Tag Archives: home design and decor

Just the Right Neutral

Posted on by

Carpet Design Center 055Most people want neutral carpeting, but how do you choose the right neutral for your new home? Here are a few tips to help you define your best choice.

Choose carpeting later: There is such a large selection for neutral carpeting that you can find a shade and tone to work with any décor. So if your new home has an open floor-plan spend time first on those options that have fewer choices such as cabinetry or countertops. Then bring samples of your choices along when you select your carpeting.

004 carpetingNarrow your search: Select three or four samples of carpeting and pull them away from the rest. Your favorite may pop out at you once you see your selections together.

Look for contrast: Is your furniture dark? A lighter carpeting choice will showcase your décor more effectively. On the other hand, if you have light colors in your home, darker carpeting can add drama. Overall, balancing dark and light creates a more interesting look.

Pull a color out of your upholstery fabric: Are there any prints highlighted in your home? Look for a neutral tone that you could pull out to integrate your furniture with your flooring more effectively. Guests may not notice the connection consciously, but your home will feel more coordinated.

Connect your carpeting with your paint choice. When you visit the Fulton Design Center, you have an interesting selection of neutral palettes to choose from for custom paint for your walls, and you may find it easier to make a paint choice first and then use that tone to determine the best carpeting for your new home.

Kitchens made for Entertaining

Posted on by

002 super browseDoes your kitchen become the central location for every party you host? Then why not create a kitchen made for entertaining in your next home? This kitchen, from the Fulton Design Center, demonstrates how a kitchen can come alive during a party.

Use your island as buffet central: With its close proximity to the oven and fridge, you can easily refresh the food as needed. Take advantage of this to provide special piping hot appetizers fresh from the oven and even offer a hot drink such as mulled cider on the stovetop for winter events.

Add height to your buffet display: The open flat counterspace that your island provides makes for a great functional kitchen but it diminishes the punch of a buffet. Find ways to include height to make the display more interesting. Place some food on pedestal stands, and include candles and fresh flowers. Setting up the buffet this way also encourages guests to serve themselves on the side away from the kitchen. This keeps them out from underfoot while you’re working.

003 super browseSet up a drinks area: You can use a corner of the island, as shown in the photo to the right, also from the Fulton Design Center. Provide cups and cocktail napkins and place sodas and other drinks in the refrigerator for easy access, or keep wine chilled in an ice-bucket on one section of the counter.

Plan your lighting: This allows you to create several moods in different parts of your home. Want the kitchen to be the light and bright area? Turn on all of your kitchen lights. On the other hand if you want people to linger around the buffet but not in the main kitchen space, use only the pendant lights and keep all the other kitchen lighting off for the duration of the party. You can turn them back on when it’s time for clean-up.

Check out these and other kitchen vignettes at the Fulton Homes Design Center. Our open browse nights happen from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. every first and third Thursday of the month. For more information visit our website at: http://www.fultonhomes.com/design-center

Your Home’s First Impression

Posted on by

Front entry photoWould you like a front entryway for your home that is this welcoming? The Fulton Homes Tehama Model shown above offers an inviting courtyard-style space to introduce guests to your home before they even step inside. People arrive at first impressions of people in seconds, and the same goes for homes. Your guests may form an opinion of your home – and you – even before you open your door to them.

At Fulton Homes we help you and your home make a good first impression – one that demonstrates your taste and sense of style. With our rich selection of exterior doors and hardware, we can create a front entrance unique to you.

Front entry photo 2The photo on the right shows just a few of the doors available to you at the Fulton Design Center. We set each of them in a frame so that you can both look and experience each door as it opens.

By providing a choice of wood, stain and design your front door can reflect your personality – and create a link to your choice of home style and design. Are you drawn to a rustic look? Then consider one of our strongly-presented doors with straightforward rubbed bronze hardware. If you want a classic feel, consider the oak paneled door on the right front of the photo above with a curved satin nickel handle that provides an established, traditional look.

At Fulton Homes we know all of our buyers want homes as individual as they are, and we believe that the best place to start is your own front door.

Fulton’s Design Center Approach

Posted on by

Carpet Design Center 057A good design center creates just the right environment to help you make your dream home come to life. Let’s take a look at some of the good decisions that make the Fulton Design Center a great resource when you buy your new Fulton home.

Updated options and vignettes: As new products come on the home market, the Fulton team reviews them and determines what will best serve the needs of Fulton’s customers. Quality, value, reliability and style all combine to make your selection process easier and more rewarding.

