Paint and wallpaper are the most common way to treat walls, but there is another way that adds texture, movement and glow without using paper–faux finishing. Faux literally means fake and generally these finishes are meant to replicate other materials, like leather, stone, wood, or tile. Faux finishers use a hand-applied glaze, which can be busy (heavy marbleizing), or subdued (strie or mottled). There are papers that reproduce faux finishes, but they can never achieve the depth of a talented faux finisher, color choices are limited, and they can never be as easy to clean as a genuine faux (genuine fake?) finish.

Doing children’s rooms is very nostalgic. I can let my inner six-year old take over, and create the cozy, playful and serenely secure environment of an idyllic childhood. An angelic 6-year-old girl is the proud owner of the room on the left, completed recently. Positioning the bed in front of the window added to the perceived space and created a nook for reading. Every element–the animal theme on the windows, pillows and pictures, the colored carpet, the amusing lamps, the elaborately whimsical chandelier–add to the innocent, carefree effect. Children soon move on to the travails of adolescence, of course, and the room below housed a teen now at college. A hint of the playfulness remains, but it’s allied with a sophistication typified by the toile on the windows, repeated on the quilted coverlet, called a matelasse in France. The refined ottomans covered in a jaunty textured plaid also reflect this duality. The yellow and reddish tones give the room a comfy warmth on even the most dreary winter days.

I’ve posted before about the best way to incorporate flat screens into a room. Here’s another solution that positions a flat screen above a fireplace. The double hearth fireplace in this addition to a recently renovated home in South Orange faces both the kitchen and family room. The flat screen fits elegantly in on the side that faces the family room.

Designing kitchen backsplashes is one of my favorite challenges. Usually one of the last elements of a new kitchen to be installed, it can make or break the overall design. The integration of color and texture, the choice and quality of materials, and of course the design theme all come together to create a functionally useful and aesthetically pleasing kitchen focal point. Here are several backsplashes I’ve finished recently, with different materials, patterns and goals. Above is a renovated kitchen in South Orange that contains extensive architectural detail, so I designed the backsplash in an understated way to compliment these details. The use of metal accents against the stone tile adds dimension to the design. On the right is in a guesthouse kitchen in the Adirondacks. It takes as inspiration the idea of a picture frame. The frame is made-up of frosted glass tiles, accentuated by a border of mosaic tiles. The field within the frame is made of brick tile shape stone. In a larger kitchen this look would be overpowering; in this small kitchen it’s just right. On the left is a project in a Short Hills kitchen whose goal was to combine both timelessness and practicality. The materials used were ceramic glazed tiles and a combination of Carrera marble and black granite as accents and details.

If you have any questions or comments about backsplashes, please send them to me by clicking on Ask Catherine, near the top of the column to the right of this post. All three of these projects featured tile sourced at Short Hills Marble and Tile, my collaborator of many years. You can find them on the web at www.shorthillstile.com