What’s on the inside is what counts to Joyce Keeney.
Keeney founded Interior Concepts, an interior design company in Hockessin, 25 years ago and has watched her business ebb and flow with the ever-changing world of home décor.
Interior design follows fashion trends and a good designer knows how to incorporate today’s trends to be tomorrow’s timeless elements, said Keeney of Hockessin.
The challenge is to create a room that is current without being trendy or tacky, said Eileen Scully of Newark, also a designer at the store. The goal is to create a room that stands the test of time – a room to weather tumultuous trends like animal prints and chintz.
That is no easy task, said Keeney.
However, reproduction furniture can help give rooms that enduring touch. That is why
Interior Concepts recently began offering customers replicas of furniture on display at the Winterthur Museum, home to thousands of pieces collected by Henry Francis du Pont.
An antique adds an ageless quality to any room, said Keeney, even if a homeowner relaxes in a reproduction of a Philadelphia Easy Chair produced in 1750 to watch “Lost” on a flat screen, plasma TV.
“It’s more than just something to sit on,” she said. “It’s a conversation piece, an artwork.”
Many people purchase replica antiques for their heirloom quality and historical value, she said.
The du Pont family’s furniture has stood the test of time, said Keeney, but interior designers must keep up with trends or they may become antiques.
Housing styles and customer tastes are constantly changing. Today’s homes are bigger, with fewer walls than a generation ago, and that makes placing furniture and matching paints a challenge. Matching living or dining room sets was a sign of wealth a decade ago, but homeowners today want mixed collections.
But the biggest change is the move toward comfortable furniture. Homeowners want couches and chairs they can collapse into after a long work day, and furniture that will function for the lifestyles of today’s families.
Change keeps the work interesting, Rafail said, and the second she glimpses a new product or fabric design she begins thinking about how to incorporate it in a home.
“It’s like a movie reel, with furniture and paint patterns running through your head,” said Scully.
It is impossible to be an interior designer without having an artistic side, Keeney said. Color, light and proportion are not confined to a canvas. They play an equally important role in a room, but interior designers have one factor to consider that a painter does not: people will live in their artwork, she said.
“We see that room with white walls coming alive,” she said. “How can you not appreciate a beautiful room?”
