the rounded front margin means that the bowl is shorter, so men are much more likely to accidentally pee on or outside of the front margin (when standing).

If you have installed a concealed toilet tank, also install a door through which you can slip a water refreshing pill. An example for this kind of mechanism is Grohe Fresh.

Bathroom accessories (like wall-mounted soap dispensers, towel bars, toilet paper roll holder) that are mounted on tile should be mounted with an adhesive (like silicone) rather than screws. This allows you to replace them with new accessories without having any leftover holes visible.

Metal accessories, like handles and support, can be either made from stainless steel or steel plated with chrome, nickel, brass and others. The difference is that stainless steel makes all the metal (and is polished on the outside), while plated steel has only a thin layer of finishing, layer which can peel, leaving behind obvious marks and rust spots.

Don't cover the entire cabinets wall of the kitchen with tile. You need to have easy access to all the pipes and cables that are in the wall, so you don't want to have to take the tile down if there is a problem. Only the backsplash should be made of tile (or some other material, like glass or composite).

Keep the light switches at a height of about 90...100 cm (36...40 in) so that you don't have to raise your hands too much to switch the lights on or off.

Keep the door handles at a height of about 90...100 cm (36...40 in) so that you don't have to raise your hands too much to open the doors.

If you plan your power circuits through the walls, make sure that you first decide where you want to mount objects on (both sides of) walls (like TV supports, wall-hung decorations, cabinets), so that the screws don't perforate the electrical cables (which normally go vertically from the ceiling downward).

Insect nets block most air circulation.

Rollable insect nets are bad at keeping insects away because their bottom edge is not sealed. They act more like insect traps (between the net and window) than insect repellants.

If your flooring is installed, keep some extruded polystyrene (10 mm thick) handy for cases when you'll need to do some heavy work and you need to protect the floor. Rollable foam (the type that is put under parquet) is also good because it can mold on walls that may need to be protected.

If you dislike defrosting the fridge, buy a fridge with full no-frost (where both the fridge and the freezer are no frost) and with an inverter compressor. The inverter smooths the noisy behavior of a simple no-frost compressor. LG, Samsung and Sharp have fridges with no-frost and inverter. Samsung also has an interesting feature (called Twin Cooling) where the freezer can be used as a small fridge, and both the fridge and freezer compartments can be turned off, separately, to save electricity.

A dryer integrated into a washing machine is more practical because you don't have to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer. This way you can start a washing cycle, leave from home and come back to dryed clothes.

A very light colored floor can hurt your eyes, so avoid it if you know that your eyes are sensitive to light.

When you sit at the desk, your eyes should not see any (very) intense light source (like sunlight), be it either direct or diffused, so the desk should face away from any window.

Don't get a very light colored desk because it reflects most of the light that it receives right into your eyes, slowly eroding your vision. For a similar reason, the surface of the desk should be matte.

Don't get a large computer display because the larger it is, the more light and heat it emits right into your eyes, slowly eroding your vision; you should keep the diagonal under 24 inches. For example, in a room with a temperature of 23 Celsius, the temperature of a TFT display after hours of use is 30...35 Celsius (it varies all over the display). Another thing which slowly erodes your vision is watching for a long time at the same distance (since the display is a flat surface); the eyes need to look at various distances.

The brightness of a computer display should be kept at a level which is comfortable for you. The color scheme of the applications should be comfortable for you, whether light (= white background with black text) or dark (= black background with white text). You will hear some people who will vehemently tell you that you must use a light background color because that provides the most visibility. This is a misunderstanding of the difference between visibility and comfortability. Shinning a flashlight in someone's eyes makes it visible alright, but certainly not comfortable and would destroy the eyes in a short time.

If your eyes tire easily, especially when sitting in front of a computer display, you should either calibrate it (with a hardware calibrator) to D55 (or D50), or search through its menu and switch the color temperature to 5'500 (or 5'000) kelvin. This will make the colors a bit warmer. The standard color temperature of a display is 6'500 kelvin. The color temperature of summer noon, excluding the sky, at mid latitudes is 5'400 kelvin. The standard color temperature of prints is 5'000 kelvin. The standard color temperature of photographic and motion picture film is 5'500 or 5'600 kelvin.

Parquet and tile are hard on knees to walk on, so use slippers with thick foam soles. Slippers also protect from cold surfaces.

If you wear slippers with thick foam soles and they make your feet perspire, drill holes in their soles to improve the air circulation. When drilling, don't wear the slippers and don't keep them in your hands. Put the slippers on a wood board or paper sheets that are at least 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) thick, so the drill bit can go into. Use a drill bit with a diameter of at least 12 mm or 0.5 in; it doesn't matter if the drill bit is for concrete, metal or wood. If the holes are smaller, more holes are required and it's possible for the surrounding foam could cover them back. Drill, at a low speed, at least 5 holes along the middle of each slipper's sole; it would be best to drill two parallel lines of 5 holes each. After drilling, cut the foam around the exit of the hole, else it will cover back the hole. The little created debris isn't airborne.

Be wary of any claims of products which are anatomical or orthopedic, especially when it comes to shoes and mattresses. Such products have an exaggerated shape which is likely to not fit your body. When you buy shoes, feel the inner side of their soles. They have to be almost flat, you should barely feel any difference in height; usually, the heel is a bit lower, but it should be very little.

