MyFab has an innovative idea that solves a real problem. One of the scariest things for anyone starting out in product design businesses is not knowing how many to make of any  new product design. It’s always a leap of faith that your brilliant idea will be appreciated and actually sell. Especially if you make very high-end designer furniture; each piece can be quite an investment in time and money.

A possible solution is in MyFab’s new site that is launching in California next month and will provide an online venue for start-up designers to get feedback on the popularity of high end furniture designs before committing to production runs.

It’s like taking viewers into the studio of your design office and saying to your potential future customers – which of these ideas on the drawing board now would you prefer to see developed. It takes the R out of R & D. If you get the research done first and find that nobody cares about the idea you thought was your winner this season – you won’t waste time and money developing it.

And it’s all as easy as the click of a mouse. Site visitors come and vote on the pieces that they would like to buy most. When there is a clear trend, then only the most obviously popular pieces are built. It is a great way to jumpstart design businesses. Designers would get the real-world feedback than generally only comes in the form of the school of hard knocks, once you have committed to production lines.

Then MyFab sources the production of the high end furniture directly from the factories in China that supply private-label furniture to European retailers. The designer does away with the middleman. By producing only the most popular ones on demand, this eliminates inventory, showroom, and catalog costs, resulting in Myfab’s prices being 50 to 80% lower than comparable retail prices.

Image: MyFab

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MyFab.com – R & D Made Easy for Design Biz Startups

photo credit: Stuck in Customs

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Happy Holidays from Home Design Find

Home Design Find is pleased to announce that we are among the finalist in the Best Blog Design category for the 2008 Weblog Awards.  We are grateful and thrilled to be nominated.  Good luck to all of the finalist and don’t be afriad to vote for HDF more than once.  Voting ends January 13th 2009 at 10:00 p.m Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).   Thanks to all the readers!

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Vote HDF for Best Blog Design Category

The winner of the HDF 2008 book giveaway is …. Joan J from the How to be a Housewife blog.  Thanks once again to everyone who participated.  Look out for more giveaways in 2009!  Subscribe to our RSS-feed to stay updated.

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Books Giveaway: Winner

Don’t forget everyone to take part in our giveaway that is ending in 3 days!  We are giving away a total of seven design books valued at over $200 dollars.  Entry to the giveaway is simple and free.  All you have to do is leave a comment before midnight eastern time December 31, 2008.  Full details is in the post with rules and conditions.

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Home Design Find Giveaway Reminder!

Photo by mikem1115

HDF wishes everyone a happy holiday!  Thanks to everyone for the support in 2008.

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Happy Holidays from Home Design Find

Just wanted to give everyone a quick reminder that there are 16 days left to enter the design book giveaway.  These books are valued at over $200 dollars in total.  Would be a great gift for anyone interested in design.  All you have to do is leave a commnent if you are already signed up to our newsletter.   Comment before time runs out!

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Giveaway Reminder: 7 Interior Design Books for Free

These items are presented in no particular order

1. Wovin Wall by 3form
2. Linear Burner System by Spark Modern Fires
3. Tekura 7242 by BainUltra
4. Kanera 1E Wash Basin by Kanera
5. Luna by Graff - HDF Review
6. Tahi Shower System by Methven
7. Memento New Glory Basin by Villeroy & Boch
8. Ethereal Rug by Top Floor
9. Legno Legno 236 by Ruckstuhl
10. Botanist Black Canvas by Orange22 Design Lab
11. Saile Tollet By Kohler Co.
12. Amtico Back to Black, Vamp by Amtico International
13. Fusion Table by Aramith
14. Piano Sonata18 by Smartdesks
15. Hum. Minds at Work by Kimball Office
16. Senzafine walk in closet by Poliform
17. Bontempi Cucine – Area Program by A&G Bontempi S.P.A
18. B2 by Bulthaup
19. Space by Elica S.P.A – HDF Review
20. Poggenpohl Porsche Design P’7340 Kitchen by Poggenpohl – HDF Review
21. Kube by Snaidero
22. Crevasse Rinsing Sink by Kohler – HDF Review
23. Karbon Kitchen Faucet by Kohler – HDF Review
24. Norm 03 by Normann Copenhagen – HDF Review
25. Andrei by Studio Italia Design
26. V Pendant by Arturo Alvares/Boutique Design Products – HDF Review
27. Daedalus by Ivalo Lighting
28. Spa Recliner by Dedon
29. Acuity by Allsteel
30. Slow Chair by Vitra 
31. Fresh Collection by Valley Forge Fabrics
32. Soho Modulo Deco by Marazzi
33. Vedana by BainUltra
34. Fountainhead VibrAcoustic Bath by Kohler
35. Sky Factory Programmable SkyCeiling by The Sky Factory – HDF Review

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Top 35 Interior Design Products of 2008

How to Win

To qualify for the giveaway from Home Design Find, you must find, subscribe, and comment.

