Hi everyone! Today I want to start a little series about how to find your decorating style. I personally am on this journey at the moment and I have found that although I often come back to one particular feature of a ‘style’ I also want to mix it all up a bit too! I will carry this over for several segments so that it doesn’t get overwhelming this will also give you and me time to consider the information and look closely at your homes and decide where changes and tweaks need to be made.
First of all lets start with some of the types of decorating styles that most of us will know
French Provincial
Shabby Chic
Coastal/Beachy
Country cottage
Nordic/Scandinavian
Now I’m going to stop here because I think that all five of these styles are often used together in decorating as they all have a common background staple.
Neutral palates
Greys, Whites, Taupe, Beige they are all part of a neutral pallet. If you start your blank canvas on this foundation you can add anything & it will look great! Now obviously some of these neutrals are “cool neutrals” eg. white and grey, and others are “warm neutrals” eg. taupe, beige and brown. This is in reference to the colour wheel, anything with the primary colour blue is classified as a “cool colour”, anything with the primary colours red and yellow in them are called “warm colours”.
From this basis there are a million different shades, hues and tones that can be made by mixing white, black to the primary colours and also the mixing the primary colours together. But going back to mixing the different style options you can see in all the above pictures they all have base tones of grey, white and beige that they build upon.
Now we come to “how to find your style”! Well I always like to ask people and myself what is your home used for and how do you want to feel when you are in it, does every room need to be the same or do other peoples personalities need to be taken into consideration eg. are you living in a chaotic family home (like most of us!) but you want to feel some sort of serenity when you walk through your front door? If so, your not going to start splashing around lots of loud colours and big bold prints, your going to keep it quiet and soft with accents of your favorite colours.
So here we see the neutral background with lovely textures in the Jute floor rug, rustic worn wood and natural wood floors. The personality for this room is in the colour pops, the greek blue coffee table, blue and green scatter cushions on the sofa, the soft sky blue in the back of the hutch, shutters on the wall and books on the stool. Using these colours here help tie the colour scheme through to the next room.
This room has taken its pop of colour from the art work on on the wall. Again a neutral pallet was used to build upon.
So from here I want to suggest that consider these questions
- How do I want to feel in my home.
- What is my homes primary purpose eg.raising a family.
- What are my favorite colours.
- What is your personality.
In the next part of this series I will build upon the different styles and also look a bit more closely at how we can integrate our chosen style into the home we already live in without going out and spending a fortune on redecorating!