Home Decorating is Much Like Wardrobing

I thought I was in a funk - wasn't coming up with inspiring outfits or accessories particularly well.  Then it hit me:  in the process of moving between homes I've been concentrating on paint chips and staging a new home with my old belongings, etc.  I was reading decorating blogs, trying out new colors on Benjamin Moore and trying to take a "crash course" on decorating.  Well, this is what I learned:

• buy what you love
• if something has meaning to you; use it!
• pay attention to scale and proportion; think about focal points in a room
• trust your gut...you will be drawn to things you love
• surprisingly, it will all come together!
• punctuate solids or neutrals with small doses of vibrant colors!

So, not much different than the clothes you put on your body.  I can DO this!.

In the process of putting together a color scheme for an entire townhome all at once, I came up with the following:

We started by all agreeing that we liked the deep brown currently in the living room.  It would look great with our dark leather furniture.  But, I chose a deeper brown with red in it, because the existing wood blinds on the main level were a reddish brown.  From there, I decided on a popular neutral:  gray.  This is very current and can be accentuated with almost any color:  turquoise, oranges, fuschia's you-name-it!  With the bright open space and cathedral ceilings I wasn't afraid of going too dark.   However, I was intent on having our ceilings painted non-white.  The painter advised me that anything we put on the ceilings will appear darker.  Hence, we're going to have a lot of silver going on up there...like the "silver lining of a cloud".  I like that idea!

I worked with a color expert at my local paint store and she helped me get hues of colors that all worked together.  But here's the amazing thing........when I brought the paint papers home and put them with fabric swatches that I had pulled out for inspiration weeks earlier, it all came together!  Just like wardrobing...you will be attracted to the things you LOVE!

The painting pro advised me not to mix the subtle green (spanish olive) with the dark gray (galveston gray) I was choosing for the bathroom/master bedroom combo.  I vetoed that advice.  Sure enough, when window shopping for linens and towels yesterday, I saw the perfect combo of printed (checked) green and gray towels!  And....some really cool kiwi green bathroom cabinets that will give a "punch" of color to the whole bathroom.  I had only envisioned the bedroom being gray, black and white - with shots of purple or fuschia, but then I saw the perfect duvet cover.......white with a trail of green embroidered leaves running across the foot of the bed.  Perfect!  Like a "yellow brick road" leading the eye right to the green of the master bath!  I didn't hesitate to buy the duvet as I KNEW I wanted an almost entirely-white bed.  (My husband and I think we are minimalists...)  I also know that the nature theme is popular right now and I like pulling the "outside" in.  Like the snowball-type lighting fixture I had in an earlier post.  No, I don't think our new home will be filled with bamboo........but there will be hints of nature, for sure!

Oh.......and I did my homework by studying the interior decorating of the other townhomes (on-line) and noticed that when the woodwork that trims the fireplace is painted white, it actually looks odd.   So, ours will be painted the same color as the walls - with a glossier finish.  The painter said it will look "rich".  YES!  That is the adjective I like to hear.....simple but "rich".

Okay, so I'm driving myself crazy with figuring out how to "re-purpose" almost everything in our current home.  At first thought, this shower curtain makes perfect sense in the light green bathroom.  But then I pulled the color swatch "shaker beige" out of my fan deck and VOILA...looks perfect.  I kept noticing how "gold" the shower curtain looked and how it wouldn't go with the silver accents of the master bath.  That's when I thought of my son's bathroom.

I'm not a beige(y) kind of person, so I had picked a really deep sand color for our son's bedroom.  He took one look at it and decided it was too "poopy" and asked me to lighten it up.  The painter pro picked out the Shaker Beige.  Of course, I'm imagining reds or blues for that pop of color, but for now, we needed a neutral. And take a look at this stunning clay bust.  A dear friend from Michigan gave it to us 18 years ago - she said it reminded her of our two boys (who are eight years apart).  The older boy is cuddling the baby boy.  Is that not too precious to be put away and not displayed!!!????  It's going in the BEIGE room or bathroom, for sure!

Do you have a house or room redecoration going on?  Would love to hear your comments!