Results

Choosing Light Bulbs: Lumens, Kelvin and Colour Rendering Explained, Room by Room

Watts tell you what a bulb costs to run, lumens tell you how bright it is, kelvin tells you whether it looks warm or cold, and the colour rendering index tells you whether a tomato still looks like one.

Sep 21, 2026

Curtains for Heat and Light: Blackout, Lined, Sheer, and Why the Fitting Matters More Than the Fabric

A curtain that stops light and one that stops heat are different objects, and the gap at the top and sides undoes both. The choice is about what the window faces and what the room is for, not about the swatch.

Feb 25, 2025

Biophilic Design for Small Apartments Starts With a View

Plants help, but small-space biophilic design also uses daylight, airflow, natural patterns and a visible relationship with weather and time.

Jul 28, 2026

Small Space Design: The Apartment Playbook

Maximize square footage without the minimalist trap. Here's how contemporary designers make small apartments feel larger, livable, and genuinely yours.

Jun 9, 2026

The rise of dark mode designs

In recent years, dark mode has taken the digital world by storm. From operating systems and apps to websites and social media platforms, the option to switch to a dark background with light text has become increasingly popular. Dark mode not only offers a visually appealing aesthetic but also brings numerous benefits for users, such

May 29, 2023

More Than One in Four Adults Over Sixty Five Falls Each Year, Mostly at Home, Mostly in Two Rooms

The design changes that keep people in their own homes are cheap, undramatic and almost always installed after the fall rather than before it. The obstacle is not cost. It is that the fittings look like hospital equipment.

Aug 19, 2026

Warm Minimalism Works When Texture Replaces Clutter

The most livable minimalist rooms are adding grain, woven surfaces, aged metal and imperfect objects without surrendering calm or useful empty space.

Jul 28, 2026

The Home Library Is Returning Without the Grand Room

Readers are building small, visible book zones into hallways, bedrooms and dining rooms, proving a home library is a habit before it is architecture.

Jul 28, 2026

The Bench With the Extra Armrest Is Not Being Thoughtful About Your Posture

Sloped ledges, studded window sills, armrests in the middle of a bench, blue lighting in a toilet. Defensive design is usually described as deterring antisocial behaviour, and it works by making a place slightly worse for everybody.

Sep 2, 2026

Louise Trotter Doubled Down on Colour and Oversized Bags for Her Latest Bottega Veneta Show in Milan

The British designer drew on Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini for a collection of vivid tailoring and enlarged Intrecciato totes, shown to a front row that included Solange, Tyler the Creator and Julianne Moore.

Sep 27, 2026

90,300 Empty Offices Are Becoming Flats, Which Is Four Times the 2022 Number and Still the Hard Way to Build

Office to apartment conversions rose 28 per cent this year and now make up nearly half of all planned adaptive reuse in the United States. The pipeline is real. So are the reasons most office buildings cannot be converted at all.

Aug 22, 2026

Physicists Made Entangled Photons Out of Ordinary Sunlight, Which Was Supposed to Require a Laser

A team in Ottawa and Erlangen put a window sized lens in the sun, funnelled the light down a glass cone into a fibre the width of a hair, and got entangled photons at ninety four per cent fidelity. The Sun is not supposed to be able to do this.

Aug 25, 2026

Interior Design Trends 2025: After Beige

Beige's reign over neutral interiors is ending. 2025 brings warm terra cotta, mossy sage greens, and rich chocolate tones that promise rooms with actual personality.

Feb 15, 2024

Smart Glasses Have a Style Problem Called Surveillance

AI eyewear is becoming more capable and less conspicuous, but a celebrity revolt and fresh privacy fixes show that bystanders still get a vote on adoption.

Jul 22, 2026

UC San Diego Physicists Ran a New Check on Whether the Universe's Oldest Light Has a Slight Twist

Anto Lonappan, Brian Keating and Kam Arnold built an independent method to test for cosmic birefringence in the cosmic microwave background, finding a rotation angle that agrees with earlier hints of new physics.

Sep 29, 2026

Jazz Shoes Are Fashion's Softer Answer to the Statement Sneaker

Flat lace-ups borrowed from dance studios are giving summer wardrobes a lighter alternative to chunky sneakers and fragile ballet flats.

Jul 27, 2026

Latest Trends

Why Renewable Power Is Becoming Essential Infrastructure Across the Middle East

Solar systems are increasingly keeping hospitals, schools, water networks and street lighting operating where centralized energy supply is expensive or unreliable.

Aug 3, 2026

Nutrition

How to Read a Nutrition Label Without Falling for the Front of the Pack

Front-of-pack claims like 'low fat' or 'natural' are not lies, but they are not the whole story. Here is what to check instead.

Feb 14, 2024

Latest Trends

The Accent Wall Is Dead. In 2026 the Pattern Goes on All Four Walls and the Ceiling Too

Colour drenching taught people to paint a room in one shade. Pattern drenching takes the next step and wraps the whole envelope, ceiling included, in a single design. It is the loudest interiors idea in years and it is not maximalism.

