Diane Paparo - How to Finish Fine Furniture

Irwin Weiner ASID - Studio furniture maker and interior designer Diane Paparo sat down with Design2Share recently and kindly shared with us her tips on where to begin when it comes to dealing with wood finishes, stains, and treatments. It's one of those practical decorating considerations that most people "wing it," but we wanted to hear what a strong furniture maker had to say. Diane has designed furniture for fine homes around the world - even the executive office suites at Revlon. Let's see how someone who combines luxury, quality, beautiful detailing, and thoughtful functionality handles furniture finishes.

Choosing a furniture finish can be a tall order. First, you'll want to consider the design scheme and how the finish can be integrated into the whole, but you'll also want to think about maintenance and repair.

1. Let's tackle color first. You have four options: natural, stained, dyed, and painted. Some woods are naturally beautiful with just a clear protective finish, but most look richer when they're stained. Stains give you the option of deepening a wood's natural color or mimicking another wood's color. 

Stains don't penetrate the furniture's surface deeply; they lhave a transparency that enhances the grain. Stains can also accentuate imperfections, so inspect the finish carefully.

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5 Rug Favorites from Diane Paparo Studios

Irwin Weiner ASID - Custom rugs really elevate home decor. It's sometimes difficult to get the message across to clients that many rooms need a good "floor show" to tie in all the other disparate elements of a room together and create a broader harmony. While one should never try to pick a rug first and say, Now we'll decorate the rest of the room around the colorway and patterns in this rug, rugs are plentiful enough that one should leave special flooring as a finishing touch to room decor. Let me nominate Diane Paparo and her boldly-patterned line of studio area rugs and runners as excellent custom-made flooring candidates for your home. I've selected a few of Diane's imaginative rugs as my favorites; click on each photo for more information.

When I design rugs, the design may say one thing on paper, but in "real life" it's the adjustments I make before it goes into production that speaks volumes. I make many samples before the final rug is added to the line because the physical practicalities of hand-knotting affects the execution of the end design.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Tomorrow's post will feature an interview with Diane, and she'll give us the scoop on how to go about choosing wood finishes, stains, and treatments for home furnishings. We get lots of questions at Design2Share on this subject, and Diane's expertise in furniture making will come in handy for our readers!

Lotus Runner: Danish Morning Interlace Area Rug: Marine

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