At the same time, as products lose their appeal they are phased out or replaced with new more-updated options. This ensures that the spacious Fulton Design Center can showcase the choices that will prove to be the most valuable for you and your family.

Opportunities to browse: With so many choices, it would be hard to make all of your home decisions on the spot. So Fulton Homes offers two browse nights every month – on the first and third Thursday evenings. With designers there to provide insights and answer questions, you can take your time exploring your choices in a no-pressure environment. Fulton Home’s online design also provides chances to review many of your options and make some preliminary selections.

Skilled designers: Your personal designer will help you make the right decisions for your home. Their experience with many other homes and homeowners will stand you in good stead when you need information or advice. Our designers are trained to help make the decision process easy and fun.

When you choose your new Fulton Home, everyone at the Fulton Design Center will do everything possible to help you make it the home you’ve always dreamed about. We look forward to seeing you!

Working with a Design Center

Posted on by

Design Center 005When you walk into a design center such as the Fulton Design Center shown here, you have a choice – to feel overwhelmed or to prepare ahead of time to turn the visit into a pleasure. A good design center serves as a one-stop shop for every option that will make your new home uniquely yours. From flooring to lighting to creating the perfect kitchen for you, a design center is like walking into your own version of HGTV.

You have many decisions to make, so take advantage of everything a design center can offer to make the process easier and fun. To start, wander through the models available. Do you see a kitchen you particularly like? What about a type of carpeting or a certain tile? Take a picture with your phone and jot down some notes of what you like and why. You can start planning your future home even before you buy it!

Do take the time to take a look at various magazines or online resources for home design. Pinterest provides a great resource for ideas. We welcome you to check out our Pinterest boards at: http://www.pinterest.com/fultonhomes/ They are designed to provide ideas for every room in your Fulton home, as well as additional tips for moving, selling your old home, entertaining and even keeping your kids happy in the summer.

Finally, visit the Fulton Design Center during one or more of our browse nights: every first and third Thursday evening of the month. This gives you a chance to take your time looking at all of your choices, talking to our exceptional design team, and starting to decide what options you want in your new Fulton Home. We look forward to seeing you there.

Home Office with Style

Posted on by

Corsica Model at Ironwood Crossing 001With a home office, style can be just as important or even more important than function. As an integral part of your home, office space should appeal to the same aesthetic that you use in the rest of your home. Colors, furniture, accessories and lighting need to work for your projects while still presenting the feeling you want your home to convey.

This home office, from the Fulton Homes Corsica model at Ironwood Crossing, comes into view the minute you walk into the home. If your home’s first impression occurs with your home office, more than ever you want it to represent your style.

Take a look at the different ways this home office sends a message about the homeowner. The desk has strong modern lines, and positioning it facing front makes it even more powerful. The cabinet set behind the desk allows files, papers and office supplies to stay hidden, maintaining a home-like feel even if it is a fully-functional office.

The old-fashioned leather wing chair on the left provides a touchstone of tradition, as well as providing a comfortable seat for a guest. By having this chair behind the desk rather than in the front, the homeowner can chat with a visitor and the desk is off to the side rather than serving as a barrier.

Accessories and art demonstrate a contemporary flair, and colors stay neutral with the exception of the two glass vases on the window between the home office and the living room. Low maintenance plants add a note of warmth.

Functional and livable, this home office can serve multiple purposes while helping to contribute to the comfort and style of this Fulton Home.

Listelles add Personality

Posted on by

Listels Design Center 027Would you enjoy the impact of a strong tile design for your kitchen backsplash or shower? If your design dreams are limited by your budget, incorporating a stripe of listelles can provide the bang for fewer bucks.

You may not be familiar with listelles, but the pre-designed and cut stone or tile patterns give you the opportunity to create an interesting and unique wall or backsplash without greatly increasing your costs for materials or installation. That’s because these pieces come pre-cut and arranged on webbing to keep them much easier to install than a design created on site.

Take a look at a few of the listelles available at the Fulton Design Center. Whether you prefer a dramatic geometric such as the choice on the lower left or something more organic such as the vine design in the top row, fourth from the left, adding one or two rows of listelles can really add a wow factor to a simple tile or stone installation.

There are two approaches to incorporating a listelle into your tile or stone design. You can start by reviewing the listelle options and then select the background tile or stone that suits your choice. Or sometimes it’s easier to start with a tile that suits your other design decisions and then visit our selection of listelles to discover just the right one to suit your taste in the rest of the room.

Your grout choice will also fill in the gaps in the listelle of your choice, helping to integrate it into the final installation. Visit the Fulton Design Center to take a closer look at our rich selection of listelles and determine the right choice for your new Fulton Home.