1. Find and choose the items that you’d love to have in your home from Lushpad.com
2. Subscribe to the or HDF email newsletter or RSS feed
3. Comment on this page and include a link to the (2) items you would buy for your home

It’s as simple as that to win.  The contest will end December 31, 2008 at 11:59p.m.  The winner will be announced the day after.  Be sure to check each day because the winner could be you.  Good luck from the Home Design Find team!  Thanks to Crown Publishing for sponsoring this giveaway.

Contest Rules

• Prizes will only be given to recipients in the US and Canada.  Sorry international readers.
• You can only sign up for our newsletter ONCE.  No double entries.
• The winner will need to get in touch with HDF within ONE WEEK of the announcement of the winner in order to receive their prize.  Failure to respond to email or newsletter message that you won the prize will result in a forfeit of the prize to someone else
• Winner chosen by random generator

Books you Can Win

1. The New Traditional

The New Traditional by Darryl Carter

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Darryl Carter is a leader in the design world, recognized for his restrained, distinguished, and livable environments. Known for seamlessly mixing the modern with the classical, Carter presents a comprehensive guide to creating a home that balances individual comfort with a timeless aesthetic.

Comfort is the essential element of a successful interior, but also the most elusive. Too often our design decisions are driven by others. In The New Traditional, Darryl Carter encourages you to be true to your own lifestyle. More than a stunning book, this is an accessible resource for making an elegant, inviting home, responsive to the people who live in it every day.

A fresh take on American design, Carter’s work has been lauded as the New Traditional for effortlessly blending classic and modern elements to create personal environments. Patinated furniture, subtle textiles and lighting, and chalky washes of color are among the details that transform a house into a home. Carter explains how you can translate these details into inspired and always calming surroundings. Ignore the obvious. Redefine a dining room so that it doubles as a library by lining the walls with bookshelves and using wing chairs in lieu of dining chairs. Stain wood floors white to create a greater sense of space. Build rooms around art. Carter shows that designing your home is a process to be enjoyed.

2.  The Luxury Bathroom

The Luxury Bathroom by Samantha Nestor

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The bathroom is the new design frontier. In urban apartments and at large secluded estates, adventurous home owners and the nation’s top designers are breaking the old rules, using space and materials in dramatic new ways and reimagining just what a bathroom can be. No longer intended solely for utilitarian purposes, today’s bathrooms are designed for everything from solitude to accommodating the family to entertaining.

The Luxury Bathroom offers a tour of thirty-five state-of-the-art spaces created by today’s top designers—among them Celerie Kemble, Jamie Drake, and Miles Redd—in exclusive residences across the country. From luxuriously equipped expanses worthy of Canyon Ranch to a tiny Beaux Arts bathroom inspired by a gallery at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to a guest bath covered in leather tiles, each room is unique and a rich source of inspiration and aspiration.

Once the most purely functional of rooms, bathrooms today are evolving into the most fanciful and sumptuous of living spaces. In these pages you’ll discover a getaway oasis that brings the spa vacation home, an unabashedly social space complete with wet bar and fabulous upholstery, and a woman’s private sanctuary that is the ultimate expression of contemporary femininity.

Not only delving into the details that make each room unique, but also including humor and insight into how the spaces reflect the owners’ lifestyle, taste, and vision, The Luxury Bathroom reveals a surprising range of possibilities for reinventing this room, for those of us who are ready to begin now or who are just dreaming about doing so.

The phenomenal array of unique materials and the limitless imagination of designers and builders have made bathrooms the new design frontier. The space has become a nucleus of style and taste, but perhaps it is most notable for seducing its owners to spend time there. And, after all, what is more luxurious than time? With the endless possibilities for what was once a boxed-in space, the bathroom has become the Cinderella star of a fancy dress ball. And so The Luxury Bathroom will inform and entertain as it celebrates not just the bathroom, but really the imagination.

3.  The Divine Home

The Divine Home by Peter Vitale

ABOUT THIS BOOK

For the millions of Americans combining the spiritual and the decorative in their homes—from dramatic crosses in a modern log cabin to handcrafted Native American spirit masks in a sprawling Southwestern ranch—this beautifully rendered book of interior design depicts how the serene touch of religious design elements can be effortlessly incorporated with a modern sensibility.

Whether as a reflection of fervent belief, a secular nod to nostalgia, or a purely aesthetic choice, devotional objects such as religious idols, crosses, and Buddha statues have a profound visual power. Within these pages are thirty homes in which works inspired by religious traditions form a vital and varied part of the sumptuous and serene design of these spaces.

