Region's top interior designers reveal trends By Debra Prinzing

Last October, the Seattle Design Center recognized the region's top designers at the annual Northwest Design Awards Gala, honoring residential, commercial and luxury yacht projects. The winning residential projects reveal several emerging trends that reflect a fresh, modern design sensibility.

With attention to functional—and livable—spaces, the projects pair crisp, clean lines with warm, organic materials. Here's a review of some of the best award-winning ideas from the program:

Space-saving for function and style

Seattle furniture maker Joel Shepard borrowed a centuries-old idea of the traditional Japanese tansu cabinet to solve a client's modern problem: organizing the clutter of a home entertainment system.

"The homeowners had a problem with all this ugly TV stuff hanging out of open shelving," Shepard said. "Personally, I don't like to have the television impose itself on a room, so this way, we in effect took it out of contention."

"I wanted it to appear that [my clients] had been really lucky in shopping all over in antique shops and found three pieces that fit together perfectly," Shepard said.

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View images of the Tansu cabinet in Portfolio