Greenhaven Home :: A Smarter Way of Living

Barbara Book Dornbush opened her interior design firm, the Dornbush Design Studio, LLC five years ago in Atlanta. The Dornbush Design Studio, LLC focuses on sustainable residential interiors. Sustainable residential interiors are environmentally friendly and people friendly. They are beautiful in any style, whether traditional or contemporary, or somewhere in between. She offers her clients design choices that are as healthy as possible for them and the environment, regardless of the style selected.

In addition to completing her associate's degree summa cum laude from a FIDER accredited program in interior design at the American Intercontinental University in Buckhead, Barbara also holds a bachelor's degree in psychology with honors from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and a master's degree in organization behavior from Northwestern University.

Barbara has been featured in Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles, Atlanta Home Improvement Magazine and Fabulous Floors. Barbara has given talks to groups, such as Georgia Organics and the Art Institute of Atlanta, on sustainable residential interiors and she was awarded the 2006 ASID Design Excellence Award for Sustainable Design. Barbara served on the program committee of the International Furnishings and Design Association's 2007 national conference to bring information about sustainability to more designers. She has also been a guest on "The Lazy Environmentalist" on Sirius Radio.

Current projects include homes in Atlanta and in Highlands, North Carolina.

Design Assistance provided by Fernanda Crawford.

The nursery combines contemporary environmental awareness with traditional southern comfort. One might call the style "New Southern Transitional". The style is transitional in the sense that there are contemporary items and traditional items blended in an engaging and harmonious manner. All of the items in the nursery have been selected with the environment in mind by published designer, Barb Dornbush, who won the first ASID Design Excellence Award in Georgia for Sustainable Design.

The contemporary crib and changing table designed by SCAD graduate Mike Ayres of Structured Green makes creative use of lumber, such as mahogany, that was "dropped" on the docks of Savannah because it was too short to be used for flooring, bamboo, and cypress that was recovered from Georgia rivers. The colors of the woods are reflected in the color scheme of the nursery. The recovered cypress has naturally turned a beautiful shade of green which relates well to the soothing (and gender-neutral) green wall color selected for the room. Warm browns, inspired by the mahogany, and off-whites, inspired by the bamboo, are also used in the color scheme.

Southern comfort is embodied in the fully upholstered, traditional swivel glider chair, which due to its environmental qualities, provides guilt-free bliss for feeding, reading or just relaxing.  Instead of petroleum based foam, the cushions are made of a soy-based foam and the fabric is a soft and durable 100% organic cotton. In fact all of the fabrics used in the room are 100% organic cotton by Schumacher, including the crib bumper. The crib sheet is organic cotton by Coyuchi and the crib mattress is all natural latex by Savvy Rest.

In addition to being stylistically transitional, the nursery could be considered transitional in the sense that it is designed to transition easily to other life stages. Many of the items selected, such as the swivel glider chair, could be used well beyond childhood and in other types of rooms.