Originally coming on the scene with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, the SwitchBot Curtain Rod is a small device that can open and close almost any type of curtain. Attaching to the curtain rod between folds of fabric, it can be controlled via the SwitchBot phone app for individual movements or on preset schedules. From the app, users can program the curtains to open as a wake-up call in the morning, to close when they leave the house for work, or even just to open up for more backlight while on a virtual call. A built-in light sensor even allows the curtains to open and close automatically at sunrise and sunset based on the amount of light outside.

The tiny gadget packs a mighty punch, pushing up to 17 pounds worth of curtains across a rod. Tab, grommet, and ring top curtains are all no problem, and the SwitchBot wheels are designed to easily glide over the bump of telescopic rods. The smart mover can also be modified to fit into curtains attached to tracks.

This little device obviously fulfilled a latent public need, as it raised nearly $1.5 million during its first fundraising campaign. The product was shipped out to customers in early 2020 and quickly garnered praise from users, earning the Good Design Award and going on to become a finalist at the IDEA 2020 awards. In 2022, it also received the Red Dot Design Award as a simple yet extremely efficient gadget.

The SwitchBot Curtain Rod got a more recent update this year. Instead of removable clips that had to be separately attached with the first iteration, the SwitchBot 2 is self-contained with spring-loaded clips. The wheels also got an upgrade, being enlarged by 1.6 times — and taking inspiration from off-road vehicles — for smoother travel along the rod.

New add-on devices are also available to increase the SwitchBot’s productivity. A SwitchBot Hub Mini (available for $39) allows the bot to bridge to a home Wi-Fi network, allowing users to control the curtains outside the house, too. By itself, the SwitchBot connects via Bluetooth. Using the Hub Mini, users can also pair the bot with devices like Alexa and Google Assistant for easy voice control.

A hanging solar panel (available for $19) is also newly available as a compatible device. While the bot itself has a 3350 mAh battery big enough to control curtains for up to eight months, attaching the solar panel provides virtually unlimited power, eliminating the need to bother with changing batteries.

While some reviews complain about the bulky shape of the SwitchBot and its inability to blend in with most curtain fabrics, the overall product gets plenty of thumbs up from customers for its smart functionality and ease of use. The SwitchBot Curtain Rod 2 is currently on sale for $99 on the company website.

The post The Latest in Smart Home Technology: Smart Curtains first appeared on Dornob.

Use Lighting Wisely

Just as harsh, bright white overhead lighting can have an invasive, clinical feel, soft ambient lighting sends us subliminal signals that it’s time to unwind. An abundance of natural lighting is ideal for positive feelings of well-being as well as intense concentration, so make the most of your windows by choosing curtains and blinds that don’t cut off too much light during the day, like sheers or roman-style shades. Full spectrum LED light bulbs can also mimic the effect of daylight, if you find your available windows lacking. At the end of the day, turn off any lighting that leans blue in color, which can suppress the melatonin our brains produce as a natural sleep aid, and turn on warm, low lights in shades of yellow and amber.

Maintain Flows of Air and Movement

If you’re feeling stagnant, trapped, or claustrophobic, it’s time to change the flow of energy in your space. You can accomplish that in a few different ways – namely, by reducing clutter, bringing in fresh air, and changing the layout of your furniture to make it easier to physically move through the room. Simply opening your windows, letting the sunshine in, and cleaning the glass can make a world of difference, especially if you can get a cross breeze from one window or door to another.

Think about your patterns of movement in the space. Is your typical path intuitive and unimpeded, or are there obstacles you have to work around? Try eliminating objects that don’t get enough use and moving your furniture around until the room feels more spacious and easier to navigate. A deep cleaning can also do wonders for your mental health.

If this concept speaks to you, a book about feng shui can help you learn more about inviting positive energy into your home. Feng Shui for Healing by Rodika Tchi is a great place to start.

Make Calculated Color Choices

Color has a major impact on how any given space affects our mental well-being, but depending on your cultural upbringing, you may react to certain shades differently than other people. The important thing is to be aware of how color affects you, and which hues make you feel cheerful, energized, calm, content, worried, irritated, or depressed.

For instance, gray has been a major color trend for the past few years, but it can make many people feel gloomy. Bright red can be agitating, while neon yellow is invigorating. Purple reads as luxurious and noble to some, but in countries like Thailand and Brazil, it’s a color of mourning. When you’re choosing paint, flooring, textiles, and furniture for your space, think about the emotions each of these colors bring up for you, matching them to the moods you’re trying to set in individual rooms.

