Kristen McGinnis’s lacquered dining room.

The best hotel rooms are the ones filled with things you want to steal – like decorating ideas.

A great decorator show house is even better. The designers, of course, want you to hire them, but they have to put their ideas out there to lure you in. And this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, the biggie of the bunch in New York City, is jam-packed with ideas ripe for the plucking.

After last year’s foray to a chilly high-rise condominium overlooking the Hudson on Riverside Boulevard, this year’s show house returns to more familiar ground, namely a svelte, late 19th-century townhouse on the East Side.  We found ten ideas to tweak, transplant – or just dream about – in almost any kind of abode.

(more…)

We love trade shows. For hotel buffs the annual International Hotel, Model + Restaurant Show at New York’s Javits Center is the Great Kahuna, a self-described hospitality show of shows unleashing a cornucopia of new, well, stuff.

Tucked deep within the rows of big-ticket items – towering refrigerators, 12-inch-thick mattress, even a couple of food trucks – we found five nifty gadgets their backers want to put in hotels. Remember, you (probably) saw them here first.

(more…)

 Designer James Rixner’s sitting area adjoins a kitchen.

If you love plucking decorating ideas from hotel rooms  – and the cleverest properties serve up plenty – you probably love show houses. The Kips Bay Decorator Show House, the design world’s big kahuna, celebrates its 40^th anniversary this year – no mean feat for anything, let alone a moveable interior design feast. (more…)

Donuts — baked not fried.

One reason we like hotels is that the best are laboratories for design, jam-packed with decorating ideas you can try at home. So, of course, we love home design shows, and this is one of our favorites (full disclosure: we moderated the show’s New York Times designer seminars, but we’d be fans anyway).

This year’s Architectural Digest Home Design Show spilled into every nook and cranny of New York’s cavernous Pier 94. As always, the DIFFA by Design table settings created by a panoply of design teams were fantasy arrangements at their best. (more…)

We’re with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on this one – Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is a big, soulless barn. But once a year The New York Times Travel Show moves in for a weekend along with a big chunk of the world, and the place lights up.

With representatives from more than 70 countries and 14 states – and that’s not counting cruise ships, hotel chains and tour operators – you could travel the world without a passport this past weekend.  Here’s a small sampling of what we saw. (more…)

Library by Designer Celerie Kemble.

We like decorator show houses for many of the same reasons we like hotels. The best show house rooms are fantasy rooms, a designer’s vision for an imaginary occupant. When a designer gets it right, you’re transported to another world where you can try on a different life, albeit fleetingly, just as you do in an evocative hotel room.

Not every show house is filled with magical rooms, but Kips Bay, currently in its 39^th year, does better than most. Still, magic is elusive. Most rooms in this year’s manse, an 1870 East Side townhouse whose occupants included Maurice Brill, owner of the famed Brill Building, and John Hay (Jock) Whitney, owner of The New York Herald Tribune, seemed more about decorating ca. 2011 than the stage craft that launches mind travel. (more…)

The Mondrian SoHo, Café Carlyle at the Carlyle Hotel and the Standard Hotel New York are stylish, newly minted places.  Last night, the architect behind the Standard, the designer of the Mondrian and the decorator who refurbished Café Carlyle talked about their work at the Museum of the City of New York.  Here are five cool facts we learned about each property. (more…)

Vincente Wolf's DIFFA table.

We love design shows, and this is one of our favorites. (Full disclosure: we moderated the show’s New York Times design seminars, but we’d love it anyway.)

What’s not to love? Top-flight designers like Ralph Lauren, Rauber + Rauber, David Rockwell and Vincente Wolf fashioned glamorous table settings for DIFFA’s annual Dining by Design exhibition. More than 100 artists showed their work in the new Artist’s Project at the adjoining Pier 92. Restaurants like Eataly, Junoon, Print at Ink48 hotel and Make my Cake sent chefs to demonstrate – and pass around — everything from Italian delicacies to cupcakes. (more…)

We love travel shows. Under one roof you can step into a discord-free United Nations and get a taste (often literally) of dozens of countries without flashing a passport or suffering jetlag.

With representatives from more than 70 countries and 15 states – and that’s not counting cruise ships, hotel chains and tour operators – The New York Times Travel Show delivered a chunk of the world to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this past weekend. We toured for six hours. Here’s what we tasted. (more…)

Cuisinart one-cup coffeemaker.

We love the sneak peek aspect of trade shows, so we beelined to the recent International Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Show at Javits Center. Seeing the panoply of items hotels can choose from prompts reactions from what took them so long to whatever were they thinking?

Here’s a sampling of what we saw – and what you’ll be seeing soon, if not already. To put it another way – expect a lot more square dinner plates, one-cup coffee makers and iPod/iPhone dock station alarm clocks. (more…)