Home design: It’s your choice

Redesigning your home can be stressful, and it can be hard to figure out exactly what direction you want your design to go.

“When you get into a space, it can be really exciting,” interior designer Amber Hodgins Thibault said, “but it can also be really overwhelming.”

Hodgins Thibault, who is based in Hyde Park, said a lot of her clients have told her they get lost in the design process.

Waterbury-based designer Teri Maher said it’s best to ask questions of yourself. What do you want to use the space for?

“Interior design is like solving a problem,” Maher said.

For example, when designing a kitchen, she said, do you like to cook or do you eat out? Do you have kids who will sit at the table to do their homework?

The answers can help you figure out the layout of the space, and then you can move on to the details.

In the greater Stowe-Waterbury area, a variety of trends have emerged lately.

Hodgins Thibault said she’s seeing a lot of people going for a kind of “industrial reclaimed” style, which uses old technologies and repurposes barn doors to produce a rustic style.

“It’s an easy style to adapt here because we have barns everywhere and we already have that natural environment,” she said, “but I think that a lot of that tends to be very masculine and heavy after a while.”

Of her clients — whose tastes vary — Maher said she sees two general trends: On one side, she sees families who have vacation homes in the area and want more rustic styles; on the other side, she has young Burlington couples who favor a more modern style.

“The people in Burlington want a little more edgy,” she said.

And the seasonal homeowners tend to want more of a ski-country feel, and she likes the variety.

Hodgins Thibault, who recently helped design Cork Wine Bar’s new Stowe location, said it’s good for a space to be versatile.

Often, she sees people turning away from bright and bold colors, opting instead for more neutral gray or white.

“They’re using those brighter colors more as accents and not ‘I’m going to paint my living room all red’ type of thing,” Hodgins Thibault said. “Nobody does that anymore.”

In addition, she sees more people using brass finishes, rather than the bronze she saw in the past, but not the antique style that was big in the 1980s and 1990s.

Instead, she said, people are beginning to use a more contemporary style of brass that was big in the 1950s and ’60s.

But a person’s perfect style is completely their own, Hodgins Thibault said, and it could easily be a mix of rustic and contemporary.

Maher said that, among her clients, she has noticed a preference for locally- and American-made furniture that is comfortable, but she thinks it’s also important to make your home a reflection of yourself.

That’s why she favors an eclectic style that mixes stylish and well-made furniture with items that have a sentimental quality.

“There’s always Grandma’s chair or some piece of art they picked up on their honeymoon or in their travels,” she said.