New textiles should be washed before the first use.

For best skin care, use soap which doesn't dry your skin, preferably one which is intensely moisturizing. There are various factors which can dry your skin, like using soap very often. If your skin dries, it may start itching.

Air and heat sources which create air currents, like air conditioners and fan heaters, may easily cause dry eyes, sneezing and headaches. An air humidity below 40% can also cause dry eyes.

Ensure that the chairs which will be around the dinning table have the following characteristics:

Their base support has the right height for your height; this is usually between 45 and 48 cm (18 and 19 in). The soles of your feet should touch the ground when you sit on a chair. Of course, the height of the table should match as well; this is usually between 75 cm (30 in).
At shoulder level, the back support is farther away (/ angled) with 10...15 cm relative to the back of the bottom support. This allows a natural curve of the backbone.
The join between the bottom support and the back support is not rounded vertically. A vertically rounded join would block your bottom from sliding all the way to the back support, so your lower back would not sit straight.
Are as light as possible, so that they can be moved around with ease.
There is no horizontal bar between the front legs, near the bottom, bar which could potentially hinder the movement of your feet.
The back support is tall enough, like at least under the armpits, to support the middle backbone, usually between 85 and 105 cm (34 and 42 in). A support that's too tall will be too much above the table, which may block viewing across the table.
The back support is firm so that it doesn't allow the backbone to flex at the base; you can always add padding for comfort.
If the back support is made with slats, especially if the slats are horizontal, the slats have little space between them and cover the entire back support (left to right and top to bottom).
The back support looks good, that is, any metal support is inside the back support, not outside.

Don't get chairs that wobble (= have a slight backward rocking effect) for sitting at the table or desk, because they cause body instability, which in turn strains the backbone (especially in the neck area).

The sitting part of chairs must not be slippery. However, for chairs used outside, slippery surfaces are easy to clean.

Chair backs made from a textile mesh aren't good for the backbone since they offer no rigid support for the lower back to sit straight.

Chairs (and tables) with wooden legs can be made shorter, by cutting from the bottom of the legs, to make them fit shorter people.

Don't put anything (that can fall or break) over the areas where people stay for a long time, like mirrors over a bed. Wall-hung photos that are printed on foamboard are fine because foamboard is a very light and soft material.

For maximum hygiene, use a stainless steel pedal-activated trash bin which allows you to open the lid without touching it, so that you can hold the garbage with both hands. A sensor activated garbage bin only opens the lid, it doesn't close it. Keep the bin on the floor, not in the kitchen furniture, in order to keep the humidity around it to a minimum; bacteria thrive in humid environments.

A good sized trash bin should be tall (to fit bottles) and have a volume of 30...60 liters. A tall, narrow shape will make the trash bag topple once it's out of the bin, which means that trash, especially liquids, could fall out of the bag. Food which stays in the bin for several days stinks, and that smell spreads out every time you open the bin. To avoid this, and to avoid throwing the large plastic bag every day, use separate small plastic bags for every day's thrown food.

Bed linen should be 100% cotton; a few percentages may be other materials. Soft materials are likely to create a lot of fiber dust. Satin, ranforce and jacquard are processing methods for cotton.

A bed duvet should be filled with artificial fiber (like microfiber / nanofiber / silicone fiber). Bamboo fiber is comfortable, but it's the result of a very harsh chemical process. You may hear that merino wool is the best filling, but this will likely smell like sheep; personally, I've washed such a duvet twice but its smells is still too strong to be close to the nose (like it is during sleep).

Avoid textiles which are treated (even partially) with flame retardants because these are very harsh chemicals that will stink your house.

Ceramic cookware usually contains lead and cadmium way above what's safe for children. Some manufactures use materials with amounts that are near the safety limits for children, like Emile Henry (tested here). Note that the simple presence of lead and cadmium in the ceramic doesn't mean that it can contaminate food, but any scratch in the glazing of the ceramic may cause these elements to leach in food.

Glass cookware is difficult to keep clean because the limescale from the water is easily seen on glass. (Apple) Vinegar can dissolve limescale when it's allowed to sit over night in / on the glass surface to clean; you must of course dilute the vinegar in water.

Water has to be wiped (before it dries) off glass, ceramic and steel objects, else it (especially its limestone) will leave marks. Knives made of high carbon steel (not basic stainless steel), as used in professional knives, are also likely to rust if they are not washed and wiped as soon as possible; carbon steel knives are easier to sharpen, something that professional cooks are likely to do in order to keep their old, trusty knives.

Cutting food with knives must always be done on a wood board because the softness of the wood doesn't wear out the blade as fast as hard surfaces like stone.

Crystal glasses contain lead. Plain glass usually doesn't. Some manufacturers make crystal with titanium instead of lead, like Zwiesel.

If you like to stir the wine in order to better smell its aroma, buy wine glasses which are at least 4 times larger than the portion that you intend to drink at a time. Obviously, only fill them at 1 / 4 of their capacity.

