the block

Quarterly Blog Review

March 20, 2016 by Naomi

Can you believe that a quarter of the year is already over? The past three months have absolutely flown by at IIHS and we certainly hope you have had a great year so far!

At IIHS we have been busy creating new content to inspire you, no matter if you are a home stager, an inspiring home stager or just interested in interior design!

This is a summary of our most loved blog posts of the year so far! You guys have been giving us some awesome feedback and we can tell how much you are really loving the blogs!

The first one we are going to look at is Feature Property – Inner City Charm. This traditional, renovated suburban home is absolutely lovely and an awesome family home! It has been staged in a way that creates a warm and homey feel. A wide variety of colours have been used to transform this home including greys, whites, oranges, blues and rose gold. We love giving you guys inspiration, examples and stand out pieces to work from and this home is great for that!

Next was Kona Colour of the Year 2016! This blog truly opened all of our eyes to the power of yellow. Everywhere you look this year there will be kona walls, stools, stables, lounges and feature pieces. Having such a lovely colour promoted in the design world may challenge some designers but will certainly brighten up any area that it is placed in!

After Kona there was Vignette Workshop with The Block Twins, Alisa and Lysandra! This blog and video compilation was a condensed workshop that Naomi Findlay had with Alisa and Lysandra from The Block, all about the best ways to use vignettes. We decided to share this workshop with you guys to help inspire you and provide some more information about how to style vignettes in a really simple and visual way!

Finally, there have been a bunch of love around the post Home Staging Prices: how much should I charge for home staging? This blog is a need to know topic, how much do I charge? While it is impossible to know exactly how much to charge when you are starting out, this blog will provide you with everything you need to consider before you start mapping out your prices!

We are looking forward to putting more content out into the world of home staging and hope you are excited to see what we have install!

Lysandra and Alisa on IIHS Colour Design

July 29, 2014 by Naomi

I thought it was about time that you heard from me again and my continual progress through the modules with the International Institute of Home Staging. The thing I love most about IIHS is that it’s so simple to understand. It’s all written in laymen’s terms, which is what I need to be able to understand what is being said.

Today I’ll be talking about Module 4, which explores the principals and the terminologies behind light and colour in your home. I’ll be focusing more on colour in your home during this blog. What I’m discovering is it’s so much more than just selecting a colour from the paint store, which in hindsight seems like a simple process. The next time I select a paint colour for a project or my home, I will be armed with the knowledge and principals to help me get it right. So I’m going to relay what I have learnt in Module 4, here the top 3 things that I learnt about colour in your home.

The first thing I learnt is that there really is no set rule when it comes to selecting the right colour for your home. The colour of a room can instantly create an emotion as soon as you enter, whether consciously or subconsciously so it is important to get it right. It really is a matter of experimenting with colours, get lots of colour swatches from your paint store and experiment, experiment, experiment. There are so many different colours, tints and shades that can complicate your decision even more. Put the swatches up against your choice of flooring, furniture or window dressings until you are happy with a colour that fits.

A very interesting fact that I learnt through this module was that colour refers to the way our brain registers the different wavelengths of light entering our eyes. A single ray of light is made up of the spectrum of colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – all of which have their own wavelength.

You may have heard people use the word “Hue” before and this essentially means they are describing the pure nature of the colour such as green or blue and it is free from white, black or grey. When you hear the word “tint” being used it means that (let’s use blue as an example) when white is added to blue it create a “tint”. Another term used is “Shade” this refers to black being added to the blue to create a “Shade” of blue. That brings us to the next word “Tone” buy adding grey to blue it produces a “Tone” of blue.

There are 12 segments of the colour wheel, 3 primary, 3 secondary and 6 tertiary colours. I won’t go too much into this as it is fairly in-depth but it is useful for highlighting how colours relate to each other and which colours can be mixed to make new colours,colours relate to each other and which colours can be mixed to make new colours. Using the colour wheel (once you get your head around it) can be useful as it teaches you how to create a balanced colour scheme that will be complementary in your home.

Colour, like art, is very subjective and can be one of the most powerful elements of interior design. If you think about it, colour more than any other item or object in a room, can change the way you feel instantly. It is also a cost effective way to create an impact or give your room the change it’s looking for.

The Block Twins – What IIHS is teaching us!

