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OPENUU

Creating a Soft Ambiance with Decorative Lighting

One of the most relaxing ways to light your home is with a soft ambient glow. In the evening, when you’re winding down for bed or with the curtains drawn for an afternoon movie with friends, having soft lighting in your home allows you to set the mood without stumbling over furniture. Lighting doesn’t always have to be brilliant and illuminating. Lighting can be soft and relaxing instead. In fact, with smart lights, they can be both.

The best ambient lighting comes from thoughtful interior design. Which light fixtures you choose and where you place them will shape your soft-glow environment when you dim the lights at home for rest, movies, or romance.

Diffused Light Strips Along the Ceiling

One of the greatest innovations in recent lighting has been LED strips. These are strips of tiny LED diodes that you can mount anywhere in your home. They illuminate countertops when attached below upper cabinets; they can line your television in a soft glow, or provide gentle overhead light when mounted along the ceiling.

Highlight the lines of your room and beautiful architectural features with the ambient glow of overhead light strips. If you want to soften the twinkle of individual diodes, seek a light rope or use a milky diffuser strip.

Candle Glow Wall Sconces

Wall sconces are a classic way to achieve romantic soft lighting. We have been hanging candles and lanterns on the walls as lighting for many hundreds of years. Wall sconces are reminiscent of candle sconces and hurricane lanterns from our design styles just before electricity was introduced to the modern home. Today, frosted glass or artfully sculptural sconces are a great way to provide soft lighting around the room.

Luminescent Sculpture

There are few things more mesmerizing than a glowing sculpture. Today, you can find dozens of designs in LED sculptures for coffee tables or to mount on your wall. Some are prebuilt to glow and some can even be built into a new glowing sculpture each week using fit-together pieces and your own creative inspiration.

A glowing sculpture is always a conversation piece when friends visit and can add a beautifully futuristic element to your interior design.

Glowing Wall Panels

Wall panels are the new innovation of interior lighting. These diffused LED panels glow in elegant shapes and patterns mounted on your wall. At full brightness, they can illuminate a room and when turned down low they add color-changing ambiance to your space. You choose the design and the light level by putting the panel shapes together in your own unique way.

Pro tip: Use a mounting board so it is easy to rebuild the sculpture if you want to change the style or arrangement of the panels at any time.

Smart Bulb Chandeliers

Today, even your glowing chandeliers can adapt to the mood of the room – and we don’t mean a dimmer knob. Smart bulbs installed into a pendant light array or even a twinkling crystal chandelier give you full illumination and color control of your overhead light fixtures. Smart bulbs are voice-activated or can be controlled silently through a few taps of a mobile app.

In fact, glowing sculptures, wall panels, and light strips can all be found in smart, color-controlled, and voice-activated varieties.

Cafe Style Table Lamps

Table lamps have been a warm and inviting addition to ambient lighting since before the days of electricity. Today, you can find table lamp styles in book shops, cafes, and cozy clubhouses where each cluster of comfortable chairs is softly illuminated by it’s own shaded lamp. Choose your time period and your style or go eclectic because there are hundreds of design varieties of table lamp to choose from.

Soft ambient lighting at home is a relaxing and versatile option. With smart RBG control and an elegant choice of fixtures, you can set the mood easily or bring up the lights for clear illumination when it’s time to clean or find the remote. For more elegant and practical home decor ideas, contact us today.

Podcast Season 1 Episode 3 – Mean Noodles

Carol’s restaurant Mean Noodles

In our third episode, Caroline talks about her restaurant business Mean Noodles with her husband Kevin. Anne and Caroline discuss how the restaurant business is doing, and what their signature dishes are, and what new products they have.

Topics Covered:

00:19 – Anne’s introduction and about her co-host Carol’s restaurant in Hong Kong.

00:41 – Caroline shares about her restaurant business Mean Noodles, in addition to her design practice.

1:09 – Caroline talks about how they operate two businesses.

1:46 – Caroline introduces her husband Kevin and his background.

2:07 – Anne and Caroline discuss why they decided to open a restaurant, which is very different than their interior design business.

2:40 – Caroline shares about the advantages and disadvantages of running two businesses, and how it helps her as a designer, and Kevin’s background in culinary.

4:22 – Caroline talks about the whole design and renovation process, as the designer and the restaurant owner.

5:07 – Anne and Caroline discuss Mean Noodle’s signature dishes, which has been voted best Laksa in Hong Kong.

5:38 – Caroline shares about using their creative background to their advantage, including logo and menu designs.

6:13 – Caroline shares about Kevin’s market adventures on Instagram lives. Follow Kevin to the market on instagram @meannoodles.

7:05 – Anne and Caroline discuss the dine-in restriction with COVID19 challenges, and what’s been happening for the last few months at Mean Noodles.

8:03 – Caroline shares about the launch of their new product InstaLaksa.

Next week’s topic is about how Anne ended up in Chicago and how she’s building her career in real estate.

Follow us on Instagram @meannoodles and Facebook http://facebook.com/meannoodles, to watch Kevin livestream his shopping adventures.

