Talking About Trends

After a decade of burrowing ourselves in ever deepening layers of weighty texture, faux finishes and earth tones, sleek and contemporary home interiors are now more appealing to buyers, according to a blue-ribbon panel of top Central Florida interior designers.

These highly regarded industry pros recently shared their views with Orlando Homebuyer at a luncheon roundtable at Anthony's La Fiamma in Maitland to share their views on the latest trends in home interiors. Among the conclusions:

Changing times and tastes explain the proliferation of bargain bins overflowing with fabrics and accessories in earthy reds and golds and animal motifs. We've simply grown bored with the over-stuffed, over-draped, Old World interiors that soothed early millennium jitters exacerbated by a souring economy and terrorism threats.

We're finally moving on.

"Everybody wants to clean up their acts," says Robb & Stuckey's Ron Nowfell, whose cutting-edge interior for "Coo Coo Kachoo," a 2003 Street of Dreams award-winning home, electrified visitors and continues to generate buzz.

"The pendulum swings," echoes Kay Green, founder-owner of Kay Green Design in Orlando. "We were under clutter for so long that now the thing is a clean line, a nice look."

In addition to Nowfell and Green, our panelists were Nowfell's Coo Coo Kachoo collaborator Dan Miner, Lauri Godfrey of Godfrey Design Consultants in Naples and Winter Park, Carolyn Franklin of Carolyn Franklin Interior Designs, and Francie Prince and Mark Mueller of Prince Associates.

Over crisp salads, steaming pastas and fresh fish, these busy designers shared favorite ingredients for today's refreshed and streamlined look.

By the time the final espresso was served, it appeared clear that the hot look today might be described as modified '70s and '80s retro, kicked up a notch by today's technology and ultimate personal luxuries.

Following are portions of the wide-ranging luncheon discussion. It's high-powered advice from the region's most sought-after designers-so place your dessert order and listen in.

Ron Nowfell: People who like a contemporary look are out there more than we realized. After we did Coo Coo Kachoo a couple of years ago, it just opened the door to an unbelievable number of people who do want a clean, sophisticated contemporary look. That's not to say they want to go over the top with it.

Francie Prince: For the first time in years, in the last year and a half, we've had probably 50 percent of our clients wanting a contemporary look.

Mark Mueller: And many of them have brought copies of magazine articles showing Coo Coo Kachoo and saying, 'This is what I want.'

Dan Miner: It's amazing how many people come to us with very traditional homes and want a clean, minimal type of fill. And that's because you don't see enough builders building contemporary homes.

Francie Prince: We've also found there's less and less carpet. The surface is more tile or stone or wood.

Lauri Godfrey: Some people are still thinking contemporary as being extremely modern, but it's not. It's a homey, comfortable kind of contemporary.

Kay Green: The other part of it is the resurgence of urban development. We're seeing it here in Orlando with all the downtown high-rises. And what looks better [in a downtown condominium] than the urban-I have a client that calls it 'urbane'-look? So it all just goes together.

Swept aside in today's new home interiors are the ubiquitous images of elephants and monkeys who-judging from the collective sigh of relief that arose from our panel-had become over-employed as decorative touches on upholstery, wall coverings, furniture pedestals and home accessories.

As cluttered animal and palm-tree motifs go, so goes the Old World Mediterranean/Tuscan/BritishWest Indies look, with some homeowners transitioning into a lighter Key West style by eliminating layers of carpet, rugs and window treatments and adding stone, tile, wood and glass.

Also falling out of favor are heavy crown molding and thick chenille or textured fabrics, which are being replaced by simpler, flatter architectural detailing and smooth micro-fiber material. This lightening-up process is pulled together by a new 2005 color palette.

Kay Green: I think the story is paint. Paint and color. What we're seeing in color, especially in Florida, are the vapor colors. Picture what the color of air would be. It would be like the blue-greens, the blues and similar colors that we actually used in the late '70s.

Carolyn Franklin: Right. More ethereal colors. You can't put your finger on the name of the color. It's kind of in between.

Kay Green: That's a very good description because it goes from blues to greens and everything in between. Those colors have been big. The reds have been real big but we're starting to see them go to raspberry more than the clay reds. And chocolate brown. Even I've gotten into the chocolate brown.

Lauri Godfrey: You can do so much with the light aqua and sky blue colors. It's just getting away from the rust and the British West Indies and the monkeys and the palm trees.

Kay Green: All the colors we used in the '70s and '80s are back, but they're teamed up with other colors. Now we're using lime green with cobalt blue, or lime green with the chocolate, or blue with chocolate. So much of what's coming in is driven by young people. New homebuyers are the 25-year-old crowd, and when [the color] sage came in, and they all went wild over it, I looked at it and said, 'Oh my God, it's that old avocado!' But they love it. They embrace it because they haven't seen it before.

Mark Mueller: Just because we lived through it doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

Even if an avocado cousin is back, it's being used more judiciously this time around on surfaces that can be changed. Kitchen appliances now sport paintable surfaces or a new "meteorite" finish, which is neutral like stainless steel but hides ugly fingerprints.

The trend toward the bathroom as a retreat continues, with master baths designed to accommodate exercise equipment, massage tables and meditation areas facing private outdoor gardens. Busy boomers also find that suitcase-packing stations are a must.

The designers agree that closed-off designated home theaters are losing ground now to wide-open entertainment spaces, where family rooms flow smoothly into kitchens with gathering places around roomy, restaurant-style island cook tops.

These large indoor spaces then segue into backyard pool areas through pocket doors and accordion doors that seem to erase entire walls.

Dan Miner: Outdoor living is the main focus right now.

Ron Nowfell: We have clients who truly live in their outdoor rooms. They have the fireplace out there. They have the plasma TV screen out there. They have their summer kitchen out there. They truly live outside a good portion of the year. So the more amenities we can put out there, they better they like it.

Dan Miner: They have the capability to screen in when they want to screen in. There are new remote screens that just come out of the ceilings. There are so many new technologies.

Mark Mueller: Indoor-outdoor spaces are big. One space melds into another.

Kay Green: And all the furniture makers have developed outdoor lines that look like indoor furniture. Outdoor spaces look like indoor spaces. Outdoor fabrics look like indoor fabrics. And there's the whole idea of having indoor-outdoor fireplaces. You see fireplaces in an exterior wall, so it's an indoor fireplace inside the house and an outdoor fireplace outside.

Carolyn Franklin: It's all about the meeting of family and friends and meeting around the cooktop, inside or out. It's about entertaining and friends, and being comfortable.

So should you use an interior designer for your new home? While the designers on our panel do plenty of work for the super-affluent market, they agree that using the services of a design professional is not limited to the trust-fund crowd.

Francie Prince: A lot of the manufacturers are contributing to making [interior design] more affordable. They're coming out with mid-point lines, not just high-end. Many of the manufacturers are coming out with affordable silks, for example, so people can have silk and luxurious fabrics in rich, beautiful colors. And it's a lot more affordable than it was even a couple of years ago.