Knives can be sharpened or honed. Sharpening has a much more significant effect on the blade, compared to honing. Sharpening is best done against a whetstone, and is normally done by professionals. Honing is best done against a steel or ceramic rod, and is normally done by cooks (at home), only for blade edge maintenance (not for sharpening). Honing is done by slowly swiping the sharp edge of a knife's blade against a steel or ceramic rod. If a few swipes are not enough, the blade has to be sharpen. After honing, wipe the blade and the rod with paper towel in order to remove any loose metal particles.

A refrigerator with plastic shelves instead of wire shelves is much more likely to produce vibration noises because those plastic shelves are very unlikely to be perfectly even, so whatever you put on them will likely vibrate when the refrigerator's compressor works.

Stainless-steel faucets can cause electrostatic discharges, also known as "electrocute you", so if this is a problem for you search for ones with a plastic handle (which is finished like stainless-steel).

It's possible to buy a video camera peephole (or door viewer) for an entrance door. Such a peephole allows you to push a button and see on a small display what the camera sees on the exterior of the door. Some are motion activated and can record images, some have night vision. Usually, these are good only indoors (the light from outdoors washes out the image). If you want to install such a video camera in a place where it can capture images of people who are passing by, like neighbors, make sure the law allows you to do so.

Don't buy things in advance because the flooring, wall paint and furniture material that you choose may change, and therefore the things you buy in advance may not fit in the (new) design. First finish building / renovating the home, then the furniture, and only then buy everything that goes inside. You will be tempted to buy because, for example, you'll see large discounts, but these will end up costing you more if you change the design style.

Get a parking spot if it's cheap, even if you don't intend to get a car. You never know what will happen later, maybe you will have a car, maybe your partner will, maybe people visiting you need a place to park, or you might later sell your home to someone who wants a parking spot.

If you expect a high quality result, keep in mind that people who work for you after their day job will either need a lot of time to finish your work, or they will rush it, make mistakes and deliver a low quality result.

If common sense tells you that something is wrong, than that something really is wrong. There is no magic technology to fix bad design, choices and installation which obviously lack strength and reliability. Some people will try to cut corners and tell you that it works fine like that; they will not deliver a high quality result.

When the walls of your home are laid out and when the flooring is installed, check the work progress daily. For example, make sure that the floor skirting will be able to cover the rough cuts of the flooring (be it tile, parquet or carpet) next to the walls. For a walk-in shower, check that the floor is sloped toward the drain in order to allow water to drain, with 1...2%; make sure to agree on the floor's height difference before it's installed.

Humidity and cold keep wall paint from sticking, and may cause it to run down the walls or wrinkle. If you have such problems when it's freezing outside, check that the humidity is below 70% (if not then use a dehumidifier), turn the heat up to something like 23 Celsius (73 Fahrenheit), and ventilate the space by opening the windows wide (in multiple rooms) for 10 minutes. If you have underfloor heating, the external facing walls will remain cold since no wall radiator heats them directly; such walls may need direct ventilation from a fan heater (even if it blows air at room temperature) in order to dry quickly (in 30 minutes). Don't turn on the underfloor heating if the flooring is being installed; the adhesive requires a stable floor temperature.

High quality wall paint can't be sanded by hand due to its mechanical resistance, only with a sanding machine. Moreover, manual sanding would leave scratch marks because the hand movement is linear, whereas for sanding machines it's circular.

If you need to cover wall heat radiators with plastic sheets to keep them from getting dirty when you paint the walls, avoid using colored plastic because the high heat could evaporate the chemicals used for color, and they could end up coloring your ceiling.

Don't drill holes near the edge of tile because that's where the glazing is the weakest and it could chip easier than in the middle of the tile.

Dark surfaces are a nightmare to keep clean because dust is ever visible.

Clean thoroughly only after the furniture is installed. Before that, just wash the dust so you don't breathe it later.

To give you an idea what it means to do cleaning after construction has taken place in a home with a high density of furniture, even when protection foil has been used, cleaning my house was done with an average of 2.5 m2 (28 ft2) / day / person to wash the tile, the furniture, the bed and table frames, the doors, the appliances (refrigerator, washing machine), the countertop (including its underside), and so on; adding more people will likely not proportionally increase the cleaned surface. I had to wash everything at least two times because the powder dust from the construction and the furniture chipboard dust can only be removed with washing. I took all the drawers out and the small furniture doors. I've washed under the furniture, which was a nightmare because of the position. The density of the furniture matters because if it's small, it's much easier to move stuff around, and much easier to clean the floor since most of it is just empty space. How do you increase your efficiency? You finish all construction before you install the furniture, so that you can easily clean the floor before the furniture arrives.

For floor cleaning, use a brush, a cloth mop, water, soap and an utility razor (to mechanically break building material off tile / concrete). Mechanical cleaning is the most efficient way to clean, by far.

Cleaning glossy areas (like glass) is difficult because normal cleaning liquid leaves visible traces. First, wash the area the way it's easiest for you, to clean the grime off it. Then, prepare a cloth (paper cloth is fine), (alchohol-based) glass cleaning liquid and (soft) paper towels; alchohol-based liquid evaropates much faster than water. Spray the liquid on the cloth and rub it on a part of the glossy area. Before the liquid evaporates from the area, wipe it with dry (slightly damn is fine) paper towels. This will force the liquid traces to evaporate in seconds, which removes any cleaning traces.

