Highpoint Markets - Powell

While at Highpoint, we wanted to do a little rock climbing... No, not really, but after visiting Powell Furniture's new kids collection of furniture, it sounded like a good idea! The brightly colored rock wall accents on rugged furniture designs created a great interactive experience for children's room designs. Rope ladders, unique drawer pulls, a slide, chalk wall and fun accessories completed the look.

Highpoint Furniture Markets - Natuzzi

Maybe it's a response to dreary economic conditions or an answer to the basic neutrals that lack personality, but bright and cheery color at Natuzzi made us smile! A very pretty plum, rich tangerine, smooth fuchsia and gray, intense yellow and apple green were a pleasing punch of brightness this season.

Highpoint Markets - Rowe Furniture

We've returned from the sunshine and warmth of North Carolina, bringing along great inspiration from the Highpoint Markets. One of our favorite stops each market is Rowe Furniture with their collections of invigorating color, unique patterns and great design. This season we were particularly happy to see lots of dusky purple hues, cheerful coral tones and many sophisticated paisley and floral patterns. These collections were certainly a bright spot during our week away from home!

Virtually Green in Comcast Town

Ready to do some green remodeling, but don't feel like breaking the bank or breaking a sweat? Comcast Town has us scratching our heads and wondering how they ended up partnered with Inhabitat for this viral marketing game. We don't know how they did it, but this is a fun, virtually green game that will have you addicted by lunchtime!

Cable company Comcast has an interesting new ad campaign (yes, featured on Inhabitat) that allows people to design virtual apartments in ‘Comcast Town’. There's fun assortment of chic, green, weird and wacky materials and objects you can use to design virtual spaces and rooms. And even more exciting than the pure fun of poking around in this mini second-life-meets-google-sketchup is the fact that Comcast is holding a design competition to find the best designed room — and the grand prize is REAL PHYSICAL room remodel — at your actual house — worth up to $30,000, and done by Inhabitat.

Branch Home Partners with Eco Citizen

San Francisco-based online sustainable design shop Branch Home partnered with the Eco Citizen boutique in the Russian Hill area to create a store-within-a-store concept to sell a limited selection of their favorite green products. For those that wish they could see something in person before they buy, this is a great opportunity to see Branch Home's sustainable products in a traditional retail environment. A portion of the month's proceeds will benefit Friends of the Urban Forest - a group helping to replant trees and green spaces in San Francisco. Via: Re-Nest

Cool Globes for Earth Day

Last year, the US Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C. displayed 40 Cool Globes as the featured exhibit in its annual "One Planet – Ours!" exhibition. Currently, the exhibit opens today in Los Angeles, upping it's collection to display 50 cool globes in Exposition Park hoping to inspire more "hot ideas for a cool planet". Here are some of our favorites, but if you happen to be in L.A. today, this might be a nice way to celebrate Earth Day!


Last two images: Kimberly Faye - Flickr. For more Cool Globes, visit her Photostream!

Recycled Glass Tile - Modwall Viridian

With a minimum of 98% recycled content, Modwall's Viridian glass tile range is sure to enhance any green home building project or remodeling effort. Viridian is made of reclaimed windows from old buildings, and manufacturing waste from window and windshield production.

The tiles are available in a variety of 21 colors and 2 styles. Viridian™ Pearl is a recycled glass tile with a soft iridescent sheen. It is an ideal finish for walls and low traffic floors, both indoor and out, including wet areas. Viridian™ Industrial is a recycled glass tile with a non slip textured, matte finish that is ideal for floors or walls, both indoor and out.

Green Your Decor - Green Rooms In A Box

A new blog-favorite of ours here at Sphere Trending is Green Your Decor written by Jennae Petersen. The blog covers all great green living and design, but our favorite haunt is her Green Rooms In A Box series that will outfit your room from head to toe in sustainable fashion. Green Your Decor offers eco-decorating consultations, green gift giving ideas, inexpensive green steals and daily blog features in inspiring green products and services.

5 Ingenious Cardboard Furniture Designs

Recycled and reclaimed cardboard can be beautiful, given a little ingenuity from some talented designers. Five of our favorites designs barely resemble cardboard at all!

Belgium-based Isabelle Gieling specializes in limited-edition cardboard furniture for both adults and children. Billed as a sofa-bookcase, the Laguna Book is covered in humidity protected wall paper to give it style and panache. To make it mobile, the sofa-bookcase is on wheels and can be extended via folding legs.

Les Cartonnistes is a collective of cardboard furniture makers in France making creations that are hardly recognizable as recycled material. Tables, chairs, children's furniture and accessories can be found through this group of talent cardboard creators.

