2019 Home + Remodeling Show: Dulles Expo Center: 4320 Chantilly Shopping Center, Chantilly; $12 (adults); $9 (seniors); $3 (children 6-12
“Your interior is your most personal expression realized,” says Tyler Wisler, a professional designer who has appeared on HGTV’s Design Stars. “Something that you should truly make your own.”
Wisler has worked with clients around the world: “millionaires, billionaires, people with a lot of money to spend,” he says. “That’s not normal life.” He believes that anyone can create their own unique space on any budget.
But how to get started? Wisler, who attended American University and Marymount University, will be on-hand at the 2019 Home + Remodeling Show at the Dulles Expo Center from Jan. 18-20, giving presentations on how to best realize your interior design vision. He shared a few of his personal tips with Northern Virginia Magazine in the lead-up to the show.
You were at the Home + Remodeling Show in 2017. What are you most looking forward to this year?
One of the reasons that I love the show is because I studied at American and graduated from Marymount. So it’s kind of like coming back home, if you will. I just think it’s a great crowd; I remember everybody just being so engaged. One thing I did like about the DC crowd, Northern Virginia crowd, was they’re very friendly, they’re very respectful, but they’re also very engaged. They did come prepared with questions and they are just a crowd that seems very eager to find out more.
What’s a common interior design mistake to avoid?
When you’re going furniture shopping, really easy, don’t buy a set. Don’t buy a set of furniture. Buying a set—yes, it’s kind of the easy way out—but buying a set, it shows absolutely no personality, no design, no nothing. It’s about as bad as it gets. There is absolutely no reason to ever buy a set of anything, ever. Never. Don’t do it.
How can people with small apartments or houses make the most out of their space?
People tend to have issues when it comes to space and space planning and visualizing, because scale is one of those things that can play in your favor or really turn a place upside down. There’s really so many good apps out there that allow you to take a picture of your room and drop in the furniture.
But, in the same respect, make sure that you’re getting pieces that are appropriate for you. Just because you have a smaller place, you still have to buy pieces of furniture that are going to be usable for you. Most people … you don’t sit upright on your sofa, because generally your sofa is probably the most used piece of furniture besides your bed. So as soon as you buy a sofa that’s 60 inches, you can’t even stretch yourself out comfortably. A normal, average-size person can’t actually lay out on that sofa and use it the way that they’re probably wanting to use it.
Why is interior design so important?
When somebody walks into your home, they are going to see who you are, they are going to hear who you are by the acoustics in the room, what kind of things you have going on—the sounds, the smells in the room, the lighting that you are using in the room. I emphasize upon everybody, all your senses are tingling when you walk in somewhere. So when you’re going into your home, you’re setting the tone for what kind of interior, what kind of experience you want people to have as well.
What home trend are you most excited about this year?
First of all, one of my talking points is actually about trending lightly, because I’m not really a big fan of trends. I think they’re fun, I think there are ways you can incorporate trends into interiors, but I always tell people to do it in various small doses, because the inherit meaning of a trend is that it is going to come and go.
The one thing that I do like though, is right now where we are in time, you can have a complete cross section of interiors that are current that were just done and you can’t date them, because I think now we are embracing a much more eclectic mix of items and we’re blending styles together to create something that is new and contemporary in the fact that it’s not just one note. Prior to this, things were very one note, they were very much about what that time reflected. And now it’s about incorporating new and old, hard and soft, different pieces from different eras. So you can’t pinpoint modern interiors as anything. That’s a trend that I like—sort of being timeless in the fact that it’s … more of the trends of things being truly unique and truly blended and truly individual.
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The post Tyler Wisler from HGTV’s ‘Design Stars’ shares interior design tips appeared first on Northern Virginia Magazine.