Hi Everyone! I am on vacation from organizing this week, so luckily, closet designer to the stars, Lisa Adams of LA Closet Boutique, is here to share some closet inspiration. Personally, I have a bit of an obsession with celebrity closets and I am always clipping images of them from magazines and posting them to my Tumblr blog, so I am so excited to welcome Lisa to Hatch!  Take it away Lisa…

In the last few years, well designed, luxurious closets have become status symbols.  Flip through the pages of home décor or entertainment magazines, and you can easily find features on plush, tricked-out celebrity closets.  If a custom closet is beyond your means, there are some easy and low cost ways of adding the same chic and luxurious touches to your closet. Here are some of my recommendations:

• ACCENTS: Pick a few plush looking accents from a bargain store or even the flea market or Salvation Army. From pillows and rugs to paintings and lamps, your eye will be drawn to that unique, maybe even antique piece.
• PAINT: Add a bright color to one wall of your closet to add spunk and high energy, or use cool shades like grays, blues and purples to promote relaxation.
• HANDLES & KNOBS: Find interesting handles and knobs to bring a touch of style and luxury to your closet.  There are fabulous leather and stainless steel options. Yard sales, flea markets, and even hardware stores can be treasure troves!
• MIRROR: Add a full-length mirror to the dead space.  It’ll make the room feel bigger and be functional.
• SEATING: If you have the room, add a sitting area.  The seat could be used for lounging or for putting on your shoes.  A sitting area makes the closet a true living space.
• LIGHTING: Lighting is very important when choosing your outfit and getting dressed.  Pay attention to the lighting to make sure it is natural and not overpowering. Also, use natural lighting whenever possible, such as windows and skylights. It flatters more and saves on cost.
• DRAWER LINERS: Lining your drawers either with cedar, lavender or even pretty paper is a beautiful, cheap and a great motivator for keeping things neat and orderly.
• HANGERS: Don’t skimp on the hangers.  Make them uniform for each type of clothing.  It’s a good investment in the long run because your clothes retain their shape, and don’t snag or become ruined.
• BOOT TREES:  Invest in boot trees or boot shapers for maintaining their shape and to prevent cracking and creasing.  Your boots can then be displayed like a shoe store, and will have a longer lifespan.
• STACKABLE SHOE RACKS: Get your shoes off of the floor and organize them with chrome stackable racks.  With a simple expandable two-tiered design, you can store more shoes in a limited space.
• SLIDING SHELF DIVIDERS: Bookends for your closet, these sliding shelf dividers come in various heights and depths and are perfect to keep rows of sweaters stacked like in a boutique.
• DOUBLE HANGING RODS: Without having to overhaul your tight closet, these double rods add function to wasted space by providing two layers of hanging space at once.
  

If this list is too long for you, simply hire Lisa, or visit LAClosetDesign.com and scoop everything up in the one place!

Well, it took me awhile to get inspired today. Atlanta is about 20 degrees hotter than Hades right now, and it’s made a slug of me! Lately I’ve found myself clipping out a lot of red, blue and yellow and chucking them in my inspiration box. Here’s the board that resulted when I threw them all together:

One look I love in modern design is a neutral palette with a few accents in primary colors – a few pillows, a painting, a vase of sunflowers. They can give a room a perfect graphic punch.

I love this dynamic project from Bercy Chen Studio LP in Austin Texas, which they submitted to our Fresh New Spaces Group on Flickr. It looks to me like it was inspired by Cargotecture (you know, when architects build structures out of shipping containers). What I love about their work is that it still has that architecture school fearlessness, optimism and creativity that often gets drilled out of architects when they venture out into the real world. When I saw this picture, my first thought was “well, night architectural photography is always sexier, let’s see it in the light of day”…

Still pretty sexy. However, I have to wonder if Unhappy Hipsters is going to have a field day with that milk crate bicycle basket in the first photo. Here’s the description of the building:

1111 east 11th is a three story mixed use project in the revitalized 11th Street Corridor of Austin TX. The ground floor is divided between an art gallery and boutique retail outlet. The second floor is reserved for office tenants with residential spaces occupying the top floor.

Formally, the shifting floor plates align with area landmarks such as the Texas State Capitol and the UT Austin Tower. The form mimics the geological exfoliation of the central Texas landscape, which can be found at the `Enchanted Rock`, the Texas version of Australia’s Ayres Rock.

The resultant space is a series of unexpected terraces and canopies drawing one outdoors. The cantilevered second floor provides a respite of shade from the intense Texas sun at the entry. The floor plates step back at the rear of the structure allowing it to mediate between the commercial scale of the front and the residential in the back.

All images from Bercy Chen Studio LP

Thanks to Maya of VisuaLingual for tipping me off to this fantastic house that is a total steal. I grew up very close to this house, and my good pal Jennifer Jowaisas lived right down the street. I had never seen it before. It was the personal home of modern early modern architect Ray Roush, and it’s in Anderson Township, Ohio (a Cincinnati burb, about 10-15 minutes from downtown). Roush served as a mentor to Michael Graves, who later wrote the forward to a book about Roush and his colleague, Carl Strauss.

This house seems to have gone into foreclosure and is on the market for $135,000. The original realtor, Susan Rissover, would love to see it preserved so much that even though it is no longer her listing, she is making people aware of it on her website. It is a wonderful modern preservation opportunity. While Susan took these pictures in 2007, she went back to check out the property a few months ago and discovered that it had been vandalized, which makes us both sick to our stomachs. While it wasn’t anything that sounded terribly expensive to fix, original fixtures were stolen or damaged. To learn more, check out cincinnatimodern.com. Oh, and P.S. Susan lists the pros and cons of the house, and from spending a lot of time in the area as a kid, I can tell you there are big scary snakes on all around Five Mile Road. I don’t know if any of them were poisonous, but they are big, and they made me avoid going outside at Jennifer’s house as much as possible.

As someone who’s a bit obsessed with inspiration boards, I spend a good chunk of my free time drooling over the ones I find all over my favorite design blogs. I like to think that looking at and making inspiration boards will help me be less indecisive when it comes to decorating my own home. How’s that working out so far? I bought my house almost a year ago and have barely decorated it. C’est la vie. Anyway, today I thought to myself, “self, wouldn’t it be great if you created and posted a weekly inspiration board on Hatch?” So that’s what I will attempt to do! I’m starting off with a red and black office that kind of makes me want to replace my brand new desk with the awesome Blu Dot Desk 51. See what just happened there? Indecisiveness!

Julia Rothman for Hygge & West Pieces in White Wallpaper, $105
Blu Dot 2d:3d Wall Mount Magazine Rack, $99
Vitra Nelson Ball Clock White, $335
Lights Up! Woody Floor Lamp, $306
Vitra Uten Silo, $350
Emeco Navy Chair Semi-Upholstered, $795
Jonas Damon 2B Ltd. Edition Vacuum Tube Radio, $350
FUZ Corky Corkboard, $29
Blu Dot Desk 51, $699
Pablo Duo Wastebasket, $52