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Tile is the glamour accessory of the kitchen or bathroom remodel - the crowning jewel, often, in a space otherwise dictated not by aesthetics but by utility. Just about all of the designer kitchens and bathrooms that appear in this section feature tile backsplashes or showers - many with well-known and expensive tiles of glass that start at $40 per square foot and go up from there. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There might be some tabletop ideas and gift possibilities to be found Friday and Saturday at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum's second annual Holiday Artisan Fair. Seventeen Bay Area artisans will show their handcrafted textiles, vases, bowls and other goods, alongside books and jewelry. The event, in the Piazzoni Murals Room, is free, from noon to 8:30 p.m. Friday and 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We all know how to keep our clothes and bedding and towels looking unfrayed and unfaded: Don't wash them and, especially, don't dry them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ah, just what dog owners have been waiting for: electronic openers for their pets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's so easy nowadays to snap photos and print them, it should come as no surprise that a company has found a way to make it almost as easy to frame them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sea Stones is a New Hampshire company that harvests stones from beaches in New England and puts them on knobs, bottle stoppers and coat hooks. Which of course raises the question of what happens when the stones are all gone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Smith & Fong, a San Francisco company manufacturing architectural bamboo plywood and flooring in China under the label Plyboo, recently announced very proudly that it had received Forest Stewardship Council certification, which raised the question: Why does a fast-growing grass that replenishes itself on a five-year growing cycle need FSC certification? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Zephyr, the Alameda company that specializes in not-your-mother's range hoods, has enlisted tech designer Robert Brunner for a new line, the Arc Collection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The company that brought us the popular countertop surface Corian has created a quartz surface called Zodiaq that is collecting kudos from environmentalists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The first SF20 has landed an impressive array of 50 exhibitors for next week's show at Fort Mason's Herbst Pavilion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ian and Adam Gibbs created the Shade Store two years ago as an online incarnation of their longtime New York window-treatment retail business, Home Works. Now Shade Store is getting its own showrooms, the latest of which is scheduled to open today in 1,690 square feet at 1932 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here's a little something that came to our attention when we were researching dorm room decor (Home&Garden, last Saturday). But most dorms have window coverings of some kind. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mills College in Oakland uses its spacious dorm rooms as a recruiting tool. Hopefully we aren't spoiling the surprise when we note that elsewhere freshmen generally get the oldest and smallest rooms on campus. That's one reason why decor matters. Another reason is the comforting connection to home that a few key belongings can provide. Yet another: the chance to show dorm mates who you are. Here are a few furnishings, tips and tools that can transform a little box into a cozy nest for two (or three, or even four). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The freshman checklist varies from school to school - and depends greatly on how far the student has to travel to return home and pick up whatever didn't make the first trip. But here are a few suggestions collected from experienced dorm dwellers and university Web sites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As if choosing, placing and hanging a single painting weren't challenging enough, the Sunset Idea House in Menlo Park went over the top with an entire wall of art in the dining room. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many folks find the idea of acquiring 20 pieces of art daunting - never mind how to present it. Larry Rinder, the new director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, loves seeking out original but unknown artists and named three of his favorite places to shop. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Maybe you'd love to go shopping for new furniture but have to make do with the old for now. That doesn't mean the home office has to remain a mess. Here are a few tips from the makers of SmartDraw space-planning software: [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Crate&Barrel's little sister, CB2, is opening at Union Square on Thursday. She looks nothing like the flagship store of the Chicago company that's become a favorite for wedding registries - and that's by design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One may choose sink over swim when it comes to remodeling the bathroom, judging from a couple of innovative sinks that have swum this way recently. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Daniel Goldstein never liked the looks of his TV. He'd hide it away in an old Chinese wedding cabinet that didn't quite close, and one day he shut the doors before the TV was off and noticed the way the light played through the slit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ikea shoppers who have enjoyed visiting the Emeryville showroom just to eyeball the well-furnished vignettes and then lunch at the bargain cafe with a billion-dollar view are down on their luck at the moment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Botanical photography is far from predictable in the new book "Flower" (Artisan; $35; 168 pages), a compilation of the works of Christopher Beane with text by Anthony Janson. From the colorful tulip images that grace the cover to the stark image "Unfolded Tree Ferns" at right, Beane's eye discerns a different kind of beauty than that of the dewy rose. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Target somehow keeps finding space for a steady stream of new designers. One of them, Sami Hayek, is doing some beautiful bedding. But what caught our eye were some of his small-space pieces designed to streamline clutter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some products promote themselves as newly green, organic or sustainable - others just simply are. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