Some of the people featured in this dramatic book collect with a geographic interest, some define their collections stylistically, and still others choose a historical framework. Yet all of the residences share a distinctly personal touch. Personality, in fact, runs rampant through these interiors that tell stories about the owners, the objects, and the houses themselves, such as CeCe Cord’s sunny Texas residence, John Saladino’s calm California villa, Kelly Klein’s soaring Manhattan loft, and Adrienne Vittadini’s richly textured Florida home.

While some of the residents have personal spiritual connections with their pieces—like a Santa Fe psychoanalyst and his varied collections of Outsider art, African works, and Judaica—others merely find in the antiquities a sense of beauty and comfort. An interior designer who updated a rustic Colorado cabin is drawn to decorating with crosses for their geometric appeal as opposed to their religious connotations. In New York and Los Angeles, two different homeowners escape their busy lives in peaceful, calming environments created with Asian art.

While the religious or spiritual elements are quite pronounced, they blend seamlessly into fascinating, eye-catching hybridized environments—from French Provençal to Spanish Colonial to light, airy patrician. Each residence—captured by one of the most sought-after interior photographers—will enchant you with its beauty and originality and perhaps inspire you to begin a spiritual collection of your own. A collection, as these homeowners explain, starts with one artwork, but it is one piece that can lead to a magnificent obsession.

4.  Celerie Kemble: To Your Taste

Celerie Kemble: To Your Taste by Celerie Kemble

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Celebrate what’s beautiful about traditional style while breaking some of its rules: Take a page out of a designer’s book and add your own sense of relaxed whimsy and exuberant personality to create spaces that are versatile, original, and truly livable.

That’s designer Celerie Kemble’s philosophy in a nutshell. It’s all about blending a classic sensibility with a dose of irreverence and a dollop of humor to achieve a home that’s tasteful, eclectic, always evolving, and always welcoming.

Celerie takes you by the hand, gives you a detailed look at many of her signature interiors, and enthusiastically reassures you that, with the right information and attitude, you can overcome challenges and artfully achieve the ultimate design goal—a perfect blend of beauty and comfort.

From finding inspiration in childhood memories, current trends, and favorite belongings to working around real-life design dilemmas (such as a lack of space or light, or awkward floor plans) to selecting just the right furnishings (including rugs, lamps, and accessories), Celerie Kemble: To Your Taste infectiously proves that when making a beautiful home, the process is the best part.

5.  French Country Kitchen

French Country Kitchens by Linda Dannenberg

ABOUT THIS BOOK

“When I think back on all the homes I’ve visited in the French countryside—and I’ve visited hundreds over the last twenty-five years—it is almost always the kitchens I remember most clearly and recall with the most affection.”
—From the introduction

The kitchen is truly the heart of the home, and nowhere is this exemplified with more style and personality than in France. Distinguished by striking craftsmanship, bold colors, and vintage accents, the French country kitchen—whether a rustic retreat or an urban oasis—is always unique and inviting.

In this beautiful celebration of France’s real-life kitchens, French style authority Linda Dannenberg invites us into dozens of kitchens that capture the spirit of their regions, carefully examining the design, the priorities of the owners, and the details—from color palettes to collectibles—that create inviting, functional, and personal spaces. You’ll visit a remarkable new “eighteenth-century” kitchen in the heart of Paris’s old garment district designed entirely with elements dating from the 1700s; an airy, open family kitchen in a Provençal house that was once a grain mill; a dramatic kitchen, bold in color and scale, in an elegant farmhouse in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence; a romantic country kitchen, illuminated by a Palladian-style window from an old abbey, in a welcoming village surrounded by the farmland of the Île-de France; and a casual Parisian space—once an atelier occupied by Pablo Picasso—featuring a kitchen with subtle, restrained mosaics.

Distinctive elements that characterize these welcoming spaces are examined in depth, from tile work to the French way with color. You’ll even find recipes that capture the spirit of the French kitchen. With an extensive directory of sources, more than 200 full-color photographs, and evocative text highlighting a bounty of original ideas, French Country Kitchens is a lush and inspiring guide to re-creating a little corner of France in the heart of your own home.

6.  Dreaming Green

Dreaming Green by Lisa Sharkey and Paul Gleicher

ABOUT THIS BOOK

For anyone with eco-friendly ideals as well as a penchant for high style, Dreaming Green showcases seventeen inspiring homes that are at once luxurious, beautiful, and fashioned inside and out with green materials, design, and details.

While renovating their Manhattan brownstone, Lisa Sharkey and LEED-accredited architect Paul Gleicher’s top priority was to create a home that was light on the earth and completely free of the harmful products that are often found in building and decorative supplies. A sophisticated couple who entertain frequently, Sharkey and Gleicher also demanded a home that was beautiful from the basement to the top floor’s sunroom. They sourced stylish and elegant materials, designed small and large spaces for flawless efficiency, and finished the project with responsible yet stunning finds.

