Acanth

The field of home decoration has witnessed major changes as centuries passed by. Just compare the Egyptian wall paintings with the austere Middle Age castles or the opulent style of the European 17th and 18th centuries with the minimalist modern design!

Interior design is not just a way of making our home more practical and comfortable. It’s also a true art that reflects our personality and sense of style, transforming a house into a cozy welcoming place.

Curtains are one of the most important elements of an interior decoration. Can you imagine a room without curtains? It will not look like ‘home’ anymore, losing all its comfort and warmth. Curtains are not just a practical protection against sunlight. They are also a wonderful decoration, capable of transforming and improving the image of a room. That’s why buying new curtains is the easiest and the cheapest way of making some changes in your house.

Traditionally, people use heavy drapes combined with sheer curtains. When you need to block the sun rays, you can use the thick drapes. If you need more light in your room, you can tie back the heavy drapes and only the delicate transparent curtains will protect your window and your privacy. These curtains will gently filter the daylight, at the same time creating a certain opacity that will not allow curious eyes to explore the interior of your home.

Traditional curtains come in many styles, colors and designs. The most popular are the white or beige sheer drapes combined with brown, bronze, deep blue or burgundy heavy curtains. This combination is perfect for a home decoration in classical tones, looking great next to wooden furniture and lush carpets. Just make sure that the main color of the curtains is matching with the general concept of the room.

However, there are no limits to our imagination! Aside from the classical solutions, modern designers have invented different types of curtains to complement and improve the most sophisticated and original decors: iridescent shades and textures that will create an ‘electric’ effect in an modernistic decor; delicate string curtains that suit so well minimalistic spaces; beaded curtains that can give ‘oriental’ ambience to any room.

The modern experiments with curtains do not end here. For creating unusual effects, designers also like to install different types of curtains in the most unexpected places: around a bed, on a wall, in doorways, in front of a closet or simply in the middle of the room. Sometimes these arrangements have a practical purpose, other times the design is purely decorative.

The wide assortment of curtains present on the market nowadays can make every homeowner dizzy: What to choose? How to select the best product? How to create an original design without making an arrogant statement? Of course, it’s not easy to be original and classy at the same time. But one thing is sure: you’ll never get bored while choosing your curtains!

Most often than not, new homeowners include an indoor fireplace in the top three list of their most desired home features. The cozy and inviting feel fireplaces give has always been tempting to families or to any home dweller. The fire is easy to love, plus the warmth fireplaces give especially during cold winter nights is so good to not admire.

However, traditional fireplaces (which is the most popular) gives off harmful emissions to the environment. And in this era of increase environmental awareness, these fireplaces have been a source of heated discourse. Wood-burning is pointed out as one of the primary cause of air pollution, especially during winter when it’s mostly used.

According to some energy reports even, the heating provided by traditional fireplaces is not at all efficient; these indoor fireplaces require chimneys which are literal openings through a house-roof. The heating process actually sucks up the cold air inside the house creating a sort of vacuum. The vacuum in turn, draws outside air in (either through small openings on the wall or in small cracks on the ceiling or window). Bottom line is, traditional fireplaces do not efficiently warm your room. The truth is, it is only 10% efficient when you compare the heat you get from it to the actual energy-capacity of the wood you burnt! Moreover, do I need to mention more about air pollution?

Fireplaces should not be discarded though. We all love the flame and the warmth, and the crisp fire-burning sound, don’t we? Thanks to modern technology, we still get all these minus the worry of the environmental effects of wood-burning and the wastage of energy. There are many different options actually — there are flue-less fireplaces and gel fireplaces which use alternatives to have a clean burn (very minimal smoke and carbon emissions), and for the inefficacy of fireplaces with chimneys there are accessories which you can install (fire-back, damper, etc). But of course, electric fireplaces are always available options. New electric fireplaces not include flame simulation, even the fire-crackling sound, fire popping and so much more that you might mistaken it as a real wood-burning fireplace at first glance (maybe an exaggeration).

Nonetheless, talking about flue-less fireplaces, they are fireplaces which do not require fuel supply. They use denature ethanol, a renewable energy source extracted from plants. The burn is long lasting and is carbon-free, plus the by-products are purely biological. These fireplaces have ethanol-tanks which can be re-filled up to five liters of denatured ethanol which lasts between 7-20 hours of burning depending on the size of the room being heated. On average, it burn time is about eleven hours.

The other fireplace I made mention of are gel fireplaces. These fireplaces burn clear alcohol-based bio-gel.The gel burns cleanly with virtually no smoke and gives out a really nice flame. Many gels are commercially available and the burning time depends of the type and size of the gel you throw into your fireplace.

But as earlier mentioned, it does not mean that when you have a traditional wood-burning fireplace already then you can’t do anything to contribute in the environment-protection advocacy trend. If upgrade is not your option, simply incorporate environment-friendly elements into your fireplace. There are Eco-friendly firewood substitutes available plus accessories like Eco-fire grates which reduce the harmful emissions wood-burning fireplaces give-off.

The best part is, you don’t need to give up your fireplace to be Eco-friendly. Simply put that to make the best indoor fireplaces option simply think of mother Earth and surely, you will enjoy a guilt-free cold night drink in front of your fireplace.