You’re Spending a Lot of Time Indoors Now. Is Your Air Clean Enough?
More homeowners are asking interior designers how to offset the toxins in their rugs, sofas, and paint.
Like many interior designers, Brigette Romanek loves a high-gloss paint—a lacquer finish so shiny you can see your reflection in it. But the Los Angeles decorator had to rethink her methods after she gave her usual treatment to the interior walls of a home in Hancock Park and her clients almost fell ill from the smell.
She’d expected the fumes to dissipate by the time they returned from vacation more than a week later, but she quickly realized one’s sense of smell isn’t always the best judge of air quality. “Right then and there, something clicked,” says Romanek, who’s worked with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Beyoncé and Jay-Z. “My clients had fresh noses, but I had gotten used to it—that was the danger.”