Hope you are all hanging in there as well as you can during this difficult time.
Here in California we are on week 6 of a Safer-at-Home order, working from home and rarely venturing out of the house except for a neighborhood walk. We are taking this time to give the blog a magazine style makeover (coming soon) so we can bring you better and wider content topics. I decided make a good use of my time and have taken on a meaningful design project. We are redesigning the interior and exterior of an office building for a women’s organization, the Haven Hills shelter. It’s the oldest domestic violence shelter operating in Los Angeles and the building includes office spaces, staff areas as well as therapy rooms for victims. Eaxcited to something for all these amazing people who help others who spend their time there and of course the women and children who’ve had their lives shattered and their self confidence stolen from them.
I want to create an UPLIFTING, HAPPY, COLORFUL, POWERFUL and FEMININE inspired spaces.
At no other point has it perhaps magnified just how important it is to make our home, or any space we spend time in, lift our mood, embrace us and help us.
YES, interiors can really help you.
Here is a look at the current exterior:
As you can see it really needs a new color scheme and lots of curb appeal help.
Here are a few of the interior areas:
Entry area.
A center stair case area.
A big room not being used.
A therapy room.
We are going to use color as therapy to affect the people who will move through the rooms. Colors all vibrate with certain energies and we are planning on having them work to bring the desired emotional and stabilizing effect. (A lot more on that in a later post.)
Here are some inspiration photos….
Happy and welcoming on the outside.
It’s a limited budget and the makeover purely decorative so I plan on using paint and color in a way to give it certain architectural illusions.
A bunch of these inspiration pictures are from The Wing, a private global women’s networking club where they have allowed a female driven design vibe to rule.
We’ll use soothing pastel tones for certain areas.
Images above from The Wing.
Pops of strong color.
2 Images above from Fig House – an event venue in Los Angeles.
Masculine colors will be worked in to interiors to also take in to account the few men who work there and survivors who will go through their programs.
Photo The Wing Boston.
Designer Beata Heuman private home in London.
The Wing Brooklyn.
I want to line the hallways with women’s portraits.
We plan on sourcing vintage and second hand furniture that we will paint.
I like these painted stair cases….
2 Images above from The Wing.
My reason for using women’s interiors as inspiration?
Statistics globally show that 1 in 3 women become victims of domestic violence. A staggering fact, so I ask myself…would 1 in 3 women be abused if we had lived in a matriarchy? I really don’t think so, therefore we will allow a powerful feminine design vibe to rule.
I am determined to make interiors help people.
I’ll post a lot more about this here on the blog and you can also follow along on our Instagram account @jillsorensenlifestyle. I will also post from a slightly different perspective on @jillsorensen
Stay safe, try to stay positive if you can, hug your loved ones. This current situation will be over soon.
