Why do people select outdoor furniture in complete sets that all match? We don't do that with our interior rooms - otherwise we'd look like something out of the styled rooms of a furniture catalog. It's unthinkable to choose your sofa, club chairs, dining chairs, and tables all in the same material or style.

When choosing outdoor furnishings, try the eclectic approach. Try a teak table with metal chairs (like the amazing Forest Chairs, aluminum stacking chairs from the Cafe Janus Collection at Janus et Cie, in photo above), then work in woven faux wicker club chairs from Restoration Hardware or Frontgate and some great traditional style wicker furniture (we love the traditional wicker Belvoir Collection from Lloyd Loom of Spalding; see below).

Dedon has whimsical Slim Line DDC Collection lounge chairs from designer Jean-Marie Massaud, with imaginative faux woven wicker patterns (pictured in Marseille and Edinburgh, respectively, in the photos below).

The epitome of outdoor furniture is the Petal Table from Richard Schultz. Straight out of the 1960s, Richard Schultz has reissued the design and it comes with white metal or bamboo petals (below).

Don't try to recreate your interior furnishings scheme outdoors by adding outdoor floor lamps and area rugs. This isn't necessary at all. We prefer seeing natural materials like stone and decking underfoot in our outdoor rooms, but by all means use outdoor rugs to cover flooring that is badly cracked or stained.

When you're looking at colors, don't automatically default to beige or sand for your color scheme! Choose a striped umbrella (see the Janus et Cie umbrellas, at right) and use the stripes to coordinate the rest of your furnishings. All schemes should be carried out to your outdoor furniture, dinnerware and serving pieces, and even the flowers in nearby planters.

With outdoor lighting, go with down lights or lighting with shades. Bare bulbs attract insects and the glare is harsh on the eyes. Candlelight is optimum, and if you can use citronella candles, they'll provide a beautiful light and naturally keep insects at bay. We love the Lotus Hurricane Lanterns and LotusHurricane Lantern Minis from Design House Stockholm. Hang them from pergolas and tree branches and place them on outdoor tables and walls - and on steps and along walkways as luminaries. Stunning. (See photos below for styles in grey, white, and black; the full-size lanterns hold regular tapers and the minis are made for tea lights and votive candles).

Q. What are Some of the Worst Home Design Mistakes?

Irwin Weiner ASID & Nicola Chernicoff, our Design2Share video hosts, talk about the worst home and construction design mistakes and how to avoid them in this video. How many of these "pet hates" are in your house right now, and how can you solve them? 

Q: What Value Does A Fireplace Add To A Home?

Fireplaces are fantastic focal points for the rooms in any home, but what are the secrets for using a fireplace to add value to your home? Irwin and Nicola, our New York designer co-hosts, love the fireplace and share their advice and common sense tips with you on making your fireplace addition really count. In this episode you will learn the do's and don'ts for placing plasma TVs above the fireplace, which room gives you the best resale value for fireplace additions, the fuel gel fireplace trend (easy, inexpensive, and stylish), using decorative mantels and other fireplace surround materials to tie in with your room's color scheme, and the romance of coal and woodburning fireplaces (particularly if you love chimney sweeps)!

Q: What Should I Consider When Decorating My Half Bath?

You would freak out if you knew how many years the average person spends using the toilet. It's not a pretty fact, but it's a fact that your toilet can be in a very beautiful room (and that's what counts in the end)! Nicola Chernicoff and Irwin Weiner take you onsite to a powder room and in this episode they will cover the resale value of adding half baths to your floor plan, what elements make up a typical powder room as opposed to a bathroom, how to add whimsy and style to bathroom decor, the latest trends and appliances to make this room greener and higher functioning, the early days of bathrooms (and we're talking sitting on stone, people!), the glam days of powder rooms, Irwin's pet peeves about bathrooms (and other outrageous bathroom humor), and a special tip about quiet, energy-saving toilets.

Q: What Are The Trends In Master Bedroom Design?

Decorating is a moving target. Trends come and go, and even how we use the master bedroom is evolving. In this Design2Share Q&A episode, Nicola and Irwin delve into the latest trends in decorating and kitting-out your inner sanctum. You will learn about the his-and-her wave that's sweeping closet space and bathrooms (and even extending to separate bedrooms), alternative ways to decorate the master suite, amenities and those little extras that will turn your bedroom suite into a relaxing haven, TV tips to keep the tube hidden when you're not watching, the hot electric bed movement, remote controls to do everything except brush your teeth, Irwin's recommendation for laundering pillow cases, and our favorite tip of all (hint: you can sell your iron)!

Q: What Can Make My Dining Room Special?

 Formal sit-down meals have been supplanted by today's casual, on-the-go lifestyles. But the dining room should never become the dinosaur of your home's floorplan. Take back the dining room and use it every day! Join us as Irwin and Nicola talk about turning your dining room into a special multi-purpose room. This Design2Share Q&A episode will cover the versatility of your dining space to accommodate everything from simple suppers to holiday feasts, ideas for turning dining areas into more family-friendly spaces, tips for tables, how to flex up on your seating space, how the wealthy historically set up their dining rooms, rules of thumb for dining room seating, ways to decorate and light your dining room, and style tips that will elevate your dining room from ordinary to stunning!