Don't let anyone clean your windows with newspaper (or other stiff paper) because that will scratch the glass. To wipe cleaning liquid off windows, use (soft) paper towels.

A good detergent for wiping pencil marks from furniture and tile is Cif Power & Shine (liquid); there are several types and each may be good for different types of grime. The fresher the marks are, the easier they are to wipe; some marks of pencil or rubber can quickly remain uncleanable even with a razor. For spots that are difficult to remove, spray the detergent on them and leave it until it dries, so that it has time to break down the grime. If you still can't remove them and they are on tile / stone, try an utility razor.

Tools

One of the most important tools to have around a house is a cordless power drill. Here are some features to look for:

Battery voltage above 10 V. Simplistically, the power is proportional with this.
Multiple rotation speeds, like 400 rpm and 1000 rpm.
Variable rotation speed. This allows you to press the trigger only lightly in order to use a low speed (from 0 rpm up), and press it all the way in order to use the maximum speed (for the selected level).
Torque above 20 Nm, like 20 Nm and 40 Nm. Power = Speed * Torque; to calculate, make sure to use the torque for the correct speed (they are inversely proportional).
Adjustable clutch, like 16 levels. This prevents screw heads for being stripped during overscrewing.
At least 2 batteries. This allows you to continue working while one battery is charging.
Battery capacity over 1 Ah.
Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries. Litium-Ion (Li-ion) are fine.
Maximum drilling diameter for brickwork or steel at least 10 mm.
Forward / reverse switch.
Keyless chuck. This allows you to change bits with only your hands.
Percussion / hammer. Good to have for drilling into hard materials.
Weight with battery below 2 kg (4 pounds).
LED light.

My choices

If you want to design a home which looks modern, bright and spacious, the choices below will give you a good start so long as you like consistency, harmony / consonance and low contrast in design. If you prefer dissonance or a high contrast, you'll have to make adjustments.

Have I ever doubted my choices? Constantly. For example, I had one sample tile that I was looking at from time to time, the model that I actually ended up with. Right from the start it felt a bit too raw / natural and cold, and at some point it started to get boring. I was even contemplating to get another type of tile, one with a luxurious look, something like a beige marble (a type called Marfil), but the pattern of that one was (I felt at that time) a bit too busy and the color a bit too dark, although, the matching wall tile was amazing (it was a very light beige, with little pattern).

How did I feel when seeing my home empty? Bored. Bored and exhausted of every color, pattern, structure, tile, parquet, melamine, wood, stone, whatever. If I see something new and interesting, a few minutes later I'm bored. But what is left after the boredom is light, space and simplicity, and these things actually matter, they have a beneficial influence on the state of mind.

I didn't know / choose the design style of my home, I had to discover what I like by seeing various combinations in reality, in photos and in simulators. When everything was in place and I had time to get used to the very different atmosphere (than what I had before), it all came together in a subtle and comfortable way. It was home. The look is subtle, relaxing enough to stimulate creativity, it's airy, it's modern yet it has details on which to focus. It looks a bit like a beach home.

Could I have done things more artistically? Yes, but I would not clean all those structural details.

After this entire experience, there are some things that I would do differently in the future:

I would choose a slightly warmer white for the wall paint, like white 1186.
I would choose a very large format tile or marble (like 120 cm / 47 in) (for the floor, bathroom walls and kitchen backsplash), or a satin-finished light beige or warm gray colored concrete floor. My tile looked a bit cold until I've gotten used to it. After I've installed sheer curtains, their warm white color and light diffusion effect have softened the look of the tile, making it very pleasant. When I was looking for tile, I didn't find exactly what I wanted, mostly because I wanted matte (not polished) tile. I can now see better choices, probably because I've become much better at seeing color and pattern, and because new tile models have started popping up.
I would choose furniture whose color is a warm white. The color of my current furniture is NCS S1505-Y40R, a beige with little saturation, which is significantly darker than a warm white. I would mix in some golden or brown wood elements for accent. At the same time, I would have walk-in closets, so little furniture would be needed for the rest of the house (other than the kitchen).
I would use golden or brown wood as an accent color. I would also use large green pot plants.
I would make the bed and table frames from golden or brown wood instead of metal, either to have the exposed wood texture (without paint), or to be able to paint with the much larger NCS color palette (instead of the limited RAL used for painting metal).

Large areas: If you like light and warm colors, for large areas (like walls, floor and furniture) use light, neutral colors, like warm white, light greige (= light warm gray) or light beige. If you prefer a darker or more colorful floor, you can use light brown (/ caramel) tile or golden wood parquet.

If you like strong colors, don't use them for very large areas, use them just for accent colors, like accent walls.

Neutral colors, like warm white and greige (and even beige), provide a good background for colorful decorations, especially for large and colorful photos which are hung on walls. Any colorful decorations become very powerful focus points for the eye, untainted and unobstructed by background colors. At the same time, a dark background allows the eye to better focus on the photos that are overlaid, or even people who stand in front of them, instead of being overwhelmed by light from everywhere.

