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Walls & ceilings The walls of a room are far more than simple dividers. Decorating them to suit individual tastes is no longer reserved for the initiated. Each year, the decoration market offers new possibilities of creation and innovation to give a new look to your home.

Mosaic and stone are ideal for brightening up bathrooms. Waxed concrete gives a rough, minimalist effect, inspired by its original industrial function. Walls covered with wood panelling, on the other hand, give a warm, cosy atmosphere at little expense. Variations include PVC panels, wood veneer and decorative wall panels. The possibilities are endless. Whatever type of wall you choose, it will go a long way towards giving the room a real identity. Tiles are another wall covering that come in many varieties including ceramic, glass, zellige, listel, baked enamel and border tiles.
 
Redecorating the walls also helps to attenuate the defects of a room: too dark, too small, a ceiling that is too low. You can personalise your interior and shape it to your image in the bat of an eyelid and make it unique.
 
Simple gestures can change the look of a whole wall in next to no time. With the help of wall decorations, everyone can personalise their home. Adhesive wall jewellery can be stuck on wallpaper and give it a new lease of life. There is an endless variety of wall stickers to suit everyone's tastes. Tired paint will quickly brighten up if you add a coat of glitter glaze. Just the right amount of shimmer and you will be whisked off into the Arabian nights.
 
Recycling materials is both an economic choice and a source of creativity. A simple decorative wall paper panel can add an exiting feature to a plain wall. The same applies to tiling. A single coat of tile paint offers the possibility of renewing your bathroom in next to no time.
 
It's almost child play these days to create character walls. Leather tiles in a study produce a very elegant effect and a studious atmosphere. A dressing room with these very unusual tiles will create a sensation. False beams will make your living room look rustic and refined at the same time. A whole range of wall facings exists for both indoor and outdoor use: wood panels, waxed concrete, tadelakt, wainscoting, cork and vinyl tiles are just some examples.

The latest in wall decoration trends: tailor-made wallpaper and wall fabrics reproducing photos or personal graphics that will impress visitors no end. Unless a water wall steals the day. Winking lights combined with flowing water have a calming effect. Greenies will enjoy the vegetation wall which gives them an instant vertical garden. For movie enthusiasts, home cinema paint is a wicked solution. Only two coats are needed to turn your wall into a top-quality projector screen. Getting away from it all is now possible in a more static version. Panoramic wallpaper offers a wide selection of landscapes. The most sensitive to this new wave of non-conformism will most certainly be the younger members of the household. They haven't been forgotten by the manufacturers, who have come up with fluorescent wallpaper to give them sweet dreams and even magnetic paint and chalkboard paint to boost their self-expression.
 
Elegance and functionality. Wallpaper is a wonderful way of hiding imperfections. It can also make the room look bigger. Vertical stripes, for example, will make the ceiling look higher. A luminous finish will make up for the lack of light in a north-room facing room.
 
Because decoration is a fast-developing sector, application processes have been improved. Repositionable wallpaper is just one example. An innovative magnetic system does away with laborious hours of wallpapering. Another advantage is that it's easy to change the decoration to suit the season and follow your latest fancy. This effect can also be achieved with temporary walls. Partitions, dividers and screens of all shapes and sizes can be used to create separate areas within the same room, provided they are mobile and extendable. On the other hand, glass bricks and blocks, which are fixed in place, let through just a small beam of light and are wonderful at keeping out curious eyes.
 
Outside walls are more exposed to damage from various sources. Protecting them from tag with anti-graffiti paint will save a lot of headaches. Today, there is a specialised paint for every purpose, including façades, outdoor timber, roofs and window sills.
 
Non-conformists may direct their creative inspiration towards another central component of the room - the ceiling - which can be acoustic, patterned, false, stretch and many more. Originality is the key!

News...

| Carlo Guglielmi had been elected president of Cosmit, the company that organises the international furniture fair in Milan. He is replacing Manlio Armellini who has held the position for 48 years. |  Mondomio, a specialist in decoration for children and their parents is moving to149 rue de Longchamp 75016 Paris. | USM has just launched a software program to design your own furniture. You can imagine, design, build and visualise your own design in 3D. Try it out by clicking on &ldquoConfigurator&rdquo on www.usm.com |

 

Richard Hutten, Design Museum Gent, 26 Feb. > 6 June 2010

Rotterdam-born Richard Hutten (1967) is one of the most well-known and most unconventional Dutch designers. He graduated in 1991 at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and fairly quickly garnered international recognition. In his own design studio he produced designs for furniture, products, interiors and exhibitions. Hutten is a conceptual designer but his designs are highly functional, each and every one of them. Often the object will even have multiple functions. Design museum Gent gives Hutten the assignment to give shape to the exhibition himself. The result will certainly show this, and will be telling of the convincing and typical style of Hutten.

design.museum.gent.be