Q: Can I Use My Collections When I Decorate?

If you're like many people, you like to collect odd things like old photos, paperweights, Hummels, or imported beer cans. Now that you've done the packrat thing, we see no reason not to incorporate these treasures into your decorating scheme. Nicola and Irwin, our Design2Share co-hosts, take you inside a home proudly displaying collectibles to cover a few decorating basics: how to use collections to express your personality, how to entertain with collections, using flea markets and eBay to add and subtract to your collections, how to group collections for best display, and how collections can enhance your home's color scheme and style. Irwin also waxes poetic about collectible insects, so don't miss the buzz!

Q: How Can I Work From Home Without Making a Mess?

 More people are working from home than ever before, and turning whole rooms into a chaotic nightmare of files, loose papers, books, and disarray. Design2Share Q&A has been flooded with questions about storage and home organization, and we decided to focus our response on the home office (or library, study, den, spare room). In this episode, Irwin and Nicola share tips and advice on what essentials belong in a home office, how to use storage containers to maximize utility and minimize clutter, how to combine the home office with a library look to avoid sterility, how to decorate the home office to make it a relaxed and quiet space, ways to make the home office serve several functions, and the importance of good lighting. And don't miss our tip on feng shui and the proper placement of your desk!

Q: What Can Make My Renovation Less Intimidating?

It's all in the planning. Home renovations always cost more money, take more time, and cause more aggravation than we anticipate. The end result, however, is almost always worth your painful efforts. Watch Irwin and Nicola, our Design2Share Q&A co-hosts, as they advise you about getting all your design specs in writing, help manage your expectations for how a remodeling job should turn out, demonstrate their favorite renovation tricks and tips, walk you through one of their remodeling successes, and discuss special details that can make your next remodeling job that much more satisfying. And don't miss their recommendation for greening up your next home renovation!

Q: How Can We Make Guests Feel Welcome In Our Home? 

If we listen to the angel on our left shoulder, we definitely want to make guests feel welcome and stay with us in our apartment or house. But pay attention to the devil on our right shoulder, and we come up with designer Irwin Weiner's tip for keeping visitors from wearing out their welcomes. He and fellow designer Nicola Chernicoff pour themselves some wine, relax in a great toile-covered guest room, and share their advice for how to add fine hotel amenities to your guest room, why pillows can be a problem, how to experiment with color when decorating small rooms, the valuable no-wrinkle sheet tip, Nicola's advice for maximizing guest room sleeping comfort, and Irwin's unique design for squeezing ample bed space into a tiny guest room. And, of course, you'll get his devilish tip for unwelcoming house guests!

Q: How Should I Decorate My Outdoor Spaces? 

It's a distinct home design trend today to set up "outdoor rooms." This podcast episode explores the huge movement to bring the indoors outside and to colonize lawns, gardens, and yards with additional living and entertaining space. Nicola and Irwin, our Design2Share Q&A co-hosts, offer their usual nuggets of wisdom and opinionated barbs as they tackle how to determine the function of different outdoor spaces, how to define outdoor rooms with a variety of landscaping and hardscaping materials, what furniture and features define today's outdoor spaces, how to accessorize the great outdoors, tips on when and where to shop for good outdoor buys, and the importance of outdoor lighting and other details. And there's even a tip on decorating with mosquito netting!

Q: How Do I Choose Colors That I Won't Get Tired Of?

If you're looking for a magical color palette, forget about it. Everyone gets tired of the colors of their clothes, and some people weary of their hair color. That's only natural. So the bottom line is: decorating with color isn't rocket science. You're going to change it around frequently, so you might as well have fun with your color choices, and even risk choosing brave and bold schemes. In this Design2Share Q&A episode, Irwin and Nicola look at classic and monochromatic room schemes, ways to choose color schemes that inspire different moods (uplifting, dramatic, romantic, etc.), how to paint your home's architectural details, finding color inspiration from different countries, how to pick up on color trends, ways to use contrasting colors in a room, and a host of additional hints and tips surrounding decorating and color selection.

Q: How Can My Home's Interior Make a Great First Impression?

 For many homes, the foyer is the first interior space you see after coming through the front door. It's a crucial transition point from the outside to your indoor environment, and our show hosts Nicola and Irwin discuss ways to make a memorable first impression when decorating a foyer. Their tips and advice will help you create a dramatic, inviting, and entertaining space that will greet you when you come home and welcome all visitors. This episode covers the origins of the foyer in the French theater, color hierarchies for foyers and adjoining rooms, creating a sense of drama, adding functional and convenient features, the importance of lighting (and why many foyers have lanterns hanging down from the ceiling), dramatic and inviting themed displays, and how to welcome guests when you're throwing a party. And we tell you how lice became one of the most important factors in designing the features of early foyers!