Designer Paul Coudamy really thought out-of-the-box when designing this interior for an advertising agency. Conference areas, workspaces, shelving and even filing cabinets were created using corrugate material. The advertising agency had a timeline of one month and a small budget, so this design with it's modular reconfiguration properties fit the bill perfectly!

Cardboard Designs out of NYC offers a complete line of furniture and accessories made from recycled corrugate and paper materials. With 55 pieces of furniture that fit together like a puzzle, nothing extra is needed to assemble the pieces.
For those who are a little more DIY inclined, Gomi Style has a great video on how to create your own furniture creations using cardboard from your recycling bin or your local recycling center. The video is quirky and fun, yet has great design tips!

5 Great Vertical Garden Installations

Spring has officially arrived, even here in chilly Michigan. If you're short on space or looking to create a unique, living piece of art then this round up of our favorite vertical gardening installations is for you!

The walls of the Musée des Arts Premiers Quai Branly in Paris were created in 2004 are now completely covered in vegetation. Patrick Blanc used his patented scaffolding and irrigation system to create this masterpiece.

Live Light is a plant mural prototype created by Rogers Design Group and Evo Design. They have incorporated science, ecology and aesthetics here, creating recycled resin boxes that function as indoor gardens, as well as a source of light and art.

Perfect for installation inside or in outdoor living spaces, this vertical garden from Smith and Hawken creates a mini wall of garden greenness. The planter includes two panels, each holding 22 quarts of soil creating 90 planting cells. That's a lot of gardening in a small space!

These photos are from the reception area of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation's office. The installation features three stories of green gardening goodness.

For the DIY enthusiast, here is a great installation to brighten up a fence or a brick wall from a blog written by Jillbert.

Dish Rack Herb Garden - Spring Greening DIY Contest

Yesterday we published our Kitchen Trends 2009 issue of our digital newsletter, so we have kitchen design at the top of our to-do list, so this next feature is a no-brainer! If you want to subscribe to our e-newsletter, feel free to add yourself to the list to receive consumer and design trends delivered straight to your inbox!



Over at Inhabitat they're currently running their Spring Greening DIY Contest and our vote is for this dish rack that grows an herb garden using the run-off droplets of water. One of the 15 finalists, the design by Nibha Jain and Srikanth Jalasutram has clothes pins attached to one side to hold flatware and smaller items while the built in rack is suitable for anything you chose to wash by hand. The tray has an inclined base which funnels water drips towards a small plant of your choosing, making this an ingenious invention for keeping cooking herbs close at hand. You can vote for your favorite spring green design over at Inhabitat.

Build a Greener Kitchen

We're kicking off a week-long dedication to green home design and innovation in honor of Earth Day. And yes, we agree, everyone should devote more than a single day to greener living. Read our previous post for our thoughts as well as a great contest and a free download from Grist. Their free download will make it easy to extend Earth Day well beyond next week! That said, let the green posting begin!

Umbrella Cabinetry builds their boxes out of Plyboo, the bamboo ply-board that is a favorite of many green kitchen designers and remodelers. For the parts that you don't see, like the drawer bottoms and cabinet backs, they use a board made from heavy recycled cardboard. The shelves are a formaldehyde-free MDF and the finishes are all water based VOC free. Backsplashes are woven palm and countertops are quartz. The best rule of thumb when going green? Reduce, reuse, recycle. Umbrella heard this loud and clear, so rather than recycle or throw away their end cuts, they turn them into beautiful serving trays that coordinate with the kitchen. Perfect! via: Treehugger

Earth Day is Coming... What Do You Think?

Yes, we agree with the general consensus that Earth Day should be a 365-day change in pursuit of a more eco-conscious lifestyle. That doesn't mean that we don't appreciate taking one day (or a handful of blog posts over the next week here at LIMElight) to offer solutions and innovative products and services that make it easier to go green. If you think setting aside only one day per year for "Earth Day" is silly, you might want to check out Grist's "Screw Earth Day" contest where you can download a free copy of the book "Wake Up and Smell the Planet" and register to win an eco-friendly prize that is music to your ears. Does it get any easier than that?

More Angles & Lines - Ronald Jeanson

Last week we featured all sorts of angles and edges on furniture, design and architecture here on the blog. While reading Contemporist today we stumbled on The Mazy Armchair by Ronald Jeanson of INTOO in the Netherlands. The design is reminiscent of branches or a geometric inspired nest and the chairs feature an upholstered cushion for a comforting experience. We are seeing more of these angled and edged interpretations for home and interiors design, what about you? via: Contemporist