If you want to have the floor, walls and furniture all lightly colored then make sure that all the light colors have the same undertone; the saturation and the lightness may vary over a wide range. In simple words: don't mix areas of orangy whites with areas of greenish, yellowish or bluish whites. Don't mix a cold white ceiling with warm white walls (like white ceiling and yellow walls), or cold white walls with a warm white floor, or cold white walls with warm white furniture. You can mix different undertones if the lightness is contrasting (light with dark), or the saturation is very low for one and very high for the other, so you mix cold white walls with a golden wood floor. If you can't match the undertones of the light colors, use colors that contrast either on lightness or hue.

If your windows are not toward south (for the southern hemisphere, the direction is reversed), choose warm colors because the low light from homes shifts colors toward gray, which looks rather cold and industrial (think cloudy beach). However, don't exaggerate because you could end up with a color which is too warm when there is a lot of light.

Accent colors can be used for small areas, like the kitchen countertop and backsplash, tables, desk, chairs, bed headboard, curtains, bed and sofa covers, low hanging lighting fixtures, lamps, decorative pillows, vases with (artificial) flowers, bowls with colorful fruits and vegetables, designed objects, photos hung on walls and so on. Accent colors are enough to fill a space and give it contrast, contrast that some people are keen to have.

Wall paint: If you like warm colors, use a warm white. Usually, matte paint is used, especially because it's better at hiding wall imperfections.

In order to obtain the smoothest surface possible, the walls have to be painted with a pump rather than manually, but this would make it almost impossible for you to paint your home on your own, plus, later fixes would stand out.

Choose the (general idea of the) wall paint color before anything else because it will color the largest area of your home, and will therefore define the background / subconscious perception of colors. The wall paint color has the greatest weight in creating the atmosphere of your home because color perception is dramatically affected by the surrounding colors from your field of view; this is because the adaptation of the eye occurs at its periphery (not at the center, as you might expect).

Some people will recommend you to choose the wall paint color at the end because it's harder to find tile or parquet matching the wall paint, than it is to find wall paint that matches the tile or parquet. While this is true, you would then be forced to choose a wall paint that fits the floor color, not what you like, for the largest area of your home.

After that, choose the colors of the furniture, doors, window frames, curtains, and, finally, of various decorations.

Do not add pattern to the walls, except for accent walls, that is, a wall which is patterned or colored very differently than all the other walls. More than one patterned wall in a room give a very cluttered / busy look to the room.

Wallpaper: Wallpaper brings an exceptional design variety due to its simple manufacturing and installation processes. Be very careful not too use a busy pattern for all the walls of a room.

Floor: The simple choice would be to go with a golden wood parquet, but if you don't like the look of wood (with all its lines), you can use tile with a color like light gray, light beige, or light brown. A too light color will show dirt and hair very easily, so either you should be ready to clean it often, or the floor should have quite a bit of pattern (as in color variation).

If the floor's color is similar to that of the walls, the feeling will be of less clutter, but for many people it may be too little clutter.

A more colorful floor allows more flexibility in choosing the wall paint color, especially later.

A very dark floor dramatically reduces the amount available of light (by reducing the reflected light).

The floor should have little pattern. For example, if the flooring material imitates wood, choose a model which has little color contrast and especially few lines (long or short) marking the wood all over the place, lines which are common in wood imitations and give it too much contrast and directionality. If there are lines on the flooring, install the flooring with the lines toward the windows (toward the larger one, if there are several), in order to maximize the visual effect of the sunlight on the floor.

Tile: I've chosen a (rectified, 60 * 60 cm / 24 * 24 in, porcelain) tile which imitates white travertine (with little pattern contrast). Its color is a dark and dirty white, a bit warm in sunlight, with some reddish-gray pattern. If there is a lot of light, the pattern looks like dust / sand being blown by wind over a warm white stone, or like the bottom of a creek, made of white stone, where the water dragged sand all over. After I've installed the sheer curtains, their warm white color and light diffusion effect have softened the look of the tile, making it very pleasant.

The tile is perfectly matte, which makes it look a bit like raw / unglazed ceramic. I've used it for all floors and bathroom walls; for the floor, the lines are oriented toward the light / windows, for the walls, the lines are horizontal.

The delicate gray pattern of the tile is useful at hiding dust and not having to clean the floor every day.

I would have preferred a larger format, but the next larger format was twice as expensive (for the same area). The extra tile that was necessary (above the installation area) was nearly 20%, and only two full tiles remained, mostly because all the tiles were aligned to the ones from the hallway.

To match the slightly reddish-gray pattern of the tile, I've chosen an orangy warm white wall paint, and a slightly orange chipboard for the furniture.

Tile grout: I've chosen an epoxy grout with a color very close to that of the tile, but darker, basically a medium-lightness warm gray. Epoxy grout looks better, is more durable and is easier to keep clean than the average cement-based grout. Epoxy grout feels smooth to touch, while the cement-based grout feels rough.

If its color is similar to that of the tile, the feeling will be of less clutter. If its color is contrasting to that of the tile, the feeling will be more cluttered.

I've used a 1.5 mm (1/16 in) wide grout line. An extra bucket with grout was necessary above the amount calculated with the manufacturer's formula, which means that I've used 4 buckets rather than 3.

