When people visit our home one of my favorite compliments is “I never would have thought to put x,y and z together, but it just works!” I love this compliment because this was a tough learning curve for me when designing this house. Painting a wall a color you end up hating is annoying to change, but overall doable. Now spending money on a stair runner that has to be installed and is non refundable, well that will give you a few stress spikes on your oura ring.
I’m not a professional designer so take my advice with that in mind; But I wanted to share some things I always tried to keep in mind when figuring out how to bring in all of the colors, patterns etc. that I wanted in a room without it becoming an eye sore.
1. Create a Vision Board!
When I first dove in to designing this house, I did what I think most people do which is create a Pinterest board. This was a great starting point, but it wasn’t until I actually started selecting potential selects for tiles, flooring, furniture etc. and adding in photos of actual materials I had picked out that I could get a good visual of what the space was actually going to look like. This is so fun because you can add and remove things as you go and eventually one day you'll look at it and it will be like someone took everything that was swirling around in your head and scooped it out and laid it out in front of you.
Home Vision Board
2. Adding Colors
The initial color pallet of our living room and kitchen/dining room were practically the same (green, neutral and walnut) but then I fell in love with the Pottery Barn Mauve Chairs; And then oops, wait, I love this Blue Stair Runner too.
So now I’m like “ok Tate, chill out, this is going to be way too much” But guess what, it wasn’t!
So, how to do this?
Recognizing that the chairs and the stair runner were “the moment” for those colors; And the extra touches of blue and mauve throughout the room were just to create a subtle flow to make it all make sense. Lucky for me the Blue stair runner had touches of mauve in the florals so we were already off to a great start. Now we build on that. Add in pillows, flower pots, lamps, etc. Choose Items that all together can create a flow but nothing that is too big, bulky, permanent and over powering. Here are some photo examples of how I did that:
I think we can all agree that The BM Vintage Vogue Green Paint is the star of the show in these spaces; And I love the impact it makes when you first walk into our home. With that being said, I wanted to be careful to not add too much of other bold colors and have them take away from that.
Once I felt like I accomplished tastefully and subtly adding these two new colors in, and it actually worked, I began to do it in other rooms of our house and it made all the difference. Especially in one room in particular; The guest room.
I had such a hard time with the bedding and decor in this room. I loved the deep burgundy; But in the beginning felt like because it was already so much, bringing in any other colors felt crazy and like it would become too overwhelming for the eye.
Well, I was wrong. Pulling in the small amount of blue from the Pottery Barn Plaid Chair was a game changer, and took it from looking like a creepy old lady room to now (and hopefully you agree) a more Ralph Lauren, cozy cottage vibe, with a touch of grandma still in there lol.
3. Patterns, Texture & Layers
As I said in the beginning, I’m by no means a professional; But am I the girl who made and unmade her bed 1 trillion times before actually liking the way it looked? yes, yes I am.
Here’s my typical approach for making a bed:
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Choose a quilt and bulkier duvet/blanket. I almost always choose a quilt as a base, and a bulkier duvet or blanket to fold midway or at the foot of the bed. I typically choose one out of the two to have a pattern and the other to be a solid color. I think you could do a pattern on both in some instances; But I find with adding in the decorative pillows and occasional patterned sheets its good to have one of the two main pieces of bedding to be solid so it breaks everything up a bit.
- I make sure to mix organic patterns with geometric patterns. I don’t have any real reasoning behind this; I just know from my own experiences; Mixing a plaid or a stripe pattern with maybe a floral quilt or western pattern pillow will give you a perfect balance of mixing two things that look different apart but together create something beautiful.
- Layering the bed in a way that makes sense. I normally go for a quilt as the base as I said above. This is because it lays flat and I like being able to build off of that. I also enjoy the texture of a quilt. Whether it has a pattern or not, a quilts texture just always has something charming about it. Following that, I’ll take the bulkier bedding and mess around with how I want to fold it. In our primary bedroom we have a floral quilt as a base; So I ended up folding the thicker solid green blanket 3x long ways and laying it in the middle of the bed. This broke up the pattern from the quilt and also added depth with the thicker blanket.
- Have fun with the pillows and sheets! Everyone likes having extra sets of sheets; So switch it up! When I make a bed you will rarely ever see the sheets when I’m finished; but I think it’s so fun to have different pattern sheets as a little surprise when you or a guest you have staying with you slides into bed at night. As long as the aesthetic of the sheets goes with the “vibe” of the room, I don’t really think you can go wrong.
Below are some examples throughout the house of how I mixed colors, textures and patterns - whether its with wall paneling, wallpaper, bedding or a staple piece of furniture like a green plaid chair; It can be tricky to find that perfect balance.
I think the biggest tip I could give out of all of this is trial and error. The more you do it, the more you know what works and what doesn’t; And eventually you’ll stop overthinking it, and will naturally know what to grab for.
