Imagine a bathroom dedicated to your dog’s own shower or designing a luxe custom bed for your cat that costs as much as your own. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Dallas interior designer Kim Armstrong says when her clients begin home renovation projects, they’re including pets into their interior design schemes. Here are some of the best pet design trends she’s seeing here in the Dallas-area.
Armstrong custom designed and built this luxurious rosewood settee in response to the growing pet design trend of custom pet furniture.
Pet Beds That Look As Good As Yours
As pet beds have evolved from oversize floor pillows to stylish options that cater to your companion’s cool comfort, Armstrong Interior Design is responding to a new pet design trend: custom-built furniture for pets.
“I’m getting requests from clients that want pet beds that look like furniture,” Armstrong says. And while there are some great pet furniture options on retail sites like Wayfair, Kim says she wasn’t finding the specific styles and fabrics she wanted for her clients, so she began custom building them.
For each bed, she starts from scratch, drawing detailed sketches of designs that vary from sleek modern beds to more ornate carvings for a traditional look. Once she lands on a design she and the client like, Armstrong selects stain-resistant fabrics that are especially well suited for animals and works with local workrooms who carve and upholster the custom furniture. Prices range from $2,000 up.
For one client, she designed a dog daybed that looks like a sleek, blue bench you’d find at West Elm. Look closely and you can see a dog paw carved into the leg of the bench, a subtle nod to the lucky pets who recline on their daybed by the window to watch who comes by.
A Shower Designed for Your Dog
The New York Times reports that there’s a growing demand for designated showers for dogs in homes, and Armstrong has seen many requests for these pop up in the Dallas-area.
“In this beautiful, historic Charles Dilbeck home in Lakewood, I have a client who installed a dog shower in their laundry room,” Armstrong says. “With clips to clip in your pet and a hand wand to make rinsing easy, it’s a practical part of the laundry room.”
In addition to leash clips that keep your pet safely in place and a petite handheld showerhead, these dog showers usually feature a raised floor that’s at a convenient height for owners to rinse their pets. Some clients have even installed short steps for getting larger dogs into the shower.
And while a dog shower has its purpose for pet owners, it doubles as a practical rinse-off area after gardening or when muddy kids come stomping through.
Organized Pet Stations
Designers are using utility spaces such as laundry rooms and mudrooms to create central pet stations for their clients. Essentially custom cabinet systems, these popular pet stations often have built-in pet crates that are flush with the cabinetry and contain usage-specific storage for dog food or cat food bags, drawers for pet medicine, hooks for leashes and even a place for pet rain coats and paw boots.
“For my own pets, I designed a pet station in my home that’s an all-in-one,” Anderson says. “I put in personal touches like designing separate places for the dog’s and cat’s food, so that the cat’s bowl is accessible on a perch he can jump to and is up high out of the dog’s reach.”