Silicon: I've chosen a silicon with a color very close to that of the grout, basically a medium-lightness warm gray.

Doors: If their color is similar to that of the walls, the feeling will be of less clutter. If their color is contrasting to that of the walls, the feeling will be more cluttered. If their pattern is similar to wood, the feeling will be more rustic.

If you can afford, then choose non-rabbeted doors (= doors which are closed inside the door frame, not over it) with hidden / 3D hinges.

If you can't find doors with the color you want, ask the seller for doors that can be painted in a car paintshop; of course, you would have to deal with that when the doors arrive.

I've chosen doors whose color is the same as that of the furniture, NCS S1505-Y40R. Because the doors are painted while the furniture is melaminated chipboard, the color of the doors looks much better than the color of the furniture.

Furniture: If its color is similar to that of the walls, the feeling will be of less clutter. If its color is contrasting to that of the walls, the feeling will be more cluttered. If its pattern is similar to wood, the feeling will be more rustic.

The price of the workmanship was about equal with the price of the chipboard. The price of the board cutting and edging (material and application) was about half from the price of the chipboard. To this, add the price of the hardware. Overall, the price of the furniture was about 3 times the price of the chipboard.

Furniture chipboard: I've used a chipboard whose color was (specified by the manufacturer as) NCS S1505-Y40R, which is a significantly darker color than what I wanted (which was a warm white), but it was the best choice that I had. This color is a greige with an orange undertone. You may be able to find this color under the name "tortora".

The countertops of my tables are MDF painted glossy with NCS S1505-Y40R. This looks good because the horizontal orientation and the glossiness make the color appear lighter than the matte color of the (vertical) furniture and doors.

The finalist decors for furniture were: warm white oak (= colored white, not just named white) and NCS S1505-Y40R. I dropped the white oak because it gave a rustic look to my home, and it wasn't warm enough for my wall paint.

Neutral colors together with neutrally colored wood, like warm white or greige oak, give a home the feel of a beach cottage.

My furniture is entirely made from the same chipboard decor, that is, including the backside and the drawer bottoms.

Furniture legs: I've chosen furniture legs with a polished chrome finish, and white plastic bottom to avoid scratching the floor.

I've extended the fronts and sides of the furniture down to 2 cm (1 in) from the ground, in order to hide the furniture legs but still allow for easy cleaning under the furniture, plus the furniture feels like it's floating in the air.

Furniture runners: I've used Hettich Quadro glide-on which allows installation on flush base drawers, meaning that the thickness of the drawer sides is irrelevant.

Furniture handles: I wanted to use knobs with the same color as the furniture, but I've ended up with matte nickel knobs because other potential choices had various problems.

Support frame: For beds and tables, I've used custom metal frames (painted RAL 9001). The horizontal section of the rectangular pipe used is 50 * 50 * 3 mm (2 * 2 in). I should have used wood because the finishing would have been much better, especially the painting (both look and color).

The deflection (= maximum bend) of a 50 * 50 * 3 mm pipe over a 2 meters length, supported and welded only at the ends, with 100 kg (220 pounds) pushing down on the center, is about 1.5 mm. This deflection is equivalent to that of a 80 * 80 mm spruce wood beam; the type of wood has little influence on this. You can see more deflections here. If you can build a program from source code, look for the "Deflection" folder in the source code archive.

Window frames: If their color is similar to that of the walls, the feeling will be of less clutter. If their color is contrasting to that of the walls, the feeling will be more cluttered. If their pattern is similar to wood, the feeling will be more rustic.

Walk-in shower: To separate the sloped floor of the shower from the rest of the bathroom floor, I've used a slat made of composite material whose color is very close to that of the tile.

Spotbars: I'm using spotbars with orientable lightbulbs, 40 degrees illumination angle, 3'000 kelvin, an average of 400 lumens per square meter, mostly mounted near walls and curtains. The light warms up my warm white walls more, giving them a very slight cream color. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this kind of illumination is spectacular, although 400 lm / m2 is too much light for relaxing nights.

Textiles: Use textiles with no or little embellishments, like flowers or geometric shapes. The color should be a solid color. The fabric's regular pattern provides a lot of variation, especially when combined with color gradients and sparkle.

My curtains are wall-sized and have folds. The color of my sheer curtains is warm white. The color of the textiles that I've used is warm (but generally neutral) in order to preserve the neutral aspect of the large areas, but is darker than the floor's color in order to provide some contrast.

I've used 3 curtain tracks, with 10 cm (4 in) between their middles. Their color is a warm white.

Can you afford things?

When you buy a new home, you may also buy a lot of things to put in it. Even though you may have all the necessary money at that moment, you still have to ensure that you can afford all those things, that is, you have to ensure that in the future you will have money to renew these things.

To do this, make a list with all the (major) things that you intend to buy. For each thing, write down its price and for how long you intend to keep it, and perhaps even how much money do you think you may get back if you sell it later (this may work for cars).

Then calculate how much each thing is going to cost you per month. For this, divide its price to the number of months that the thing will be in use. We have to consider that, on average, your income / price of things ratio remains constant through time, since we can't know what will happen later in your life.

