New house on the horizon!

Where and how should you start to choose the materials for your home? The market is as vast as it is confused!
A home’s finishings, whether chosen by its owners or “inherited”, directly affect the lives of everyone who lives there, and are the key factor in impressing guests. Thanks to the home furnishing magazines, the TV and the many interior design stores, the situation has evolved over the last few years to the point where there is no general received opinion on how to furnish a home, but rather a vast assortment of examples, covering all tastes and styles. The choice of all these materials is able to transform any insignificant room into a fantastic space. Every material has its own specific characteristics, including its colour, surface finish, vein patterns, weight and heat transmission. Non-stop technological innovation ensures that changes come thick and vast, with an ever-increasing assortment of products thanks to progress that has provided us with new treatments for the surfaces of old materials. Nowadays we have a variety of uses and combinations that provide the basis for truly surprising, and even amusing, results. So my advice is to start by choosing the material that you like best and then try to maintain uniformity throughout the home as far as possible; in bathrooms, it is worth choosing materials that combine style with practicality. Marazzi currently offers excellent opportunities, such as “TreverkHome wood-look stoneware”. 

When people set out to design their homes, they often have very clear ideas for the individual rooms (bathroom, kitchen, etc.) but not about the “overall project”. What is the secret of decorating homes so that all the rooms “communicate” with each other, in a single unbroken dialogue? 
I have often thought that you need to have an overall concept right from the architectural design phase, because this is when all the utility systems have to be laid out. With regard to the furnishings, it is useful not to mix too many styles. As I explain in my book “Welcome Style”, I like to compare the home we live in to an item of clothing, a garment we always like to wear and that makes us feel at ease, which we can use on different occasions, perhaps by just changing our accessories or adding little extra touches. Our clothes don’t have to be the work of a top designer (or our home styled by a leading architect); we just have to pay attention to stylistic details. We should start by choosing the style that suits us best, and then try not to confuse things by mixing up too many ideas. Once we have chosen our style, we need to add pieces with added design values and lighting fittings, which can also serve as ornaments as well as providing light. 

Today’s homes are often small in size and rooms inevitably become “multi-purpose”, so the dilemma is: which takes precedence, style or function? Can we have them both? 
During the last few years, because of the economic crisis, the space available inside homes has tended to contract. It is increasingly necessary to combine style and function. In view of the wide choice of products on today’s market, rooms which used to be single-purpose, like the bedroom, can be used more effectively with attractive, convenient working corners for handling our everyday administration; designers have rediscovered the writing-desks of the past and updated them to create convenient fold-away desks that fit cleverly into the bedroom furniture, concealing any untidy papers and keeping the room’s original character intact.These items of furniture are typical examples of style combined with convenience, and allow us to make better use of space. In spite of everything, since our homes are still our refuges from the world, you need to try to integrate practical features in an elegant furnishing style and not vice-versa, and occasionally dare to put contrasting “modern” pieces in classical design schemes, or a touch of the classical in a contemporary room.