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I just bought a new house. I’m trying to decorate one room at a time. I’m curious what is everyone’s personal style choice? Do you have a mix of everything going on(which is my case)? I’m trying to find some affordable wall art and was wondering if anyone has some recommendations. I would love to support upcoming artist rather then buying stuff from a department store. Any recommendations on how to bring different colors and textures into your living space would be appreciated too! I’m going to go watch HGTV all day, they make it look so easy!
I’m so glad things are going better, Tinks. I know this has been a pretty hard time for you. I’m in the same boat, redoing my entire house with my mum. I’m doing a foresty-style main room, and then of course, a nerd room. My main room is mainly going to be green/black, with my own art on the walls, then my posters in my “nerd room”. LOL Not very helpful, I know
Finding happiness again.
My decorating is someplace between “Early Attic” (for things that were given to me) and Whatever-I-like-that-I-can-afford. They say that the things you have will go together as long as you get items you like. It seems to be true.
If your surroundings please you, you shouldn’t worry about anybody else.
P.S. Congrats on the new house!
There are so many decorating styles, it’s hard to give advice but it’s usually easiest to go with having a main colour for paint and then either complementary or contrasting floors and furniture colours and adding in a few accent colours. For example some rooms with light walls and dark floors would look good with light furniture. Or if you have light walls and light floors than darker furniture would look good. If you have a lot of neutral colours, then use bright or darker accent colours for paintings, vases and decorations. You can also have a style for a room based on a historical or architectural style or a theme for a room that could be something like a beach, nature, flower, animal, jungle. etc. Here are some styles to look up: http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/Decorating-Styles
For my living room, I wanted a nature/African kind of theme with natural colours and animal pictures. I have neutral wall colour, light oak floors, black leather couches for contrast as well as a black tv stand, black bookcase, black wrought iron coffee table with green slate tiles. To go with the tiles I have a green throw rug and green plants. I also have a light oak desk, curio cabinets and dining room table to go with the floor. For other accents I have green/red/gold vases and an African/jungle animal paintings on the walls, a zebra, giraffe, lion, elephants and parrots to brighten the room and have a tall wooden giraffe statue and smaller zebra and elephant statues.
For my bedroom, tying in the African theme I also have a colourful zebra painting and a black and white zebra picture, a black and white zebra striped rug, a blue zebra striped chair, blue curtains and blue blankets to tie those things together. I also have light oak furniture in there again going with the floors. I also have African stuffed animals in book cases so it feels like a jungle in there too. I would say having one main accent colour and two lesser accent colours works well in a room. In my bedroom the main accent colour is blue followed by black and white. In my living room the main accent colour is green followed by red and gold.
My main furniture is not counted as an accent colour except for my blue zebra chair. So you can use one piece of furniture in an accent colour like for example a red couch and tie it with some pictures or decorations with bits of red along with a couple other accent colours. Or say you have a blue cabinet, then you could tie in some pictures or decorations with bits of blue and other colours. If you want to use complementary colours in a room then popular combos are blues/oranges, purples/yellows or reds/greens. You can use other combinations like the ones in this link: http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-harmonies.htm I took interior decorating in school but it’s been years. Try experimenting with different colours and patterns and see what looks good together. Just remember less is more when it comes to wild colours and patterns but too much matching is also boring. The key is having a balance between relaxing colours and some contrasting accents.
Also I bought my paintings from a small furniture store that got them overseas. They are hand painted. I also bought some print pictures and vases from stores like Home Sense and Michael’s. You can also find decorations in arts and crafts stores, decorating stores and furniture stores or try sites online where people post classifieds like kijiji or Craig’s List. Ebay is also good for finding decorations if they are not too big. You could also look in art galleries or go to art sales where you live to find local artists. I have also bought furniture from local furniture auctions. Liquidation stores are also good depending what you have where you live. I usually pick out a style or colours I want for each room and then go shopping with those in mind so I find pieces to go with my themes. Or if you find one piece that inspires a theme then try and find other pieces to match that theme.
Looking for rainbow or pink & teal grab bags!
You would think being a kitchen designer and all I would have a more up and coming or trendy style in my own home, but my style is “chaos” Yup… I call is chaos anyway!
Meaning I have the house that is reminiscent of a teenager’s bedroom throughout my home. Between action figures and framed comic books and autographed prints from the celebrity voices of various cartoons and anime… yea… I’m just a big kid… LOL!
I have however designed a lot of nice places! ^_^
This is where Renee and I show off out work. We haven’t really updated it in a while though. Renee is out project interior specialist at Lowes. She meets with the customers in home and “builds the relationship” and in the mean time I do the design portion in the store while she deals with the contractors out of store. *nods*
Maybe it will give you some ideas ^_^
Let me know if you need your kitchen done. Email me the measurements and I can make some renderings if you want.