Let's take a refrigerator as an example. Let's consider that it costs 500 dollars and that you are going to keep it for 7 years. You also know that you will not sell it, but simply discard it. This means that the refrigerator will cost you 500 (dollars) / 7 (years) / 12 (months / year) = 6 dollars / month.

You know that you can afford a 500 dollars refrigerator if you can and do save 6 dollars each month.

Let's take a car as an example. Let's consider that it costs 15'000 dollars and that you are going to keep it for 7 years. You also know, from used car sale ads, that you will sell it for about 5'000 dollars. This means that the car will cost you (15'000 - 5'000) (dollars) / 7 (years) / 12 (months / year) = 120 dollars / month.

You know that you can afford a 15'000 dollars car if you can and do save 120 dollars each month. This is just the cost of the car, but you have to add up the fuel, maintenance, insurance, parking and other costs.

After you add up all the monthly costs of the things that you intend to buy, compare the total with your monthly income. Can you save money to cover the total cost? Take a hard look at the costs and then decide your priorities.

Here are a few costs that you may have to consider:

Monthly costs: rent, mortgage, various debt repayments, food, bottled water, public transportation, gas, electricity, car fuel, tap water, phone subscription, Internet subscription, TV subscription, entertainment / fun / going out, private health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, car insurance. For heating costs, make sure to take seasons into account.
Long term costs: heating system (renew at 15 years), mattress (renew at 7 years), refrigerator (renew at 7 years), washing machine (renew at 7 years), dish washer (renew at 7 years), TV (renew at 7 years), computer (renew at 7 years), smartphone (renew at 5 years), tablet (renew at 5 years), furniture (renew at 25 years), repaint walls (every 20 years), car (renew at 7 years).
Other costs (not necessarily periodic): cosmetics, haircut, dentist, various.

A note about smoking. Where I live, with the money spent on smoking a pack of cigarettes per day for 30 years, you can buy an average studio apartment.

If you borrow money from a bank, ensure that the monthly payment for all your debt is maximum 40% from your net (= take-home) income. This percentage is standard in banking.

When you contract debt and make large expenses, base your actions on the idea that your income will remain the same or get somewhat lower, but never on the idea that it will increase.

Dealing with people

Some parts of the whole process were pretty much a nightmare.

I was either being told that things can't be done, or I wasn't told what could be made on request and for what money, or I would not be called back (even after insisting many times), or I would not be told (by the manufacturer) the prices of the products which could only be bought through distributors (even though I could see the prices at the distributors), or I would be given quotes based on things that I specifically said I didn't want, or I would be told lies shamelessly just to promote their stuff (like "these colors fit together", for things that were a horrid match).

This kind of behavior leads to uninformed decisions made by consumers, and I don't mean uninformed about how the prices compare, I mean uninformed about the available choices and materials. Since (where I live) the competition is low, the consumers are not demanding, and high quality materials are limited, the result is a general low quality.

When you want something but you are told that it's not possible, even though you saw in a catalog that it is possible, say something like "Tell me how much it would cost to have what I want. This is important to me."

When talking to people who may be doing custom work for you, like construction or furniture work, do not give away any information about how much money you are willing to spend, do not say how much money you have spent or will spend on various things, and do not say how much money others have asked you for the same thing. The only exception would be a designer or architect who needs a budget to work with.

If people hear that you are willing to pay a lot of money on various things, they'll increase their quotes. The trouble is, their normal prices match their normal quality of work, but the increase of the price doesn't result in an increase of the quality of work, quality which if it were in the same league as expensive things, would cost more to begin with.

If you want a high quality result, you will have to know all the details, even though you work with people who have years and even decades of experience in their field. Believing otherwise will likely get you a low quality result.

QA

How do I choose a mattress?

See this for details.

How do I start designing with SweetHome 3D?

SweetHome 3D is a free home design application which allows planning a home in 2D and 3D space. It runs as a desktop application, but also as a web app.

The reduce your learning curve, here are some tips.

Download and install the program. The program contains a default object library.

Download the newest object libraries. After downloading and unzipping them, if the program is already installed, you can simply double-click each one to import the objects from it.

After starting the program, in the menu "File \ Preferences" you should change the measurement unit, and the default height and thickness of the walls. In the menu "3D view \ Modify virtual visitor" you should modify the visualization angle "Field of view" to, let's say, 100.

To draw walls, click on the "Create walls" icon from the top icon bar; keep the mouse over the icons to see what the tooltip says about each one. Then, in the hashed area click and drag the mouse as long as the wall should be, then click again and drag the mouse, and this until the last wall corner is placed on the drawing. Double-click to end drawing walls. If you accidentally click somewhere, press the "Esc" key. A double-click on a wall opens its properties.

Unfortunately no room is created within the drawn walls, so repeat the same steps with the icon "Create rooms". Make sure to draw the room within the bounds of the walls that you've just created.

To place and move objects in the drawing, use the "Select" icon (the one with an arrow). Objects are placed by dragging them from the objects panel from the left side of the program's window, and dropping them on the drawing. A double-click on an object (from the drawing) opens its properties.

It's simpler to make all the furniture (including the photos hanged on the walls) with cubes on which you can apply a color or texture (from the cube's properties). In the additional object libraries you can find some objects called "Box" and "Cylinder" which can be used for box-like and cylinder-like objects.

