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Tamara Wise
- Aug 30, 2019
- 2 min
Wise Design Favorites: Our Go-To Greys
At Wise Design our next favorite neutral paint color after a clean & bright white wall, is a calming, soothing grey wall. Grey is a paint color we return to time and time again, when we want a bit of contrast with the trim color, particularly in historic homes. We have a few shades of grey that we return to over & over again, because they're versatile with just the right undertones. Besides these go-to greys, we have a few that we love and have yet to use on a project, but in
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Tamara Wise
- Aug 21, 2019
- 3 min
PDX Picks: Our Favorite Local Plant Shops
Here in Portland, Oregon we love our greenery in all forms! The Pacific Northwest is known for it's rainy, wet climate (in fact it's considered a temperate rainforest), so the region is filled with lush, green plants year 'round. The natural green palette of Portland, is all part of the city's beauty! When we are designing a space, we always add a touch of green to bring that natural beauty inside. Plants give life to a space (literally)! If you are wondering how to instantly
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Tamara Wise
- Aug 2, 2019
- 2 min
Wise Design Picks: Outdoor Spaces + Our Roundup of Outdoor Furniture Favs
Here in Portland Oregon, we are very fortunate to have the most beautiful summers! After raining pretty much solidly for 9 months out of the year, Summertime in the beautiful Pacific Northwest is lush and inviting! The sun finally graces the land with it's glorious rays and with the longer days and warm nights, Oregonians are outside in full force. Image Source: The Roof Deck at Revolution Hall Be it in the rivers, ocean beaches, mountain trails or city parks; Oregonians take
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Tamara Wise
- Jul 25, 2019
- 4 min
Reveal: Furnishing + Styling the SW Modern Living & Dining Room
Our first task when we started the SW Modern Home project was to help furnish the living room and dining room area. The family was getting ready for a big event: their son's Bar Mitzvah and they wanted help with furnishing and styling the room for the party. The family had already worked with Fieldwork Design on some of the furnishings & finishes in the space, and the clients liked these pieces, however they still needed some finishing touches; artwork for both the living and
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Ryan Harkrider
- Jul 11, 2019
- 2 min
Reveal: Cloverdilly Children's Boutique
So excited to show off the final reveal photos for our children's consignment boutique, Cloverdilly! And before you view the below images, just take a minute to remember that our client pulled this WHOLE place off by herself in less than 30 days! She is our hero. For a refresher: here are our behind-the-scenes posts for inspiration, before photos (SUCH a difference!), space planning, furnishings, and schematic design. You can also see the final reveal photos on our website. R
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Tamara Wise
- Jul 3, 2019
- 2 min
Reveal: Introducing a Sleek Update for a SW Modern Home
This week we are excited to introduce you to an amazing project - updating this beautiful mid- century home for a lovely family in the SW Hills of Portland! Our SW Modern Home was just featured in DWELL and now we're delighted to share each step of our design story for this spectacular project!!! SW Modern Kitchen: Photo by Meagan Larsen We first met this sweet family two and a half years ago, when they approached Wise Design to help them with some renovations and furnishings
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Ryan Harkrider
- Jun 27, 2019
- 4 min
Behind the Scenes: The (Schematic) Design for Our Children's Boutique
We've been talking about our work for a children's clothing boutique in NW Portland. Today we show the Schematic design! But what does Schematic design mean? If you've followed along with this series, you'll remember how we got here. (If you want to catch up or are just joining, here are the posts for inspiration, before photos, space planning and furniture sourcing.) For Wise Design, our work is done in several stages: 1. Conceptual This phase includes inspiration images or
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Tamara Wise
- Jun 20, 2019
- 3 min
Behind-the-Scenes: Designing the Funshine Girl's Room
Now comes the fun part! Just to recap on the design story for the Funshine Girl's room thus far: a few weeks ago, we introduced this super fun little girl's room we are designing for our long time client's daughter. She sent us her likes and interests, and we pulled together some inspiration photos. Her favorite colors are: pink, turquoise and purple and her favorite things are: horses, butterflies, fairies, sunshine and swimming pools! Image Source: Four Cheeky Monkeys We al
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Ryan Harkrider
- Jun 18, 2019
- 1 min
Dwell Magazine Feature of SW Modern Home!