Dreaming Green features the Sharkey-Gleicher brownstone as well as sixteen other environmentally responsible, impeccably designed residences that will stir readers to reimagine their homes as places that marry responsibility and beauty. From cities and suburbs to the countryside, Dreaming Green showcases places of myriad sizes, shapes, and styles. Each space, with its floors, gorgeous fabrics, nontoxic paints and finishes, wall coverings, furniture, fixtures, use of recycled materials, and other details, is a treasure for the eye and a gift to the earth. What’s more, Sharkey and Gleicher highlight unseen design elements that conserve resources, such as passive heating and cooling methods and ideas for low-impact building and renovation, among other innovations. The spaces on display here prove that saving the earth never needs to compromise comfort and elegance.

Make yourself at home and lose yourself in:
• An English Tudor–style home in Austin, Texas, that was built from cast earth clay and utilizes a wind-powered energy system. The home is decorated throughout with gorgeous antiquities and salvaged materials.
• An upstate New York eco-farmhouse perfectly situated on a hilltop and designed to catch the breezes from the surrounding Berkshire hills. The owner-architect used local craftspeople—none based more than a mile away—to further the “buy local” ideal.
• An Ann Arbor, Michigan, “sunhome” built to capture the sun’s rays for maximum heating and lighting. The modern marvel is U-shaped to accommodate an eighty-year-old magnolia growing on the property.
• A glamorous southern showplace in Atlanta, Georgia, which the owners christened “Ecomanor.” It hearkens back to the stateliness of an earlier time but is also a model of contemporary energy efficiency and sustainability.

Lavishly photographed, Dreaming Green also boasts an invaluable resource section—a boon to anyone embarking on making a green home, renovating a current residence into one, or just dreaming about doing so. Dreaming Green is both a practical guide and a rich source of inspiration.

7.  Matthew Haly’s Book of Upholstery

Matthew Haly’s Book of Upholstery by Matthew Haly and Kathleen Hackett

ABOUT THIS BOOK

At Matthew Haly’s custom-upholstery studio in Manhattan’s NoHo district, the demand for his work is incredibly high—and often, so is the price tag. That inexpensive flea-market find seemed great until you discovered just how much it would cost to have it reupholstered. But don’t let the professional’s price tag deter you. In Matthew Haly’s Book of Upholstery, Haly—the go-to upholsterer to Manhattan’s interior design crowd—shares his craft: all the details, secrets, and tips to help you restore the original beauty to a haggard piece of furniture with your own hands—and put the savings into fabric that will make you swoon! He draws from more than two decades of experience to provide you with the expertise you need to give that sofa, chair, stool, window, or tabletop a makeover like a professional.

Upholstery can be challenging, so Haly has provided straightforward projects to help you build the skills every upholsterer needs—from determining how much fabric you’ll need for the job to adding just the right trims and finishes. Begin by sewing a simple pillow, a table runner, and a lampshade. Once you’ve mastered these basic projects, hone your measuring skills by making a lined round tablecloth, then embark on your first piece of furniture, a stool with decorative nails. Each project is designed with the home upholsterer in mind, but Haly never oversimplifies, cheats on techniques, or cuts corners for the sake of making it appear easy. And only Haly gives you tips on how to pick out the pieces of furniture with good bones that are really worth the effort.

With projects ranging from a handsome bolster, casual floor cushion, and floor-length curtains to a multipurpose folding screen, refined headboard, and fully slipcovered dining chair, both novice and seasoned sewers will find inspiration. User-friendly yet packed with information from an industry insider, Matthew Haly’s Book of Upholstery is a thorough primer on upholstery, sharing all the know-how you need to do the job yourself.

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HDF Design Books Giveaway

Definitely worth checking out this week is Lushpad.com.

A little like a design-based Craigslist, its a place for people who love ‘mid-century modern furniture’ and all the accessories and random objects it entails. You are also going to love it if you’re into the vintage too. 

Lushpad.com has been designed to be used by both buyers and sellers of art, interior decoration items, and furniture. Not only can you find stuff to buy on the site, you can also find a lot of useful and practical information as well.

Melanie Carlson, owner of Lushpad, is an award winning graphic designer and creative director and here, she explains why she set up her site:

“When I bought my first home in Vancouver, I realized I couldn’t afford the designer furniture I love. I got an idea for a website for secondary market designer furniture for people who, like myself, want showroom furniture but can’t afford showroom prices. I had similar issues with my fairly extensive art collection. Now that I had a new home some of my art didn’t fit, but how do you find an appreciative audience who may want to buy it? I wanted Lushpad to be a resource for learning more about good design and smart collecting. I guess you could call Lushpad part gallery, part auction house and part design magazine. Lushpad is a lifestyle.”

Right now Lushpad has got a great competition running in which you can win an original Eames chair worth over $750, so why not head over there and have a good snoop around.

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Lushpad.com: A Great New Lush Design Site.