Affirm Your Connection to Nature

Humans evolved in constant contact with nature, and we need that contact to feel balanced and healthy, even (or especially) if we live in urban environments. Houseplants can be a big help, even if you don’t think of yourself as an especially attentive plant parent. Start with plants that can get by even when neglected, like snake plants, succulents, cast iron plants, and ZZ plants, and you might find that after a while, caring for your greenery becomes a sort of meditative task. Apps like Planta make it easy to log the plants you own, reminding you when it’s time to water or give them more light. Bouquets of fresh flowers, when replaced often, can also make for a bright spot in any room.

Another way to connect to nature through interior design is by choosing items with curving, organic shapes instead of hard angles and straight lines. Find items like wall art, couches and chairs, coffee tables, lamps, and throw pillows with pleasingly curvaceous silhouettes to mimic the shapes of natural forms and foster the feeling of a womb-like contentment.

Indulge Your Senses

Don’t forget about the power of scent, sound, taste, and texture when decorating your home or workspace. Create little vignettes where you can surround yourself with whatever you find most comforting, affirming, or motivating. For relaxation, you could set up a reading nook with a cozy chair, a silky throw blanket, your favorite scented candle, and a smart speaker to play some quiet music or ambient noise. For studying or concentration, give yourself inspirational things to look at, like images of your idols or poignant quotes, infuse the area with an invigorating aroma like lemon, peppermint, or jasmine, and give yourself something to fidget with while you’re thinking.

The post 5 Ways to Boost Your Mental Health Through Interior Design first appeared on Dornob.

Those looking for something in between regular old curtains and a custom-installed smart curtain system will find a few interesting options, including the SwitchBot. This add-on device can transform any curtains into smart curtains so you can stick with your favorite brands and fabrics. It’s also surprisingly small and doesn’t require special rods or rails to work.

The wireless SwitchBot installs in thirty seconds without any screws, nuts, or bolts. You just hang it over the curtain rod, set your preferences within the accompanying app, and let it do all the work. You don’t even have to pull out your phone to control it, as the system works seamlessly with Alexa, Google Home, and Siri.

The makers of the SwitchBot claim that “even the most eco-friendly air-conditioning consumes energy to cool your room. We can reduce energy consumption by minimizing temperature fluctuations in your room. Close the curtains to block out sunlight to keep your room cool. The SwitchBot Curtain has a built-in sunlight sensor to detect sunlight. This can help save energy by reducing the workload on your air-conditioning and heating. It can be set to automatically close during the day time in summer to block out the sunlight and keep your room cool. You can also have it automatically open during the day in winter to warm your room with sunlight.”

“You can also install the solar power strip add-on to charge the SwitchBot Curtain’s battery using sunlight, thus eliminating the need to recharge the battery. Don’t worry about ‘charging anxiety’ on the SwitchBot Curtain. Install and forget! Leverage technology to take care of the daily routines through automation and voice control. A ‘Lights Off’ scene turns off the light and draws the curtains [to] brighten the room naturally with sunlight. Or you can just say ‘Alexa/Ok Google/Hey Siri, give me sunlight.’”

Some of the ways you can make the most of the SwitchBot include setting them to open and close automatically at dawn and dusk, putting them on a random schedule to make it look like someone’s home when you’re away, and using them to protect your home against the harshest hours of sunlight, which can make your living spaces unbearably hot during the summer.

Crucially, the SwitchBot is also making it possible to adopt smart home technology without creating too much excess waste. Smart home features aren’t for everyone, of course, and if you don’t need them, great! But don’t knock them flat-out, as they can be especially useful for the elderly and people with disabilities. Products like the SwitchBot also don’t require you to replace things you already own in order to use them, and that’s a huge plus.

Get all the details on the official SwitchBot Kickstarter page.

The post SwitchBot Instantly Turns Any Curtains Into Smart Curtains first appeared on Dornob.

Is your house feeling painfully small? Don’t start packing up just yet. With just a few simple changes (don’t worry, no renovations necessary), you can visually expand each room and find space you didn’t even know you had in the first place.

Reach Higher

When square footage is limited, emphasizing vertical lines can make your home feel much bigger. That means taking advantage of the oft-disused space between your head and the ceiling. Hang full length floor-skimming curtains just under ceiling height, preferably in a color that’s close to that of your walls for the illusion of a larger, more open space. Build in full-height bookshelves to make your ceilings seem higher and multiply your storage space. Just remember to stick to books, decorative storage boxes, and a few carefully chosen display objects to keep things from feeling cluttered.