A huge announcement for Wise Design this week! Dwell, the holy grail of design publications, has featured our SW Modern Home and we are THRILLED. Check that one off bucket list! photo by Meagan Larsen We are excited to show off this incredible home and so thankful to Dwell for featuring it. It was a long road for our clients (check out those before & after photos!) We know they love the 'afters' as much as we do! photo by Meagan Larsen We'll be featuring the home on our blog,
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Ryan Harkrider
- Jun 12, 2019
- 2 min
Behind the Scenes: Furniture for a Children's Boutique
We love love love designing for kids. Hands down children's spaces are the most creative, sweet, daring and just plain fun! For our children's consignment boutique, we knew that we needed to source a general hanging + shelf system to display the store's inventory. We also needed to find baskets and bins to hold & display accessories. IRL, budgets are everything. We can look at custom-made, gold-plated, antique, one-of-a-kind whatever all day long but often, that's just not wh
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Tamara Wise
- Jun 6, 2019
- 2 min
Behind-the-Scenes: Funshine Girl's Room Before Photos & Space Planning
For those of you following along, a couple weeks ago, we introduced a super fun little girl's room we are designing for a long time client's daughter. She sent us her likes and interests, and we pulled together some inspiration photos. Her favorite colors are: pink, turquoise and purple and her favorite things are: horses, butterflies, fairies, sunshine and swimming pools! Image Source: Four Cheeky Monkeys We loved these photos from Four Cheeky Monkeys for their use of the fu
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Ryan Harkrider
- May 30, 2019
- 3 min
Behind the Scenes: Space Planning a Children's Boutique
If you're just joining in, we've been talking about our design process for a new children's consignment boutique in NW Portland. We've looked at inspiration images and photos of the suite in its current state (what we call 'as-builts.') Now it's space plan time! Inspiration Photo: Mapamundi Shop Before Photos of Cloverdilly Kids Space Where should everything go? This is a fun puzzle we've all played: from your childhood bedroom to first apartment, we've all shoved furniture a
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Ryan Harkrider
- May 9, 2019
- 3 min
Behind the Scenes: Inspiration for a Children's Boutique
Besides being designers, we at Wise Design have several things in common: we all have a love for historic architecture, we're all blondes (not planned!) and we're all moms. Tamara has a son, I have a daughter and Annie has us all beat with two sons and one daughter. Being mom-designers has unintentionally been a huge asset in terms of understanding the realities of everyday living. We know when a client wants durable, they mean *durable.* We've also been there: the sleep-de
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Ryan Harkrider
- May 2, 2019
- 5 min
Reveal: 'Mountain Man' Office
We have a special reveal today of one of our commercial clients! North Ridge, a financial wealth advisement firm, contacted us to help them out with their new office suite. They had an incredible brand book to show us (so helpful!) and their company's mission was so clearly represented in their logo, brand colors and marketing materials: adventurous, steadfast, supportive, local to the Pacific Northwest and timeless. They wanted their physical offices to communicate these tr
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Tamara Wise
- Apr 26, 2019
- 3 min
PDX Picks: Local Vintage Shopping Favs + How to Incorporate Vintage Pieces in Your Space
This week we're introducing yet another new series on our blog (don't worry, our WD Favorites series isn't dead...we're just on a break ; ). Our new series explores some of our favorite local spots around the Portland area. We're really excited to share these with you! Our local PDX Picks this week are some of our favorite vintage shops in the Portland area. We love incorporating vintage/antique pieces into our designs and a great way to do so is by shopping at our local spot
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Tamara Wise
- Apr 18, 2019
- 3 min
Wise Design Favorites: All About That Wallpaper
We're not gonna lie, we kinda have a thing for wallpaper. I mean it's not a like a problem, we've got it under control...honest (haha). Wallpaper is definitely one of the best ways to make a big (or small) statement in a room! Lucky for all of us, wallpaper has made a HUGE comeback in the recent decade and can now be found in all different colors/patterns. It doesn't always work for every space (kitchens & bathrooms can be tricky), but sometimes a space is just calling for it
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Tamara Wise
- Apr 11, 2019
- 4 min
Wise Design Favorites: Totally Lit - Our Top Picks for Accent Lighting
When it comes to lighting, there is so much more than ambient overhead fixtures to consider. Wall sconces, floor lamps and table lamps are a great way to bring more specialized lighting to areas either for specific tasks or to accent a design feature. Often under-utilized and under appreciated, these fixtures add an important layer of livability to any space. When we are designing a space, we like to layer several different types of lighting to give the client options dependi
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Tamara Wise
- Apr 4, 2019
- 3 min
Wise Design Favorites: Lighting Picks - Overhead Fixtures
Lighting is one of the most important factors when designing a room. Sometimes it can be overlooked, but if you have a well designed space that isn't well lit, how can anybody see it!?! We're only half kidding...but seriously, a well designed room needs several lighting options. Overhead lights, reading lights, sconce/wall lighting, table lamps, task lamps, etc. etc. Depending on the space, your lighting needs may vary. At Wise Design, we definitely have some favorite lightin
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Tamara Wise
- Mar 28, 2019
- 3 min
Wise Design Favorites: Our Go-To Whites
This week we are starting a new series on our blog...it's all about our faves! We'll be sharing our preferred picks for lighting, furniture, textiles, wall coverings and more.... Kicking off our new series is a round up of our favorite go-to white paint colors. White walls are definitely having their moment (or all the moments) lately and it's not hard to see why. A white walled room is fresh & light, can be minimal (or not) and provides a great canvas for interesting texture
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