Got a busted Windstone?
drag0nfeathersdesign@gmail.com
*OPEN for repairs**SEEKING GRAILS*
Arc-en-ciel Emperor
Siphlophis Male Dragon
Calypso Hatching Empress
Ivory Moss Sitting Baby Kirin
Tattoo Mother Kirin
Emerald Tabby Male Griffin
Tie Dye + Orion Hatching Royalty
Indigo Rockfish + Flame Tabby Little Rock Dragons
Dragon Quail + Obsidian Frost Old Warriors
Betta Sun Dragon + Male Dragon
Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry DragonsHmm, some pretty solid thoughts and insights posted!
My personal style is traditional solid-wood furniture, (an eclectic mix of Shaker, Mission, Scandinavian, Campaign, Country, and Industrial, basically anything well-made and not visually complicated that I like and can afford) with natural history, artwork and some traditional crafts thrown in for good measure. I’m pretty conservative with colors, brown wood furniture, cream walls, and whatever little thing (like beautiful blankets or shiny dragons) I bring in to spice it up.
So my thoughts…
Look out for the clear spaces. What a room doesn’t say is as important as what it does say, and a carefully cultivated clear space or two, lets your eyes ‘rest’ and even better, makes that space more functional (if say, the clear space is a kitchen counter)For affordable wall art, for a whole house, I’d personally recommend going to thrift stores to get pieces that are ‘kinda nice’ and use the money you save to purchase a show-stopping piece or two that you love. And then just releasing the ‘kinda nice’ pieces as you go. For a way to get very nice pieces, going to Etsy or an artists website, finding and ordering limited edition prints unframed but having them framed locally is labor intensive, but can be wonderful.(framing artwork is kind of epic with many joys and pitfalls. If you’re curious, let me know and I’ll ramble)
Then, there’s textiles. Textiles are an incredible way to quickly and cheaply change the look and feel of a place. Sofas, walls, windows, floors, etc. If you’re not sure about a color, you can even just lay a piece of clothing the right color where you want to test it.
The clutter clearing gurus frequently recommend looking at an item and seeing how you physically feel about it. You might feel physically strengthened or wilted and that helps with screening what to bring in or not. It may sound odd, but I still recommend trying it.
For paint, I haven’t actually tried Farrow and Ball, but I love their colors. Kind of conservative and English, but oddly hip.
For furniture, Hmm, I’d recommend solid wood furniture with good lines. Often this is easiest to find used.
And for fans of Shabby Chic may I offer a small plea? There’s a right way and a wrong way to distress furniture. The easiest right way involves buying an old piece and leaving it be. The second easiest right way involves unfinished softwood furniture, two different colors of milk paint, a clear coat separating those layers, and then being exposed to normal household wear and tear which over time, will expose the undercoat and a little wood, and look stunning. Anything more intensive, erm, it takes some research to get right. Look for sources that recommend observing the normal wear and tear patterns of old furniture.
For all this advice, my own place is painfully… in progress. But I’m hopeful about where it’s headed.
I have an obsession with those black cube shelves you hang on the wall. You can rearrange them to hold whatever looks best to you at the time, whether you like it for the utility or deco. My aquarium stand is black so shelving tends to be black in our house. I like off-white walls for the contrast.
Then all the colorful shinies stand out on the shelves nicely. The theme turned out to be ‘blacks and whites with splashes of bright’. I didn’t plan it that way though…..black is a basic color, for picture frames and shelves..and usually I can find stuff in black without having to deal with a ‘matching headache’. Our couch is a solid dark foresty green and it kinda works with the rest.
I also like those white hands for decorative bowls. They make them to hang on the wall but I haven’t bought any of those yet. Like this one:
Kim, your house sounds amazing. I would love to see photos!! I feel that i might be scared of color. Everything is turning out …tan or gray. So, i’m going to start small and start looking for accessories with some pops of color. I have been looking at some used furniture stores however, i don’t feel the prices were much lower then buying new. I live in an area with a large Amish population and they buy almost everything from local auctions ect. I did go out and buy a new sofa and dinning room set. The prices of a dinning room set almost discouraged me altogether. I wanted something simple in real wood. Purplecat, i looked at the cubes while shopping but wasn’t to sure how they would work with plaster walls. The house is almost 100 years old. So, not sure how hanging stuff with any weight will go. I’m lucky that the kitchen was already remodeled. That was always the project i wanted to do at my old house but seemed to daunting. The kitchen is painted in a mint green color, that is very slowly growing on me. However, i don’t know what colors to go with it. Red and other green shades? Any recommendations?
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