There are several reasons for wanting to make your interior design projects green. And even in this economy remodeling is still happening so what does a Green interior design project entails?. Lots of people want to make a green project but think it is too complicated or too expensive. There are several shades of green and every little effort counts towards a better future for all. Specially in this economy decisions with long term impact are a lot more frugal than buying cheap things.
We want to present several guidelines to follow, so you can enjoy a sustainable, environmentally friendly spaces, for you and your family.
1. The design process can be green. Design and Architecture are some industries that use a lot of paper. Printing plans, going over corrections and reprinting again.
In our studio and several other green studios, we opted to deliver everything on a burned cd. So all the floor plans and the material finishes and notes are kept electronically and distribute to the contractor and the home owner. Ask your designer to do this, technology will help you keep everything related to your project in just one spot or even online.
2. Use the natural light first. When going over the design possibilities choose to use natural light in some way. Interior windows have been a great add to lots of our projects. Specially in Bathrooms, just because it does not make sense to turn on lights when you have daylight. so go around your project and check where can you bring more light, think of transoms: that are Horizontal hight interior or exterior windows.
3. Deconstruction instead of demolition.
This is a most practice and there so much help in Seattle and I am sure everywhere else this is an industry growing by the minute. I am talking about places to help you salvage and de-construct. You can go to seconduse, re-store or other salvage places near you.
The beauty about this places is that they will tell you what is worth salvaging and what is OK to resale.
We have given appliances and cabinetry for our clients to those places and it just make sense to have somebody else e-use what you do not want, plus they gave our clients tax credit receipts for the value market or the things they donated so what a better deal for being green. This places help you even go further, they separate everything and make it ready for recycle for a fee. So deconstruct it is really the only way to go and we have been learning that not doing it has a very bad impact in our societies.
4. Material selection
In this one I think most people got it, local for us is the priority. Because of the carbon foot print of transportation and because we believe creating jobs in our area is an important matter. So we have specified concrete counter tops versus granite or quartz just because they are local. so ask first which material are produce locally. Our last favorite are glass tiles that we used in the project below bought at Ambiente tiles
5. Efficiency. Water and energy efficient is a most in every green project and there are several fixtures and appliances that have devoted lots of design hours to achieve this goal.
Always ask for them they are so much better that the others just because they give you the same feeling but with our the waist.
Kohler has even a catalog for all their water saving items, and we hope that becomes the law.
But if you do not know where to start you can have a small project as just changing your toilet and you are already on the way to being green. The water saved by an efficient toilet pays for it.
