Mitchell and Bob, the authors of a new how-to-book The Comfortable Home: How to Invest in your Nest and Live Well for Less, have some suggestions for making over your bedroom. When decorating your home, don't leave your bedroom for last, they say. Make it the sanctuary you truly deserve, one that will help you relax at night and help you get ready to start the day.
Furnishings shown on ABC 7
Furniture:
Bedding:
Lights Out - Kiwi
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams products are available in Chicago through Bloomingdale's Bloomingdales.com and Jayson Home & Garden jaysonhomeandgarden.com. For more information, go to mgbwhome.com.
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams mgbwhome.com offers furniture, lighting, rugs, and accessories designed to make people comfortable. Their furnishings appear in national magazines, on TV shows, and in fine hotels. The company founders are also known for championing equality in the workplace and in society.
Bloomingdale's Welcomes Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams
Personal Appearance and Cocktail Reception to benefit the Center on Halsted
You can meet Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams, co-founders of the renowned home furnishings brand, at Bloomingdale's Home & Furniture Store at Medinah Temple in Chicago this Thursday, December 3. The cocktail reception from 6 to 8 pm includes a special live interview with the designers, moderated by CS Magazine's Style Editor, D. Graham Kostic.
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams' collection of "Modern Linens," now available at Bloomingdale's, is in keeping with the comfort, relaxed style, and affordability legacy associated with the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams brand. This is Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams' first foray into the bed linens market and it coincides with the company's 20th anniversary. Their "Modern Linens" consists of six different gender-neutral collections, all with many options for mixing and matching to get the ultimate Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams "collected" look. The six collections are aptly named "Dream Stripe," "Sleep Retreat, "Good Night Denim White," "Good Night Denim Sunshine," "Lights Out Spice," and "Lights Out Kiwi." The program also includes luxurious 100% cotton, 600 thread count solid color sateen sheeting group in an array of six key basic and fashion colors. "Modern Linens" is now available at Bloomingdale's locations nationwide and the line ranges from $250 for all Queen sheet sets, $250 for all Queen duvets, $125 for throws, and $100 for decorative pillows.
Stop by Bloomingdale's Home & Furniture Store at Medinah Temple on December 3 for Mitchell Gold's and Bob William's personal appearance and to receive a complimentary, autographed copy of their newest decorating book, The Comfortable Home: How to Invest in your Nest and Live Well for Less with any Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams "Modern Linens" purchase made during the event. 10% of sales from all Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams purchases made during the event will be donated to the Center on Halsted.
Meet Designers Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams
Wednesday, December 2
6 to 8 pm
Jayson Home and Garden
1855 N. Clybourn, Chicago
For reservations, call 773.248.8180
Or email jhg@mgbwhome.com
jaysonhomeandgarden.com
Thursday, December 3
6 to 8 pm
Bloomingdale's Home & Furniture Store
600 N. Wabash, Chicago
For reservations, call 312.440.4515
Bloomingdales.com
THE COMFORTABLE HOME: How to Invest in Your Nest and Live Well for Less
By Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams with Mindy Drucker
In our current economy, consuming conspicuously has now taken a backseat to being smart about money. But one thing hasn't changed--your home is still an incredibly smart investment. In their new book The Comfortable Home: How to Invest in Your Nest and Live Well for Less (Clarkson Potter/Publishers, $35), Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams offer ideas on how to create a new home from scratch or simply update a few rooms. The founders of the eponymously-named internationally acclaimed furniture company, Gold and Williams wrote the book to coincide with their firm's 20th Anniversary mgbwhome.com.
Based on their two decades of experience, The Comfortable Home offers timely how-to advice, easy-to-follow step-by-steps, and inspiring photography of inviting Interiors designed to help readers truly love their homes and know how to invest in them wisely. In the book, Mitchell and Bob suggest that the key to smart investing in your home is planning. In this vein, they introduce readers to their simple yet effective approaches to color, furniture arrangement, and accessorizing, while also providing tips on how to get in touch with what you like and need before making any big decisions.
With room-by-room chapters, The Comfortable Home is full of expert advice, including:
Using Mitchell and Bob's sharp ideas for working with color, furnishing small spaces, creating room-to-room flow, and more, readers will find inspiration on every page. Throughout the book, sumptuous original photography provides stimulating tours of real homes, including Mitchell and Bob's New York City apartment, a country cottage, a revitalized ranch, and a Federal-style home in the city.
The Comfortable Home can inspire you – whether you are starting from scratch or simply looking for a smart way to update a room with a few new pieces of furniture.
Five Tips for Investing in Your Nest
Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams believe that, in any economy, your home is an incredibly smart investment. Its value goes well beyond what current real estate prices may say. A beautiful, serene, and organized house truly has the power to change your life. And investments can be made on any budget. Here these design experts offer are 5 tips to get you started:
1.) Plan to save money. Before you buy anything, do two things: Think about how you want to live in each room--make a list of what activities will go on there. Then get familiar with each room- -best features, views, traffic flow--and measure it thoroughly so you have a full list of dimensions. Knowing what you need and why, plus what will fit, make decorating decisions easier and helps you get it right the first time--which saves money.
