BY_Lissoni lounge designed by Piero Lissoni, IDS 2012's International Guest of Honour

I loved this year’s exciting Interior Design Show. It had a good buzz, lots of variety and good colour sightings.

For subtle colour, great texture and the sophisticated comfort of my fave “style” - Warm Modern - the award goes to the BY_Lissoni, a lounge by Italian designer-architect Piero Lissoni. At first glance the 1200 square foot space, with furnishings by his brand partners - Living Divani, Lema, Porro & Flos - looked all white: walls, shelves, gauze ceiling, even white-washed floors by Moncer, but it becomes clear Lissoni knows the key to working with white: good light and lots of texture.

The shelves were filled with tightly packed paper-backs, their white washed spines and aged ecru pages created a soft graphic pattern that added with warmth and texture (the comfort of books abstracted). Other shelves held African artifacts adding to the beauty and soul of hand-made one-of-a-kind objects. No “decorative” colour interrupted the strict palette of whites and naturals. Furniture juxtaposed cool white – the marble coffee table – with the toasty hues and varied textures of the burlap-like sofa fabric and objects in leather and wood. I badly wanted to take the booth, lock stock and barrel, and install in my living room.

"How Do I Look?", painted cherry wood art by Rob Day

From the all-Canadian True North part of the show, my object of desire was the tree-part turned sculpture by Rob Day. He painted nature’s cast-off in horizontal stripes (which always look happy to me) and poised it cheekily on an old banister knob. If it were not $6000 I would love to commission hundreds of them to lean in dull, grey, straight-edged work-places or anonymous hallways all over town. Psychologically, we always get a sense of home and belonging from bits of nature in our unnatural environments. Plants, flowers, a view of trees, even a landscape painting or floral carpet can help. This piece gives homey a new spin.

There were sightings of shiny clean light blue in surprising places - a glazed fireplace surround and the floor of this booth. The combination of light blue and shine can be discombobulating on a floor– as if you are walking on water or about to fall through ice – but that is why it was novel and fun to experience.

Relative Space featured FreeSCALE a collection of eco-friendly carpet tiles by Vorwerk. Goodbye 9 x 12 or 6 x 8. With these tiles your carpet does not have to be square. Now your carpet can be any size, shape or colour combination. Flip the shape around to create curves or bends, add or subtract to suit your space. Pull one or two out for glimpses of your floor. And if you change your wall colour why not change out a few tiles to match? Or, change the palette seasonally? The mind boggles at the possibilities.

What about making the carpet the art in a room? The Tokyo carpet from W Studio has a painterly colour combination and graffiti-like patterning.

Lighting fixtures ranged from simple to sassy; from the clean lines of fixtures made of wood veneer by Woodlight to L’Atelier Non-Useless’s UP lamp.

The PVC pole comes with stretchy fabric sleeves that can be moved up or down or scrunched to adjust the level and position of light. This prototype will be produced for a cost of about $70 a foot and sized to fit your room height if enough people want one. I signed up for two.

And just when I thought I had seen it all and was on my way to the escalators, I saw Bocci’s latest lights called 28. The hand blown glass balls come in any colour (or clear) and can be suspend to any length individually or in clusters ($750 each from Kiosk). Half a dozen of mixed colours would look pretty cool over my dining table.

So I would say that this year’s show was the best in years. It did what you want and fear a design show will do: send you home with fresh ideas, a lot of décor zeal, and a strong desire to make some big changes! Hmmmm…

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