Home Design Forecast for 2011

Sarah Van Arsdale - The watchword in real estate has always been: location, location, location. Anything else about a home can be changed: a bedroom can be added, a kitchen renovated, a garage torn down to make room for a garden. But you can do precisely nothing about the number of miles from the nearest grocery store or blocks to the library. And the surrounding neighborhood will make the value of the house plunge or skyrocket, regardless of the square footage.

This year, the watchword in home design seems to be: the economy, the economy, the economy. We're all feeling the percussive echoes of the crash of two years ago, no matter what field we're working in. And the tighter times are affecting not only how much we're spending on decorating and designing our homes, but also the choices we make about how we're decorating—everything from color to furnishings.

To get a sense of the design forecast for 2011 in three different areas of the United States, we talked with three design companies, one each in Georgia, Nevada, and Washington, DC

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Albert Pinto: Table Settings

Irwin Weiner - Are you one of those super-organized people who have all your holiday gift purchases wrapped up before Thanksgiving? I can only marvel at that. I wait until the last minute, but one thing is for certain - I will be purchasing a few copies of Alberto Pinto's Table Settings for good friends. It's filled with essential inspiration for tabletop fans.

Alberto Pinto is a highly respected specialist in photography, interior architecture and design, tabletop, and entertaining. I was not surprised that his generosity of spirit drives his love for entertaining and surrounding his guests with beauty, luxury, and whimsy. He respects guests who smoke, too, providing elegant containers for cigarettes at the placesettings.

His trick to making memorable tables is having vast collections of silver, china, stemware, linens, and other decor items on hand at his various residences - a Paris flat, a summer home overlooking the Mediterranean, and a NYC apartment. Company coming over? Not to worry. Mr. Pinto takes an average of 15 minutes to expertly style and dress a table.

He dips into his well-organized cupboards, pantries, and storage areas (beautifully photographed for the book, and certainly putting everything I've seen about storage to shame) and comes up with a glorious juxtaposition of objects which ranges from simple and refined to gloriously festive.

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