Aug 20, 2026

Designing for 45C: What Gulf Architecture Knew Before Air Conditioning

Thick walls, small openings, shaded courtyards and wind towers were not decorative. They were a cooling system, and a glass tower in the desert is a decision to pay for that work with electricity instead.

Aug 7, 2026

A Flat Painted Wall Cannot Meet Dubai's West Facing Numbers. A Shading Layer With Depth Can

Al Sa'fat caps glazing at a solar heat gain coefficient of 0.25 and a U-value of 2.0. Those two figures quietly rule out the all-glass tower that defined the region's skyline, and they are why shading is coming back.

Aug 19, 2026

Travel

The Grand Egyptian Museum Is Making Ancient History Part of a Green Future

Solar panels integrated into the Grand Egyptian Museum show how cultural landmarks can cut operating emissions without compromising architecture or visitor experience.

Aug 3, 2026

The Greenest Building Is Usually the One Already Standing, and the Arithmetic Is Not Close

Building a new home of the same size can produce up to thirteen times the embodied carbon of refurbishing the old one. That number has started appearing in planning decisions, which is how a technical argument becomes a policy.

Aug 18, 2026

Diving

Technical Divers Are Rebuilding Corals Where Sunlight Barely Reaches

NOAA teams outplanted corals at 66 meters during a 2026 Gulf mission. The work shows how advanced diving and laboratory science can restore difficult deep habitats.

Aug 2, 2026

A Beijing Studio Put a Restaurant Inside a Live Highway Underpass and Left Half of It to the Public

MARS Studio split the space beneath a working road bridge in Tongzhou with a wall of mirrored glass. One side is a 108 square metre dining room. The other stays an open corridor for anyone walking or cycling through.

Aug 29, 2026

Houseplants That Survive a Gulf Flat: Air Conditioning, North Windows and a Month Away in August

The problems are not heat but cold dry air from the vents, glass that is too bright on one side and too dark on the other, and owners who leave for the summer. A short list of plants tolerates all three.

Oct 22, 2024

Travel

AlUla Shows How Saudi Arabia Can Build the Future Around Heritage

AlUla’s strongest idea is not construction in the desert, but a model where archaeology, local skills, conservation and hospitality grow together.

Jul 28, 2026

Sustainable Materials Are Reshaping Product Design

Mycelium leather, recycled composite decking, and bio-based textiles are moving from laboratory experiments to actual products. Here's what's actually working.

May 22, 2025

Designing From an Archive Is Harder Than Designing From a Mood Board

A twenty-three piece collection drawn from research into the Barbican's original interiors arrives this month. Working from a real archive imposes constraints that a reference image never does.

Aug 17, 2026

Houseplants Do Not Purify Your Air, and the Real Reason to Keep Them Is Better Than the Myth

A 1989 NASA experiment in sealed chambers became the most repeated claim in interior décor. In an actual room, ventilation removes pollutants far faster than plants can, and you would need an implausible indoor forest to compete.

Aug 21, 2026

Terrazzo: How a Floor Made of Venetian Leftovers Became the Most Copied Surface of the Decade

Marble chips set in cement or resin and ground flat, invented by workers using the offcuts from their employers' floors. The real thing is poured in place and lasts centuries. Most of what carries the name today is a print.

Dec 20, 2023

Slow Design Is Killing the Flat Pack Refresh Cycle

Handmade ceramics, woven blinds and vintage frames are displacing furniture bought to last three years. Designers say the grey rental box interior is finally over.

Aug 4, 2026

One Colour Authority Named a White for 2026, the Other Named Three Blues, and Designers Are Selling Brown

Pantone chose Cloud Dancer. Dulux broke its own format and chose a family of blues. Meanwhile the survey of what interior designers say clients actually request puts chocolate brown and maximalism at the top. Three answers, one year.

Aug 22, 2026

After quiet luxury: where fashion went next

The minimalist luxury era is fading. Spring 2025 runways reveal a bold swing toward maximalism, sculptural design, and unapologetic opulence.

Mar 15, 2024

The Most Overlooked Thing in Your Home Is How It Sounds

Hard floors, glass walls and open plans photograph beautifully and sound terrible. Acoustic comfort is the last unfashionable part of interior design, and the cheapest to fix.

Aug 8, 2026

The Rise of Virtual Reality: Exploring New Frontiers in the Digital Experience

Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as one of the most exciting and transformative technologies of the digital era. By immersing users in virtual worlds, VR offers a unique and immersive digital experience that has the potential to revolutionize various industries, from gaming and entertainment to education and healthcare. In this blog post, we will delve

May 29, 2023

iPhone 15 Launch Date and New Features Leaks

According to some leaks, the iPhone 15 is the latest and greatest iPhone from Apple, and it’s packed with new features and updates that make it the best iPhone yet. An industry insider predicts that Apple’s much-awaited iPhone 15 series launch will be postponed until October, extending the smartphone release date past the customary early

Aug 21, 2023

The Third Place Revival: Why We're Going Out Again

After years of isolation, neighborhoods are rediscovering the cafe, the bookstore, the corner club. The third place isn't coming back because of nostalgia. It's because we need it.