June 1, 2014 by Naomi

Whoever thought becoming a student again could be so much fun? I am currently a couple modules into my design course through the International Institute of Home Staging and have learnt about the importance of size, scale, proportion and balance. I guess this is something I had never given too much thought to, well consciously anyway. Alisa and I were able to put rooms together, but we had never really considered in depth the importance of these elements.

The first element to module 4, was size. I learnt that size was based mostly on instinct. When you walk into a room you may not know the metric measurements, but you instinctively know whether if feels big, small, clutter or airy.

The second element was scale. I am learning that all principals and elements of design blend and correlate with each other. Scale is one of the most difficult elements to understand. Scale works in with the size of a room, objects, ceiling heights and layouts of a room. Alisa and I failed during living/dining week on Fans vs Favs in relation to our scale.

We had grand ceiling heights and the room was open and airy. We under estimated the size of the space and subsequently bought furniture that was too small for the room. On completion of the room, we both stood back and loved what we’d created. The judges felt that the rug was too small for the space (they said it look like a tea towel) and the coffee table was insignificant. They believed that the couch was also lost in the room.

Upon returning to “The Block” and having a subjective look, we realised that the scale was very out of proportion to the room. It was at that exact point, that I understood the importance of getting the scale right – and it ultimately cost us the win for that room.

The proportion of a room is strongly related to the size and scale of the space. When designing any room you will no doubt faces some challenges. When I think of proportion, I think of the second bedroom during “Sky high”. It was long and skinny and quite a difficult space to use. By positioning the wardrobes against the longest wall and placing the appropriate sized bed in between, we turned an awkward layout, into a very useable space.

The final element is balance. In design, balance creates a feeling of equilibrium, or in layman’s terms, evenness or symmetry. There are different forms of symmetry; axialsymmetry, radial symmetry and asymmetric symmetry. The perfect way to describe balance (axial) is to envisage a bedroom. How often would you go into a bedroom, and if you put a line down the middle of the bed, it would be a mirror image of each other. Balance doesn’t mean that it has to be an exact match on either side of the room; it’s about distributing the visual weight of objects within a space to achieve a feeling of equilibrium. It is the best way to achieve balance within a space and often leaves you with a welcoming and comfortable feel. Without balance things tend to go sideways.

I don’t blame you if you’re trying to get your head wrapped around the above elements; I was the same. If you are like me, you’re probably thinking, “yeah but isn’t proportion the same as scale?” Then add balance and size to the mix and it seems as though it all blends into one. To a certain extend they do, but they all have their place when it comes to designing a room. If this doesn’t make sense, then I recommend you do what I’m doing and do some study with IIHS. Even though I’ve only been studying with IIHS for a few months, it’s finally all starting to make sense and I cannot wait to start the next modules.

Check out Lysandra’s Block confessions here.

Check out the highlights of the last IIHS workshop with Alisa and Lysandra here.

Click here to start studying with IIHS!

The Block twins Alisa and Lysandra work the shop

May 26, 2014 by Naomi

Twins Alisa and Lysandra, two-time contestants of The Block, spent a day in and out of interiors stores to revise and strengthen their design and business skills.

There’s no doubt Alisa and Lysandra have plenty of talent and good eyes for design. Their winning transformations on The Block are testament to their amazing instincts which, with time, will only get stronger when paired with a foundation of knowledge.

Click the image to view the video!

As Lysandra recently wrote in her guest post , instinct is great but it’s also helpful to learn the principles that sit behind why a room looks good. The twins undertook an Institute of Home Staging mentoring package with me following the completion of two courses—The Art of Home Staging (Course 1) and Advanced Home Staging (Course 2)—and a workshop.

This video shows Alisa a Lysandra undertaking a one-day workshop with me, click here to check it out.
The courses enhance students’ skills and knowledge on the art and business of making homes attractive to buyers. While The Art of Home Staging is great for the basics, I highly recommend those going into business to take the Advanced Home Staging course as it offers a deeper insight into home staging principles, including specific modules on colour and light and living spaces as well as dealing with clients through consultations and installations.

The purpose of the above workshop was to revise what the twins had learnt in both courses. The first half focused on the modules of work they had completed, hence lots of sketching, notes and coffee!

