This photo from Midori's portfolio features a living room that melds seamlessly with the wild beauty of Mercer Island.

Today we are going to take a giant leap from Florida (where I am) to Washington State, where our guest designer MIdori Yoshikawa is gracing the great Northwest with her innovative designs.  Midori is originally from Tokyo, Japan, where she graduated from design school with honors.  After working for a prestigious design firm in Tokyo, she moved to Seattle and started her own company and she’s never looked back.  Midori has a very special talent because she works wonders in residential AND commercial design.  She is one of the few designers I have seen that use elements of both types of design in appropriate and beautiful ways with stunning results.  Please be sure to take the time to enjoy her fantastic portfolio. Today she is sharing a project that hits close to home. To be exact…the basement of her home.  You won’t believe the transformation. Enjoy!

~Lorrie

A common scene in ranch homes that is often challenging: High windows, paneling and a lot of stone on the fireplace.

4-Car Garage Becomes a Spacious MIL Suite

Midori Yoshikawa’s split-level ranch has several unique features that she wanted to integrate into one grand design and also be multi-functional. When she bought it, the house included a four-car garage – in which cars could be parked two deep – that also had an area for a work shop and a toilet stall. The house also had an indoor lap pool. The remainder of the ground floor included a guest room that sported very dark 1970′s paneling and a fake log fireplace, and a utility room.

Yoshikawa wanted to brighten the dark space, create a place for entertaining that could double as a family room but would also ensure she didn’t have to go upstairs to prepare food or get drinks when she was throwing a pool party. She also wanted to add a mother-in-law suite as family members frequently visit for weeks at a time. And she wanted to do it all affordably.

As head of her own interior design firm, Midori Yoshikawa Interior Design Inc., Yoshikawa used some basic interior design tricks to achieve the look she wanted, and she tapped economical sources available to everyone to purchase needed elements such as cabinets.

The space is now bright and colorful with lots of texture. I like how she infused just a bit of pattern in the rug, which coordinates with the painting.

Reuse Appliances, Cut Garage in Half

Since Midori was moving appliances from her upstairs kitchen to her downstairs, the size of the appliances dictated the size of the mother-in-law and entertaining kitchen. It was easy to see where she could steal space for the suite – she just cut the over-sized concrete four-car garage in half.

The downstairs space already had a pluming situated in the middle of the home, so it was easier to have the suite adjacent to it. Running the lines, however, was a big project because some of the concrete floor needed to be removed.

A storage area that had lots of space but was not very inviting.

Tropical Colors Add Punch and Brightness

Because the main suite room has no windows, Midori painted it a bright lime green to create a wilderness feeling, and included a French door to the pool, which let some outside light into the room.

She purchased inexpensive white cabinets from IKEA to create a kitchenette in the room so that the downstairs could be totally separate from the upstairs living quarters if needed. She added Pergo flooring from Home Depot, which looks good, is easy to take care of, and can handle wet feet well.

To brighten the whole downstairs Yoshikawa used tropical colors. The entertaining/family room is a warm yellow, while orange and white make a nice fruity combination in the bathroom.

As the mother of a small child, Yoshikawa also needed to make sure the lap pool was off-limits unless she was present. To accomplish that, she installed doors that locked from the poolside. A key is required to get to the pool from all the downstairs rooms.

“All my guests find the space warm and inviting, and comment on how much brighter it is,” said Yoshikawa. “And now if my parents ever decide to come to the United States, they will have someplace comfortable to stay. In the meantime, I have a wonderful space in which to throw parties and entertain.”

Becomes a simple and inviting kitchen. I like the modern edge with the frosted glass on the upper cabinets.

3 Tips For an Affordable, Mistake-Free Makeover

1. White trim and furniture provide a grounding base and gives tropical colors punch. The color serves as a calming force preventing you from overdosing on that particular color, and the white trim provides a familiar and warm feel to the space. White furniture is easy to find and looks good with bright colored paints.
2. Never use bright white or cream in a basement room. This is an easy mistake to make when you want to brighten a dark basement room. Using bright white can actually make all the shadows in the room standout and dulls the overall look, and can make it look depressing. Instead, choose a color that is one to two shades brighter than you might typically pick. You won’t really notice the brightness and the edge is taken off when using it in a basement or poorly lit room.
3.  Carrying a color theme, in this case tropical, ties the whole downstairs together.

Visit Midori’s website here.

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Tags: decorating tips, guest blogger

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm and is filed under decorating tips, guest blogger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.