Jun 5, 2026

Health

PRIMA’s Retinal Implant Wins Approval to Restore Vision

A tiny implant paired with camera glasses can return useful central vision to some people with advanced macular degeneration, and Europe has cleared its sale.

Jul 23, 2026

Goodyear Welt, Blake Stitch or Glued: How a Shoe Is Put Together Decides Whether It Lasts Two Years or Twenty

Three constructions account for nearly every leather shoe sold. One can be resoled indefinitely, one can be resoled a few times, and one is thrown away when the sole wears through. How to tell which you are holding.

Sep 6, 2026

Inside Al Wisam Trading, Sharjah’s Machinery Partner

A closer look at how Al Wisam combines construction machinery, industrial systems and local technical support for contractors across the UAE.

Sep 18, 2025

Diving

Wreck Diving: Where Swim-Through Ends and Penetration Begins

A sunken ship draws every diver's curiosity, but the line between a safe swim-through and a genuine penetration dive is stricter than it looks.

Jun 25, 2025

Sheer Dressing Is Back and the Argument Came With It

Illusion gowns and transparent couture are dominating red carpets again, and the online reaction is as reliable as the trend. Both are doing exactly what they are designed to do.

Aug 6, 2026

Health

Global Road Deaths Fell 21%, but the Map Is Unequal

WHO’s new figures show real progress despite a billion more vehicles, while poorer countries and vulnerable road users remain on the wrong side of the decline.

Jul 22, 2026

Traditional Emirati Food: What It Is, and Why You Rarely See It

A cuisine built by pearl divers, date farmers and traders across the Indian Ocean. The spicing came by dhow, the technique came from scarcity, and almost none of it is served in restaurants.

Aug 10, 2026

How to Judge a Garment in Sixty Seconds, Before You Pay for It

Price tells you almost nothing about how long a piece of clothing will last. Fabric weight, seam tension and fibre length tell you a great deal, and all three can be checked while you are standing in the shop.

Aug 22, 2026

The UAE Buys Candles the Way It Buys Oud, and a New Generation of Local Brands Has Noticed

Home fragrance in the Emirates is not a wellness import. It sits on top of a bakhoor and oud culture that was already there, which is why a crowded market keeps making room for small local labels.

Sep 5, 2026

Sustainable Fashion: The Rise of Ethical and Eco-Friendly Clothing Brands

The fashion business has undergone a considerable transformation in recent years toward sustainability and ethical behavior. A new generation of ethical and eco-friendly clothing manufacturers has emerged as consumers become more aware of the effects of their wardrobe decisions on the environment. This blog post examines the emergence of sustainable fashion, emphasising the value of

May 29, 2023

Fattet Hummus: Crisp Bread, Warm Chickpeas, Garlic Yoghurt

A Levantine assembly built on stale bread, designed so that every spoonful catches something crunchy and something soft. Timing is the only difficult part, and it is unforgiving.

Aug 2, 2026

The Telescope Launching This Month Sees a Patch of Sky a Hundred Times Wider Than Hubble's

Nancy Grace Roman is not a bigger Webb. It is a survey instrument, built to photograph enormous areas of sky at Hubble-class sharpness, and its value is in the sheer volume of what it will record.

Aug 21, 2026

Nutrition

Intermittent Fasting: What the Trials Actually Show

A major Cochrane review of nearly 2,000 people found intermittent fasting barely beats ordinary dieting. Here is what the data really supports.

Mar 10, 2026

Al Wisam Looks Ahead to Big 5 Global 2026 in Dubai

Big 5 Global returns to Dubai from November 23 to 26, giving Al Wisam a major stage for equipment, technical advice and regional partnerships.

Jul 20, 2026

Sfiha Baalbakiya: The Small Open Meat Pies of the Beqaa

Baalbek makes its meat pies small, square and open, with the corners folded up to hold the juices. The technique is older than most of the recipes claiming to improve on it.

Jul 24, 2026

Latest Trends

Digital detox is real now: dumbphones, offline clubs, and why

The smartphone backlash isn't niche anymore. Dumbphones are making a comeback, and people are seriously considering it. Here's the data.

Dec 10, 2024

A Detector a Mile Under South Dakota Saw One Event It Cannot Explain, and Its Own Scientists Say Do Not Get Excited

The LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration reported a single particle interaction in ten tonnes of liquid xenon that matches no known background. It is a 2.6 sigma result, one chance in two hundred of being a fluke, and far from a discovery. Why it matters anyway.

Sep 8, 2026

Korean Bibimbap: Mixed Rice Bowl Perfected

A Korean rice bowl: steamed rice topped with seasoned vegetables, beef, and a fried egg, finished with gochujang and the act of thorough mixing.

Jan 3, 2025

Diving

How Competitive Freediving Made Itself Safer, Metre by Metre

Safety divers, counterballast lines and strict medical protocol turned a high risk sport into one of the most closely supervised in the water.

Mar 11, 2025

Health

The Same Word Is on Your Serum, Your Collagen Powder and the Vial Someone Is Selling on Telegram

Peptide is a chemical category, not a claim. The two versions most people actually buy are the ones with the least regulation and, oddly, the best safety record. Here is what the trials support and what physics gets in the way of.

Aug 20, 2026