Modern Fireplace Mantels

The trend for caring for our environment whilst building and living in our homes continues with many new products and ideas coming onto the market all the time. This is definitely an area that anyone building a home should take time to consider and incorporate, particularly with rising power costs and long term environmental impact that housing has, even adding solar water heating can greatly impact the running costs of your home in a very beneficial way, along with incorporating passive solar energy materials such as a concrete floor and block walls.

Sleek with clean lines are still on trend for your modern home plans when it comes to kitchens, maximising storage and creating a great flow of the kitchen to the dining area are still also key, however smaller butlers pantries are becoming more popular allowing you open storage and a second preparation area whilst also being able to close it off of the main kitchen area when entertaining.

Designing and building a new home is a very exciting time in your life, checking out the latest trends and designs is essential so you can consider including them in your modern home plans. Investigating what is going to be in fashion and might suit you and your home is a great idea so that once it is built you are not left wishing you had included some great new feature.

With more and more of our life being lived online and many of home appliances and gadgets being developed to integrate with our home networks and smart phones carefully considering a multimedia set up is essential. It might just be incorporating wi-fi to entire house as part of the build process, installing smart TV or other smart appliances such as a washing machine, refrigerator or oven. Additionally your alarm system can incorporated now too including video surveillance to ensure your new home is kept safe and sound.

Deciding which colour to decorate your home in has got to be one of the biggest decisions especially as replacing items like carpet or tiles can be very expensive if you get it wrong. Most home owners still feel most comfortable with neutral tones as these are familiar and we feel safe with them, however the beiges that have dominated the home decor scene for many years to slowly being surpassed by tones of grey.