The second half of the workshop looked at developing a design and styling business. This goes beyond the actual skills of home staging and covers things like what offerings to have, what products to deliver, and how to price them, which is why we visited a few interiors stores to get a fuller picture.

Another aspect many business owners forget is how to value and manage their time. When you’re passionate about styling, it’s so easy to fall into a time trap (ever been absorbed by looking at swatches for hours?) when you need to learn to prioritise and work effectively. For interiors specialists packaging and using your intellectual property is a key element as well.

Since the twins now run their own online homewares store, Alisa & Lysandra Collections, and their careers will for the foreseeable future be in the interiors sector, it was not only important to establish the principles of design, but to make sure they were confident in going forward as a business.

Click here to see highlights of the day.

What do you need extra help on?

Lysandra from The Block confesses

April 30, 2014 by Naomi

I have a confession to make. After a year and a half of being a contestant on The Block, it is only now that I finally get my first opportunity to sit down and get my head stuck into learning the core principles of interior design. It’s so funny that Alisa and I have been designing winning rooms on The Block without learning the principles of interior design.

People think that we know what we are talking about because we have that natural ability to put a room together. Alisa and I have never pretended that we are interior design gurus, but hopefully after completing our course with the International Institute of Home Staging we will be well on our way.

I remember one of the first questions we got asked when we got onto The Block: Sky High was, “What style would you say describes you?” My response was, “Ummm, we don’t really know. Let’s call it the Alisa and Lysandra Style.” Looking back we had absolutely no idea about anything, we didn’t know the difference between contemporary or modern, for crying out loud.

Yes we have done two seasons of The Block, but the rooms that we produced were by complete instinct, not because we had an idea about what we should and shouldn’t be doing.

I sat down on my laptop and opened my first module, Design Skills 1. By the end of this module I am finally able to describe the core principles of design and how they vary from one another. It’s all well and good for Alisa and I, to be able to put a room together and make it look good (and even have people exclaim ‘Wow!’ when they walk in the room), but if we are serious about our career as designers, it is paramount that we learn the core principals of design.

The first module covers the core principals of size, scale, balance and proportion. Completing this module makes us excited about what more we could produce when we combine our experience of two seasons on The Block with the knowledge we have gained so far in our IIHS course.

Alisa and I have been very fortunate to have Naomi Findlay, principal of International Institute of Home Staging, take us under her wing as a design mentor. Bring on the next module I say!

About Alisa and Lysandra:

Identical twins Alisa and Lysandra are best known as winners of renovation and design show, The Block. After winning The Block: Sky High and being crowned the Bathroom and Kitchen Queens, they were asked back as favourites for a second series, The Block Fans VS Faves. They have now launched their new stylish online homewares store, Alisa & Lysandra Collections.

Surviving “The Block”

March 23, 2014 by Naomi

It all started when I said to Kenny, “I’m going to go and buy a video camera so we can make an audition video for The Block”. Next thing we know we are selected for the show, and following a whirlwind of photo shoots and meetings, we found ourselves on The Block: Fans VS Faves.

We were excited, nervous and determined at the same time! In our first 24 hours on The Block, we were given the challenge to design, create and style a space as a room in a New York style loft. Competing against the clock and against Kyal and Kara was not easy!

If you are a Block fan you will know that Kyal and Kara pipped us at the post and won the challenge. We left The Block broken-hearted but with our heads held high because our room, although not exactly how I wanted it, was something that we were both very proud of achieving in such little time.

Since being eliminated in The Block challenge all I thought about was styling and renovating. I decided to look for an online course that was inspiring, fun and informative to learn more about staging, styling and flipping houses. It was here I stumbled across Naomi Findlay from the International Institute of Home Staging.

After enrolling into Module 1 I noticed straight away the text books were easy to read and the founder Naomi is a real person that is continually doing her own projects which are nothing short of breath taking. It’s pictures like hers that inspire me to grow into a great stylist.

I’ve been invited by Naomi to come and have a behind the scenes look at what exactly it takes to be a home stager and home stylist. Let me tell you, it doesn’t look easy! I’ll keep you updated along my journey through the International Institute of Home Staging course and fill you in on what Kenny and I
experience as we see is involved in Naomi’s impressive staging transformations.

Stay tuned! -Jesse from The Block