Designer Spotlight: Charn and Company

Customize your nursery with designer cottage style products from Charn & Company. Their products are custom made with a large selection of fabrics and cottage chic colors. You can find modern pendants, functional floor lamps, whimsical wall sconces, and custom lamps for your nursery design.

How did you discover design and this industry? I was born in a world of custom furniture design and lighting with my parent’s manufacturing company in Asia. My father was a talented architect and a great designer of carved furniture while my mother was very skilled tailor and enjoyed making custom silk lamp shades.  Growing up as a child around designer parents, I was surrounded by beautiful silk fabrics, saw dust, and the ever interesting atmosphere of design and merchandising. My parents owned a large export furniture design company and shipped their products all over the world. I grew up drawing and sketching from catalog books to making lamp shades with scrap fabrics.

What defines your style and what do you do to maintain your uniqueness? Charn & Company lighting and décor offer a stylish cottage chic look. With selected hardwoods, our wooden chandeliers, table lamps, floor lamps, and wall sconces are artisan made and antique finished to give it that Americana cottage look. Even our popular Bella collection which features romantic appliqués that embellish this vintage line is given that shabby chic touch. We pride ourselves in allowing our customers to customize their own products. Not only are you able to mix and match the lamps and shade styles, you can also choose your own fabrics or finishes and even send in your customer’s own material. We maintain our uniqueness by insuring quality made products and providing excellent customer service.

What trends do you observe in the nursery design field and how has online stores influenced this industry and nursery design as a practice? We have noticed over the years the competitive nature of the nursery design field and in order to compete, online stores are needing to provide customers with more information, more choices, and more deals as free shipping, free design service, and design nursery room packages.  Everyone seems to be an expert now and its not enough to have a interior design degree. You need to educate yourself with how new applications (apps ) work like design boards from Pintereset and Olioboard.  Not only do you have to give more… you have to present them in an easy step to make the selection process manageable. Finding unique products for online stores is another challenge as it seems that the customer can easily GOOGLE or search another site. That is why Charn & Company can proudly celebrate our 20th year in business because we do always offer unique products with our customization tools. Charn & Company is also very selective in our acceptance of online accounts. We don’t just sell to anyone who wants to open an online store. To qualify for an account, we need to approve your high quality site and make sure your current product line fits our look.  Online stores are Jackandjillinteriors, Poshtots, and Rosenberryrooms definitely offer the best products, service, and design.

About your portfolio

What do you love about your product? Our products are made by local artisans in the USA and we are very proud to support American made products. We use selected hardwoods to hand turn our floor lamps, table lamps, and chandeliers. Skilled artisans and lamp shade tailors customize each lamp shade order.  We use quality materials as flame retardant lining, 3 way sockets for all lamps, and water based paint colors. Our beautiful floral resin appliqués are made in house with custom made molds to produce fine details. Most importantly, we love customizing all our products.  Each product is characteristically unique and is given great attention to detail with fabrics, colors, and style options. We are a down to earth company where customer service is the key. Customers trust our brand and know that they will be getting a product that is custom made for them.

When does a nursery become awesome in your opinion? A nursery becomes awesome when it has personality. Designers achieve this when they are able to incorporate custom made products that reflect the child’s personality and signature. Whether if it be a monogrammed lamp, personalized bookends or custom name plaques, it brings the room together with details. Getting a cookie cutter nursery room from a large chain store where fabrics all have coordinate to a few colors and everything matches is not an ideal nursery. Every child is unique as should his new nursery be!

Design process:

What is your usual design process? How do you go about creating a completely new nursery over and over again? My design process usually starts with some inspirations.  Inspirations can come from anywhere, place, person or thing. I always carry a blank notebook and pencil in my purse as I never know when the inspiration process starts. Sometimes, it may be from a child’s hair bow and the colors draw me in or it can come with a glance of a furniture leg section. I am not sure if all designers react the same but whenever I enter a room, my first attention is drawn to light like a fly. It seems odd but I start staring at all the light fixtures of the restaurants, hotels, and places I visit. It becomes a part of me and I go into a design mode and start visualizing the process and what parts are needed to make the chandelier or lamp. Then comes the phase where I start imagining the colors and variations of patterns. Of course, it immediately goes into sample production if it strikes like lightening and goes into sampling mode.  Our design team takes a vote and usually, I win.

We work closely with designers to customize chandeliers or floor lamps for their nurseries often.  Many times, the designers will send us a picture of a product that they like or the actual nursery design board and we will sketch a new floor lamp or chandelier (complete with their selected fabric or color) to help them visualize the end product.  Attached is a sample sketch with options and custom made floor lamp for Bellini Baby and Teen.  The client loved the floor lamp so much that we decided to include the New Jonathan floor lamp in our floor lamp selection.

What are the essentials of a nursery? Space saving furniture design, functional lighting, welcoming colors, products that help keep the nursery organized and safe. We will focus on lighting and organization.

Lighting is definitely essential for a nursery. With the level of lighting, a newborn can rest comfortably and adjust to his room.  Lighting needs to be functional so it is important to choose lighting that can offer three levels of light – 3 way sockets are offered on all our lamps and floor lamps. Wall sconces not only provide an attractive light source, but can easily be hardwired to leave space on your dresser for other necessities.  Our floor lamps are great for dark corners or next to your rocker as a great space saving idea. Add a convenient table top design to place your bottles during feeding time.  Of course, our chandeliers provide plenty of light with three, four or six arms which take up to 60 watts each.  Both chandeliers and pendants provide enough illumination for a standard nursery room. From our Bella collection, we offer great hampers, toy chests, bookcases, shelves, and step-stool to accessorize and help organize a nursery.

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