2.) Re-prioritize your spending. Be conscious of what things like a new pocketbook, a watch or even a car cost, and consider the benefits of reallocating those funds to making your home more comfortable. One way to furnish a whole room: Try a "staycation" instead of a vacation. Make it the family room, get the kids involved, and create a new kind of family memory--and get a space that will give you years of enjoyment.
3.) Use color to get a great look affordably. When people tell us they "want our look," a big part of what they're responding to is our sense of color. To make a room feel calm and warm without being the least bit bland, we use soft, subtle, solid-colored hues and then enliven with accessories in patterns and stronger colors. We also limit the number of colors in a room to no more than four, with two used as accents.
4.) Invest in a few good pieces. Some things not only "say" quality, but also help insure quality of life. For you, it might be a beautiful dining table that will let you entertain the way you've always wanted, or a rug with colors to set the theme of the whole room. It might be window coverings--beautiful linen draperies that add warmth and texture. Or it could be an antique chest you buy for one room knowing you can repurpose it by moving it to other rooms over the years--an environmentally intelligent way to decorate.
5.) Get finished (at least for now). We often see people invest in decorating a room, but then stop short of the finishing touches that will give them the look they want. Adding accessories, pillows, throws, flowers, photos, and collectibles--without cluttering things up--can be done affordably, giving rooms that "finished" look you see in magazines and making them easy to update by regularly switching out and rearranging items.
About Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams In 1989, Mitchell Gold and his business partner, Bob Williams, created a furniture company in Taylorsville, North Carolina mgbwhome.com.Today, they head a nationally recognized company, with a 600,000-sq.-ft. state-of-the-art factory with a family-friendly work environment that includes an on-site not-for-profit daycare center, the first of its kind in the residential furniture industry.
Over the years Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams has expanded its offerings from upholstery to include case goods, lighting, rugs, accessories, a photography collection by Tipper Gore and, this fall, a new line of bedding called Modern Linens. Together, Mitchell and Bob strategize on creating products both unique and marketable, producing only items they'd want in their own homes. Bob then directs the execution, and Mitchell oversees marketing and production. Their goal, Bob explains, is to make the pieces inviting, with "the same toasty feeling you'd get at grandma's as a kid," and for customers to still be in love with their pieces a decade from now.
Since its inception, the company has been committed to operating in an environmentally intelligent manner, from its focus on creating fine-quality, comfortable furniture designed to be treasured for years to the way those pieces are manufactured and packaged to how the factory is run. Many consumers know Mitchell and Bob's philosophy of comfort from their furniture and retail stores. Now celebrating its 20th Anniversary, the company -- which they started with an initial investment of $60,000 -has become a leading home-furnishings brand, carried in such national chains as Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Williams-Sonoma Home, and Bloomingdale's, as well as more than 60 independent retailers nationwide. In addition, there is a growing chain of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Signature Stores that carry exclusively their products, in cities from New York to D.C., Miami, Houston, and L.A., with several more planned for 2010.
Mitchell and Bob are known for creating a corporate culture that respects diversity, supports education, and is environmentally responsible. They've also been recognized for their philanthropic work. They help those with life-challenging illnesses through groups including Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. And they are seen as a major force for gay rights by many, including The Human Rights Campaign, where Mitchell served on the board for seven years; TimeOut magazine, which named him to 2007's "Top 50 Most Powerful Gay People in America"; and The Advocate, which gave him a 2006 "People of the Year Award."
In 2005, Mitchell founded Faith In America, a non-profit working to end religion-based bigotry against LGBT Americans (www.faithinamerica.com). Last fall, Mitchell published CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain & Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America and received the Stonewall Community Foundation's distinguished Visionary Award for his work. Bob also makes design contributions, such as creating table settings for Elle Décor's Dining by Design, a benefit for DIFFA, and styling rooms for The Hamptons Designer Show House by House & Garden, benefiting Southampton Hospital.
In addition to its popularity with consumers, their furniture is a favorite of interior designers, TV set designers, and the design press. It has been included in the redecoration of the Obama White House. It has appeared on Friends, Sex & the City, The Office, and Lipstick Jungle. It has been in virtually every home magazine, including Elle Decor, House Beautiful, and Metropolitan Home--from whom MG+BW has received "Design 100" awards.
Mitchell and Bob have been widely featured in the media, from design blogs to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Inc., who included them among "26 Entrepreneurs We Love." Their first book, Let's Get Comfortable: How to Furnish and Decorate a Welcoming Home, was published by Meredith in March 2007, and led to two appearances on The Today Show. In August 2008, Mitchell and Bob were among the celebrity judges on HGTV's Summer Showdown design contest. Last May, Mitchell was the subject of a USA Today column on what CEOs are reading.