Hardwood Flooring

Posted on by

Hardwood Design Center 058With a classic and timeless look, hardwood flooring is hard to beat. Hardwood flooring, with its long life, flexible background for any décor, and variety of tones and finishes, can work in any room in your home. At the Fulton Design Center, take the time to investigate our hardwood options for flooring.

Fulton Homes offers a choice of Shaw, Armstrong or Holland Hardwoods brands for flooring, all three with a long-term and well-deserved reputation for quality materials and construction. Hardwood flooring has been designed to last, and it has a significant impact on resale value and speed. But the main reason to select hardwood flooring comes from the elegant appearance of this choice.

Many of today’s hardwood finishes tolerate more wear due to modern coatings. But hardwood flooring gains personality with wear. If you’ve ever visited a historic home, you may have noticed that those hardwood floors can last through generations of use, and a few scratches and dents don’t detract from the way this flooring creates an environment of tradition.

With hardwood flooring, changes in décor are easier, as wood makes a perfect background for any combination of colors and style. Hardwood provides the perfect background for area rugs, adding an additional layer to your home’s design.

Hardwood flooring isn’t for everyone. When you’re ready to choose flooring for your new Fulton Home, talk to your designer at the Fulton Design Center to determine if hardwood is a good choice for you and your family.

As you will find out when you talk to others who have chosen hardwood flooring, it’s an option you won’t regret. To see the full range of Fulton Homes’ hardwood flooring, visit the Fulton Design Center on one of our browse nights: the first and third Thursday evening of every month.

Painted Kitchen Cabinets

Posted on by

Design Center 003There’s a fresh clean look about painted cabinets in a kitchen. They bring light into a space yet still work well with black or stainless appliances. With the black countertops shown here combined with the black and white marble backsplash, this kitchen has the perfect combination of traditional and modern.

design center 002003Painted cabinets today take advantage of some of the options you see with stained cabinets such as glazes to create a more three-dimensional appearance. Take a look at the finish on these cabinets, from one of the kitchen vignettes at the Fulton Design Center.

The detailed trim on the cabinet doors combined with a rich crown molding option offer the perfect surfaces to showcase the dark glaze on these off-white cabinets. The rubbed bronze knobs and pulls suit this inviting style.

If you are considering hardwood flooring in your kitchen, or laminate or tile with a hardwood look, painted cabinets bring a positive contrast between the cabinets and flooring. Adding the dark countertops provides a strong delineation and keeps the kitchen looking interesting.

Old farmhouse kitchens often sported painted cabinets because it was easy to keep them clean and a new surface was only a can of paint away. But with today’s cabinet finishes, a quick wipe with a damp cloth will keep this kitchen sparkling.

With painted cabinets your color and décor options are almost unlimited. Bring in bright jewel tones, earthy colors or pastels and this kitchen provides the perfect background. Enjoy the beauty and flexibility of painted cabinets in your new Fulton Home. For more ideas visit the Fulton Design Center or the Fulton Homes Design Online center at https://edc.envisionoptions.com/welcome/browser.aspx?oid=506&iid=8007295&type=brw&src=edc&toid=505.

Little Touches Make Kitchen Pop

Posted on by

Corsica Model at Ironwood Crossing 009A smart, functional kitchen can also be lovely. This room, from the Fulton Homes Corsica model at Ironwood Crossing, demonstrates some of the best features a kitchen can offer when the goal is to combine practicality with style.

Let’s start with the cabinets. While glass-fronted doors add appeal to a space, many cooks worry that their cabinets are often just not tidy enough to make glass work for them. By choosing only one cabinet door – the angled one – for a glass front, this kitchen owner can place just the right dishes and bowls in this space to create the impression that every cabinet is this inviting.

Take a look at the type of glass on this cabinet. The vertical lines provide some shielding from seeing exactly what the inside holds and at the same time contribute another design element. Also, this type of glass is less likely to show fingerprints.

The glossy backsplash adds another pop of texture to this kitchen. While the tile and sealed grout make for an easy clean-up of any splashes, the grey, white and light coral tones provide a subtle element of color to the space.

Notice also the high-profile faucet. The clean look and strong curve provides another positive design element, while the skilled kitchen chef recognizes the height advantage when filling large pots. This oversize sink is ready for any culinary adventure.

Finally, the comfortable island invites family and friends to spend time in the kitchen talking to the cook after school or during parties. Overall this kitchen provides high style in its finishes yet still remains functional and welcoming for everyone.