City balconies could use the noise negation of a waterfall, but who's got room for that here in the big-bucks real estate capital of the country? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Compact fluorescent bulbs may save energy, but they also uglify the spaces of some readers, who have complained about the unsightly spirals peeking out from overhead fixtures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Crab tray and Celebrity lamp shown here don't represent the quirky home goods marketed by a New York couple at Deeply Madly Living. That would be impossible to do. But, you get the gist. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Now here's a fridge that needs neither magnet nor memo board to convey a message: Amana's new Jot dry-erase refrigerator. Use the accompanying dry-erase markers from Crayola and write, draw or doodle directly onto the appliance surface. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The death of their 90-year-old mother in September left Karen Pearson and Susan Lange to empty and sell her two homes, a cottage in France and an apartment filled with antiques in San Francisco. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When metal artisan David Gulassa drowned in a kayaking accident in 2001, his brother Stefan picked up the baton for his Seattle furniture manufacturer, now called Gulassa & Co. Stefan's latest pieces wowed visitors at the San Francisco Design Center's recent market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Claire Requa was born in New York and raised in Jamaica, then moved to Los Angeles and now lives in Copenhagen. This convergence of cultures does little to explain the quirkiness of her Claire de Lune chandelier, which mixes funky and baroque styles in a flat little eco-friendly package. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A new home and baby collection for Target offers a fresh take on some classic designs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What's not to like about the furniture at Room & Board? Well, if you like your furniture to come in a flat box, or if you live in a fourth-floor walkup, this might not be your place. Otherwise, well, the stuff is mostly solid, natural wood in contemporary designs crafted in the United States and selling at prices not out of this world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A meeting of art, nature and technology has produced a new dimension in decor centered in San Francisco: Exactmosaics, which combines artificial intelligence with the natural striations and variations in marble (and in wood) to create mosaics of unpainted "tiles." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Smart shoppers have already begun hunting down bargains on next year's holiday decorations and goods, and discounts may go a little deeper in the next few days. If you're thinking of replacing your electricity-hogging Christmas lights with LEDs, though, this may not be the time to save, because pickings will be slim. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Enviro Bath's whimsical Fantasia Lavatory ($599, as shown at right) comes in 10 colors, but it was the red that jumped out and called attention to the green symbol nearby: "100 percent recycled." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here's one highfalutin showhouse product with trickle-down potential: VisionArt, the television screen concealment system displayed in Sunset's San Francisco Idea House. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What is your house saying about you this holiday season? Believe it or not, if you've lit it up to the nines, visitors might be thinking they'd rather live near the residents of the more quietly decorated house next door. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It may be the season of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, but most of us otherwise prefer to keep our fires screened. Leave it to a designer and an architect, both working out of Los Angeles, to introduce fireplace screens this season that get the job done in vastly different styles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bay Area probably doesn't rank among the nation's top markets for heated bedding products, but here's one that might capture the fancy of many a Baby Boomer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of a heated bed holds little appeal to women of a certain age, but that's not what Kurt Tompkins was thinking when he invented the Bedfan. A self-described "hot sleeper" Texan, he was simply tired of cranking up the air conditioning at night just so that he could cool his bedroom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's still National Fire Prevention Month, and we could prevent some of the 23,600 residential fires annually in this country if we would just remember to put out our candles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The theme for next weekend's International Vintage Poster Fair is "Around the World in 3 Days - Great Cities of the World." Dealers from all over are expected to feature more than 10,000 original posters, mostly from the late 19th and 20th centuries, because, of course, they just don't make 'em like they used to. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Halloween kitsch collectors, we know you're out there and desperate for classy additions to the cache. This one's for you, the FrightFest Mini Stained Glass Window from Meyda Tiffany - yes, that Meyda, the leading manufacturer of Tiffany lamps and other stained-glass lighting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]