You should start the names of all the furniture pieces with the same prefix, like "Furniture - ", so that you can later select all of them quickly and change their color.

If you want to change the texture of multiples selected objects (of the same type), at the same time, and the "Texture" button is disabled, you first have to change the color of the objects. After you reopen the Properties dialog, the "Texture" button should be enabled.

SweetHome 3D is also rather bad at showing colors in the design mode, but it's rendering them with acceptable quality. For example, surfaces which have a color are rendered differently than surfaces which have a texture which has the same color.

SweetHome 3D is rather bad at lighting, and you can't change the orientation and angle of the light sources, or the color of the light. In order to be able to generate better renderings of your home, if you want to simulate the effect of having a lot of light sources, you have to add many light source objects called "White light source" (which you can find in one of the additional object libraries – "eTeks"); to simulate artificial lighting, use the "Halogen light source". These show up in the final render as light, not as objects. It's recommended that you place these light source objects at a height of 120 cm, and set their power to 15%.

If you want to use warm whites then for the walls and furniture try #EFD8C3.

If you want to use a warm white tile for the floor then try this texture, if you want a beige then try this texture.

Should I get a bidet?

These days there is a lot of promotion of bidets as the proper way to wash your bottom. The problem is that they cost money, occupy space in the bathroom and need to cleaned. So, are they the ideal solution?

Regardless of how you choose to wash, you should first wipe (some people don't wipe before using a bidet).

On a bidet you have to either sit or crouch. If you sit then it's very difficult to wash because you need space for your hand to get to the areas that need washing; worse, because of the position, your thighs would be lower than your bottom and water would run down your thighs. If you crouch then you are high above the bidet, and the water which would get to your bottom would be splashed around the bidet.

In the shower / bathtub you can crouch, so your bottom becomes the lowest body part (except for the feet soles), and you have ample space to move your hands around. Also, since you are so close to the floor (/ bottom of shower), the water is well contained and isn't splashing on the bathroom floor. You can read about hygiene here.

Obviously, if you have enough room in the bathroom, you can install a bidet and later decide whether to use it or the shower.

Links

The manufacturers listed below are mostly European companies which sell internationally.

SweetHome 3D is a free home design application which allows planning a home in 2D and 3D space. It runs as a desktop application, but also as a web app. See this for instructions to start working quickly.

Design rules is a series of lessons about interior design.

E-Paint has information about various standard colors, online viewers, and an online shop for color samples (including A4 size). They also show the RGB values for the standard colors, and you ca use these in simulations made with SweetHome 3D.

NCS has information about NCS colors, an online viewer, and an online shop for color samples (including A4 size) and color scanners.

RAL has information about RAL colors, and online viewer, and an online shop for color samples and color scanners.

Ubakus has an online calculator (free demo) for the thermal transmittance (U-value) of walls.

AI art generators: Midjourney, Lexica.

Image printing services (also have photos): Pixels, Saal, Cewe.

Inspirational interior design: Houzz.

Inspirational tiny house design: Living Big In A Tiny House.

Wall paint: Behr (has simulator), Benjamin Moore (has simulator), Sherwin Williams (has simulator), Tikkurila (has simulator).

Effect wall paint (for accent walls): Giorgio Graesan.

Tile: Aparici, Atlas Concorde, Cifre, Italgraniti, Fioranese, Marazzi, Sant'Agostino, Serenissima, Tagina, Undefasa. These tile manufacturers are high profile, so their prices include a significant markup for the brand.

Epoxy grout: Laticrete, Mapei (Mapei Kerapoxy Design).

Epoxy floors: Colledani.

Parquet: Egger, Kaindl, Tarkett. (All have simulators.)

Furniture chipboard: Alvic, Cleaf, Egger, Fundermax, Kaindl. Egger has a factory in my country, and I was able to create an account and order samples of any decor they have; the entire process is fully automated.

Furniture handles: Hafele, Hettich.

Furniture accessories: Blum, Hafele, Hettich.

Interior doors: Barausse.

Entrance doors: Oikos.

Window glass: Pilkington, Saint Gobain.

Lighting: Eglo, Globo, Faro Barcelona, Lucide, Philips, SLV / Big White, Trio.

Composite countertops: Corian (has simulator), Franke, Himacs, Kerrock, Rehau, Silestone, Staron.

Concrete furniture: Pietra Danzare (concrete sinks).

Epoxy furniture: La Table (tables). If you want to make one yourself, search (for example, on YouTube) for how to make a table coated with epoxy resin. This is basically a roughly cut block of wood or stone covered with transparent or translucent epoxy resin.

Textiles (for curtains and upholstery): Ado, Alhambra, Anka, Comersan, Fibero, Gardisette, James Hare, Loneta, Moondream (only blackout curtains), Reig Marti, Rioma, Robert Kaufman, Szintetika, Winbrella, Yebane.

Chairs and tables: Julia Grup (La Forma).

Kitchen cookware: Demeyere, Emile Henry.

Kitchen knives: Wusthoff, Zwilling / Henckels.

Kitchen glasses: Zwiesel Kristallglas.

Waste bins: Brabantia, Simple Human.

Home perfumes: Culti, Millefiori, Vranjes.

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