Feb 1, 201207:25 AMEditor's Notes
Reinvent Your Space
Recently, I had the pleasure of going to King’s House Antiques for their monthly Third Thursday meeting where architect Chris Reebals and designer Doug Davis spoke about putting together our 2011 Inspiration Home. Afterwards, I asked Doug how often he thinks people should redecorate. He surprised me by saying, “as little as possible.”
The key, he explained, is that when you initially begin to decorate you ought to buy quality, classic pieces in basic colors that you can accessorize with color. If you want a change in your living room it is much easier (and a whole lot cheaper) to change the throw pillows than get a new sofa. Doug also said that it’s best to stay away from trendy items that will look old in a few years. I thought this was great advice. I’ve also heard other designers say that if you must do trendy, then let it be something small like a side table or lamp that can easily be replaced when the trend has ended.
Doug’s advice got me thinking about some ways that I could add some fresh accessories to my own home. Of course I headed straight over to handy-dandy Pinterest to get inspiration. These are some of my finds. Notice that not all of these sofas are white and beige. You can have a sofa with color, you just want to make sure that it is a color that you can reinvent.
What are some simple things you've done to reinvent your space?
{Here’s a picture of the living room from our Inspiration Home. As you can see, Doug started out with basic colored sofas, but he’s incorporated punches of orange-red throughout the room as well as interesting patterns on the ottoman and throw pillows.}
{You don’t always have to choose a white sofa. Here is a light blue sofa witha green chair, but notice the pieces are solids not prints. The absence of pattern allows printed window treatments and throw pillows that incorporate the base color of the sofas.}
{I love the bright oranges and muted blues in this room.}
{Notice the recurrent color in this room is pink—but if you took all that pink out, you could very easily substitute another color and reinvent the entire space.}
{This designer pulled red from the botanical prints on the bookshelf and repeated them in the color choices for the throw pillows.}
{I absolutely love the robin egg blue of this sofa. The orange that the designer chose to complement this blue works very well, but one could easily pair it with a green or yellow.}
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