Do Your Own Business Valuation – Part 1: Introduction to Business Valuation

As a business owner, you know more about your business than any one, but there is one thing you are not too sure about – how much it is worth. This is the first in a series of articles designed to help you learn about business valuation and, if you choose, do your own business valuation.

Defining Value

Before we begin discussing business valuation it is important to define what value is. When asked, most people will struggle to define it then end up using an example like a one dollar bill is worth more than a quarter. Value is difficult to define without comparing at least two items. The comparisons must be well defined to have any meaning. For example a rare quarter may be worth more than a common dollar bill. The first step in any valuation is to accurately and completely define the property that is being valued.

Value is also subjective. Someone who needs a quarter to plug a parking meter in order to avoid a parking ticket would gladly pay a dollar or more for a quarter. Similarly, one business may have a number of values. A strategic buyer that can plug the customers of the business into its existing system may perceive more value than a person who is going to run the business day-to-day. The second step in valuation is defining for whom the property is being valued.

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Colour Me Brightly! Understanding Light in Interior Design. Part III: Patterns from Opaque Materials

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create breathtaking results. In this four-part series which I call â??Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,â? I draw on my experience in Londonâ??s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This third article talks about how to create patterns using opaque materials.

The second way for an interior designer to create light-based patterns involves opaque surfaces, which reflect light back into a room. This pattern creation process is more sophisticated and can be fine-tuned for stunning interior design effects. Light portrayals impact how we understand a surface and its texture. For example, the â??standardâ? technique often seen in London residences simply involves casting a gentle play of light across a wall. The light brushes the fittings, causing the wall to appear even, flat and two-dimensional. Some top London Interior Designers know that their clients crave more drama and stylistic nuance. In such cases, placing lightwell fillings very close to the wall and angling them downwards can be really striking. Using this technique, interior design consultancies can transform the previous gentle wave into an enunciated designer style, as the photons shave the surface and build to form sturdy optical patterns, including top-level arcs and dramatic textures. A sharper, more laser-like focus will only make the pattern more conspicuous â?? recreating a look that is popular in many trendy London nightclubs.

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Colour Me Brightly! Understanding Light in Interior Design. Part I: Introducing Patterns of Light

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create breathtaking results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This first article is about patterns.

Ask a London schoolgirl to imagine natural patterns, and she may talk at length of curvaceous seashells, the undulating edge of waves on the shore, the grooves in a gnarled tree trunk. Interior designers know that patterns are all around us. Patterns profoundly influence all interior design schemes, transforming our appreciation of color and texture, adding fluctuations and drifts or promoting harmony and stillness. London Interior Designers will focus on soft, fluid outlines in order to create relaxing patterns. By contrast, bold graphic statements in a wallpaper stencil can be invigorating for a London discotheque or salon. Pattern is a foundational ingredient of interior design, fragmenting overwhelming shapes and plain surfaces while simultaneously lending personality and profundity to a room.

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Colour Me Brightly! Understanding Light in Interior Design. Part II: Perforations and Glass

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create breathtaking results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This second article talks about how to create patterns using illuminated materials.

Any perforated textile, when lit from the back or from the inside, will speckle adjacent forms with pattern, from point strips and pirouettes to constellations and dazzling laser specks. The professional interior designer can use the trim of a window covering to create fabulous banding across a shiny floor covering in the London summer. Some interior design firms love to use ornamental metal lanterns to paint fiery asteroids on walls and furniture, while light projected through a sculpted screen can create magnificent abstract outlines in expressive contemporary interior design schemes. A factory-inspired metal stairwell with perforated treads – of the type often reinterpreted for ultra-modern interior design schemes – can throw tiny checkmarks of light onto local furniture when exposed to a bright London sky in springtime. A fabulous option with a wooden staircase would require the interior designer to specify a grit-washed tread, to deliberately throw stunning shadows from the rail onto the adjacent wall. Abstract wire-mesh sculptures by local London artists can engender powerful interior design emotions, with the pattern even becoming more important than the object itself! Interior designers can expressively use perspective to distort the pattern from complete realism, when lit front-on, to Baconesque abstract enchantment when illuminated at an acute angle. The same effect can be created by using mirrors to refocus natural light from bay windows in some of the more luxurious London residences.

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Colour Me Brightly! Understanding Light in Interior Design. Part IV: Conclusion

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create breathtaking results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This fourth article concludes my series.

Linear light patterns can focus on either the horizontal or the vertical metrics of a room. A given wall-light technique can create an immersing halo effect, if the interior designer uses concentrated super-bright light at high level that gradually fades out towards the base. Some London Interior Design consultancies specialise in choosing continuous sources, such as a miniature tungsten rack for a soft light or overlapping fluorescents for a cooler light. This is an effect that works very well in contemporary interior designs, where light can be concealed between the wall and the ceiling in a crevice in order to take the place of the traditional cornice.

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