Are you looking to make your bathroom more accessible, safe and keep it stylish? Understanding the ADA Standards Guidelines and incorporating bathroom grab bars into your design can make a significant difference. These standards apply to commercial and places of public accommodation. Residential homes are not required to meet these standards. However, these guidelines provide an important standard to ensure correct and effective user ergonomics. We at Universal Interiors use these standards and tailor them to suit the needs of our clients.

The selection of the shower fixtures takes place long before the plumber arrives because there is more to think about than brushed or polished. Especially when it comes to the shower. Plumbing codes currently state that showers can no longer have separate hot and cold faucets; all water must go through one mixing valve. This change led us to the current style of shower fixtures we commonly see now that have one knob that both turns the water on and off and determines the temperature of the water.

Every year Pantone and name brand paint companies unveil a color of the year and color trends for the coming year. While it may sound advertorial, a lot of effort goes into deciding the color trends. Experts travel the world following fashion, music and culture to determine what color(s) we will want to see in our clothing, on our walls or in our fabrics.

Interior design, like many professions, requires training, education, and customer service. We spend years building relationships with vendors and weeding out the excellent from the subpar. We research product reliability, sourcing, environmental imprints, and more. These are just some of the tools we use when we are hired for a remodel.

The next project on the docket was to install a hand rail at the step down leading to the living room. The original idea was a wood railing but the more we discussed our options I kept coming back to the swan. In the end we installed a brass railing, typical in other parts of the building, and in place of stiles we installed glass panels with, you guessed it, swans!

So much of what interior designers do is small stuff. A lot of small stuff. Individually they don’t look like much but putting all those small moving parts together is the challenge we face every day. And we love it. Think jigsaw puzzle. If one piece gets lost it leaves a hole in the picture and that is exactly what the wrong coffee table would do since it is the centerpiece of the living room.