Sit Lower

By the same logic, choosing furniture with a relatively low profile will help stretch your rooms vertically. Midcentury modern pieces are often just the right size for this purpose.

Get Leggy

While platform beds and low-lying furniture create the illusion of more space, the opposite effect can occur if you use too many heavy, bulky items that take up all your available floor space. At least half of the furniture in your space should have legs to create a sense of airiness.

Go Bigger

It may seem counterintuitive, but fewer, larger objects in a room make a stronger visual impact and make the space feel more open than a whole lot of small items. A sofa is often a better choice than a grouping of individual chairs, for instance. By the same token, hanging a single piece of oversized art creates the perception that there’s room to spare. Plus, since you’re buying less, it allows you to focus on higher impact, higher quality pieces. Just make sure the scale doesn’t go so far in the wrong direction that the furniture feels crammed into the room.

Find Your Light

Arranging furniture around windows can make a room feel less claustrophobic, even if the view isn’t great. Hang sheer, breezy, light-colored curtains to allow maximum transmission of daylight without sacrificing privacy or accidentally gazing into your neighbor’s house. You should also avoid placing heavy objects right in front of the windows.

Clear Things Up

Materials like glass, acrylic, crystal, and lucite, like the base of this bed, allow the eye to travel through the room without interruption, which plays a major role in how we perceive the size of a space.

Check Your Reflection

Sure, we know logically that we can’t step through a mirror, but our brains don’t always register reflective surfaces that way, especially in passing. It’s an old trick, but using mirrors to visually expand a room really does work.

Do Double-Duty

Multifunctional furniture is a no-brainer when you’re trying to make the most of a small space. An ottoman that doubles as a coffee table, a coffee table that can be used as a bench for company, a bed with storage hidden underneath, a desk that pulls out into a dining table, and other convertible furniture designs can free up a lot of crucial floor space.

Control Your Colors

Just like too much clutter, an unrestrained color scheme feels chaotic in a small space. That doesn’t mean your home has to feel sterile or be devoid of color (not everyone wants a home that feels like a “minimalist monastery” a la Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, after all). Select a palette of complementary colors that includes a couple light hues for an airy feel, along with a couple accent ones, and mix up the textures and materials to optimize visual interest.

Keep It Simple

Use closed storage whenever possible to keep unnecessary distractions out of sight, avoid unnecessary ornamentation, and make sure there’s a clear path through each and every room. Simplicity doesn’t have to equate to minimalism or a lack of personality. The ultimate trick is learning how to tweak your own space so your uniqueness and character shine through.

The post 10 Ways to Make a Small Space Feel Much Bigger first appeared on Dornob.

The post Shanghai Theatre Features Moving Facade first appeared on Dornob.

The post House Wrapped in Exterior Curtains first appeared on Dornob.

The existing building, which measures about 3,229 square feet and takes up almost all of its lot, resembles most of the other 1970s and 1980s-era structures surrounding it. It’s simple, highly rectilinear in shape, and lightly colored to avoid absorbing too much heat. There’s nothing particularly architecturally distinct about it. The clients commissioned 314 Architecture to redevelop all four levels of the rental, including a small walled-in garden on the ground floor, the two middle floors, and a penthouse master suite on the rooftop.

The architects call their vision for the renovation “H102 Romance Contemporaine,” or “contemporary romance,” an aesthetic that’s immediately identifiable thanks to the billowing curtains shielding the top floor from view and the sultry shadows that can be discerned from behind the translucent panels of the new facade. The existing building features wraparound balconies on the two uppermost levels, which the architects transformed into solariums contained by the same sheer walls.

“The romantic character is even more emphasized through the continuous curved engravings, which are depicted as an imprint of light and shadow on the blurry translucent facades,” say the architects.

Now, lush tropical plants flourish on those balconies, bringing some much-needed vitality into the interiors while screening some of the sunlight and improving the air quality. New arc-shaped openings in the exterior walls provide both visual and functional access to those same balconies, enlarging the amount of usable space. Inside, the rooms are bright, white, and open: the architects removed many of the dividing interior walls to encourage a sense of free-flowing movement. They also pierced through the ceilings of each level to create new atria, with a sliding ceiling at the top that regulates the circulation of warm air inside by allowing it to escape in the summertime and holding it in during the colder months.