Connect with Anne
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annefan
http://fanofluxury.com
Email: anne@fanofluxury.com

Connect with Caroline
https://hk.linkedin.com/in/cchou
https://openuu.com
Email: hello@openuu.com

Podcast Season 1 Episode 2 – Caroline Chou

Carol’s work as an architect and designer

In the second episode, Caroline talks about her work as an architect/interior design in Hong Kong. Anne and Caroline discuss how her interior design business is adapting to COVID-19 challenges.

Topics Covered:

00:19 – Anne’s introduction and her co-host Caroline.

1:17 – Caroline talks about her 2-year-old daughter, and her zoom classes. Anne and Caroline discuss the new normal of online schooling and private tutors.

3:52 – Caroline talks about her work as an architect/interior designer in Hong Kong for 8 years, and her practice with her husband Kevin. They manage a small team of designers, and work with clients with interior renovation needs, mainly focusing on hotels, restaurants, and retail spaces.

4:58 – Caroline talks about how COVID-19 has affected their company and their clients. She talks about the current on-going hotel project, but businesses are slow to start new projects, because of the hotel and restaurant industries.

5:31 – Caroline and Anne discuss the dining restrictions and safety measures and dine-in restrictions in Hong Kong vs Chicago. 7:05 – Anne asked about how COVID-19 impacted Caroline’s business operations. Caroline talks about how OPENUU adapted to work from home.

8:12 Caroline discussed how client meetings changed from face-to-face meetings to online calls. 10:02 – Caroline and Anne discuss the process of material selection. 11:00 – Next week’s topic is about Caroline’s restaurant Mean Noodles, and how they pivoted during COVID-19.

11:13 – Sign up at openuu.com to download a free copy of a budgeting worksheet.

Connect with Anne
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annefan
http://fanofluxury.com
Email: anne@fanofluxury.com

Connect with Caroline
https://hk.linkedin.com/in/cchou
https://openuu.com
Email: hello@openuu.com

Podcast Season 1 Episode 1 – Anne Fan

Anne’s work as a real estate agent

Topics Covered:

00:27 – Caroline’s introduction and Anne tells her story about her current situation in Chicago. She spends more time now enjoying her home office whereas before she was out a lot and didn’t cook at home much. Now she enjoys taking her coffee at home.

1:36 – Anne talks about her role at Compass where she leads a small team. They help people find income-generating rental properties and full-time residences.

2:20 – Anne explains what “income-generating” properties are. These are rental properties that have really good rental potential, where an owner can easily find a tenant for their units. Homeowners can get healthy returns on their investments.

3:09 – Anne narrates how COVID has affected real estate in general not only in their firm but the whole realty business in Chicago.

5:09 – But she explains the difference of their property amongst other real estates which is much more beneficial for their tenants because of the location and feature that is important during the quarantine.

6:36 – Caroline asked if there are still people buying properties during COVID. Anne answered, yes. The explanation entails, take advantage of buying these income-generating properties while the interest rates are low.

7:47 – Caroline asked, what are the safety measures in place during house tours since people are afraid to go out due to the pandemic.

8:05 – Anne and her firm introduced Virtual tours. Also, there are lots of showings using Lockboxes which are master lock key boxes that can hang on doorknobs or fences so the renter’s agent can access the key and unit themselves. They are also offering Virtual Open houses as well as some in-person open houses with masks, shoe covers, and gloves. They Limit the showings in tenant-occupied units for safety and protection measures. But what is great is that interest rates are very low so new homeowners and investors are taking advantage. And we all know once COVID passes these properties will increase the value.

Connect with Anne
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annefan
http://fanofluxury.com
Email: anne@fanofluxury.com

Connect with Caroline
https://hk.linkedin.com/in/cchou
https://openuu.com
Email: hello@openuu.com

TAS Alumni Spotlight: Caroline Chou ’02 Finds Success Blending Design with Food

For most people, running a restaurant and a design studio would mean taking on two separate full-time jobs. For Caroline Chou ’02 and her husband Kevin Lim, it is a serendipitous combination that enables them to fully flex their creative muscles as co-owners of OPENUU Design Studio and Mean Noodles. This year, their hard work and creative innovation bore fruit when Mean Noodles was awarded the 2019 Will Ching Award by the International Interior Design Association (IIDA).

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RISD Alumni Stories: Mean Little Noodle House Makes Big Impression

The enticing Southeast Asian dishes served up at Mean Noodles in Hong Kong are as aesthetically pleasing as the exquisite décor. Opened by husband-and-wife architects Kevin Lim and Caroline Chou MArch 11 in 2017, the restaurant in the city’s Sheung Wan district recently earned a Will Ching Award from the International Interior Design Association (IIDA).

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Interior Design Magazine: Mean Noodles by OPENUU Wins 2019 IIDA Award

Kevin Lim missed laksa, the spicy soup he slurped as a child when visiting relatives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “It was my comfort food,” recalls Lim, who is an architect as well as a trained chef—he attended Le Cordon Bleu, the now-closed culinary school near Boston, after attaining his architecture degree. Now back in Hong Kong, he’s the co-founding partner of OpenUU with his wife, design director Caroline Chou. The soup and other Southeast Asian dishes conceived by Lim have debuted at their first restaurant, Mean Noodles, the winner of the Will Ching Award for a project by a firm with five or fewer employees.

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