The top level is where the project really shines, both literally and figuratively. A small rooftop volume gives the inhabitants beautiful views of the sandy hills surrounding the city, but it feels a little overexposed to both the unforgiving sun and the gaze of neighbors. The solution is a weatherproof metallic curtain that can be drawn around the entire space while keeping it open to the sky, giving it the feel of a private sanctuary.

Like “House in Corfu,” which transformed a bland building with spectacular views of the Ionio Pelagos, “H102 Romance Contemporaine” uses transitional indoor/outdoor spaces to create a dialogue with its surroundings and make the most of a warm, temperate climate. Free of fussy details, it puts the focus on modern Greek lifestyles, adding comfort and functionality while preserving the existing building as a natural fit in its Athenian setting.

The post Lush and Luminous: Greek Apartment Building Reinvigorated by a New Translucent Facade first appeared on Dornob.

Kodachrome may be out of stock, but for some it will never go out of style. This set dating back decades was appropriated, drilled and stitched back together to form a flexible but light-filtering window shade for an entry doorway

YarnZombie (Jacki Vance-Kuss) shot the images of the final product; Travis punched a pair of holes in each corner of each slide, then looped chainmail rings to connect each slide to the next in rows and columns.

So far, so good – no fading reported as of month five and counting. No doubt, though, the images will blur in time, and the paper sides of the slides will yellow in turn. Nothing lasts forever.

For someone with a little ingenuity, and perhaps more time and craft skill than money, this would make a great garage-sale-based do-it-yourself home project that could definitely keep you busy for hours on end.

The post Kodachrome Curtains: DIY Shades from Color-Photo Slides first appeared on Dornob.

There is more to these drapes than meets the eye – behind what seem like an elegant series of window covers lies a surprising amount of clever technology used to create everything from the colors to the patterns (printed out of a CMYK-style set of 4 thread colors). This process used by designer Jeroen Vinken starts with a simple spectrum of bright colors in a single classic floral pattern, digitally deformed by software to create a series of seven designs.

The results (randing from classic-looking to ultra-modern) are then auto-stitched on demand – repeating patterns are cut to length to hang in any space.

Much like a printer uses varying amounts of a few base-colored inks to make virtually any color you can imagine, various depths and densities of just four different thread colors are able to mimic the effect of an infinite set of colors.

Standard silk or lace is replaced by polyester fabric with the right material properties to meet the high-tech requirements ?making these curtains.

Since everything is computer-controlled, it is easy to offer a series of variants within the seven basic styles: each one can be ordered in beige, black-and-white, pastel, light or dark tones. Still, despite all of the mass-produced aspects, one gets the sense of owning something unique and original – which, in a way, each variant is.

About the artist

“Jeroen Vinken’s work is clear and direct for those who will approach it with an open mind. It is original, intense and full of latent aggression. There is no doubt or hesitation in any direction to be found in it. That is the lot of the observer who, whether he will or not, is always caught off balance. Together these things are the sign of the presence of true quality. Vinken doesn’t make it easy for himself here because it will still be some time before this œuvre gets the rank it deserves in our artistic world.”

“Textile, and not only textile, is inescapably a loaded medium and was denied recognition as one of the fine arts for a long time, unless chosen by established artists: Oldenburg – Barry Flanagan – Beuys, to name but a few. This barrier which exists will stimulate rather than obstruct Jeroen Vinken. His work will gain in power and meaning from the challenge.” – Benno Premsela

The post 1 Floral Pattern, 7 Increasingly Simple Curtain Designs first appeared on Dornob.

Picture a long white designer curtain – and this is likely the last image that will come to mind. Forget standard shapes, styles and sizes. From top to bottom, each magnetic tab makes it so this clever hanging curtain stays in any position you could possibly imagine along a whole bay window area or even an entire room.

Modern, modular and geometric, no one would guess the at the multifunctional capacities of these curtains designed by Florian Krautli. The spiderweb of repeating shapes are deceptively simple – the lines connecting each magnet are made to bend and fold so the magnets can stick together.

Though unfortunately still only a prototype design at this point, these pictures clearly illustrate the amazing capacities of such flexible designs – they can be used to selectively divide spaces, block and allow light and add a creative and interactive dimension to rooms and windows.

The post Clever Custom-Shape Modern Magnetic Window Curtains first appeared on Dornob.