Flowers: Adding something extra or carrying the room?

Greenery or flowers in a room: It's like the hair & makeup for a model before a photo shoot. They are always there in our favorite magazine rooms. To get rooms looking their best, photo stylists almost always add these finishing touches. And look how much they add:


I remember when I was younger, I used to look through catalogs & cover up the plant/flowers in the room & realize that I didn't like the room nearly as much without it. (I still do this & it's almost always true.) Sometimes the greenery stays (potted plants) and sometimes it goes (a vase of fresh flowers) but we rarely see rooms photographed without it. Sometimes I even don't like a room without the greenery... other times it's just another layer of beautiful, like this room from House Beautiful:

Without the Christmas tree, this room (West Elm) doesn't really do it for me:



In college, I filled my rooms with ferns I'd dug out of the woods (is that illegal?!) & slowly killed them as the school year went on. (oops) But because I didn't have the money to spend on the room (or the know-how), I let the ferns carry the room into this kind of conservatory-feeling place. But without them, the room didn't have much going for it design-wise. The photo below (from idealglazing.com) is what I was going for in an apartment bedroom -and haha ok on a really embarrassing sidenote, I actually went to the dollar store & hung a fake plant garland around as crown moulding.. WOW - hey, we all start somewhere, right?


Whenever I have rooms photographed, flowers or fresh leaves usually go in & I'm almost 100% positive that my clients don't constantly freshen their flowers in every room of the house. (Unless you're like Martha (image below) and/or obsessed with the way your house looks -like I'll admit I sometimes am- there's probably a pretty good chance that there aren't always fresh flowers or greenery in every room of the house- who's got the time?!) ... So it's really important that the room be beautiful on its own, without the flowers/ plants.


In a perfect world, we'd always have these little luxuries, but most of us usually end up doing it before parties, when guests are coming, when the seasons change or when we get a nice bouquet from the man. Which is what makes it special. (On another sidenote- Sometimes, because I'm constantly evaluating rooms/ homes, I feel this crazy pressure to have mine always looking its best. And right now it frankly does not. There are toys scattered everywhere, laundry baskets full of clean clothes waiting to be put away, and there's a dying branch of something that used to be pretty in a ball jar in my bathroom. AHhhh!!)

In the photo below from Martha Stewart, I love the old-discovered feeling of this room but it's the little bouquet of lilies that makes it really special to me. It brings the just a hint of the life that I think the room needs. I'm really not as into the room without it.

If the hit of life or green is what the room needs on a daily basis for the design to work, then put something that can stay there like moss or a living plant, like this room from shift (a blog I love and the room is done by Christine Lane Interiors who I will be writing about shortly as I cannot get over her amazing her rooms!):

Adding flowers and/or greenery to a room is something beautiful that we can do whenever we want to freshen up our homes without spending a bunch of money- it just takes time- but let's also remember that we can't let them carry the room either (like I did in college! .. If I had a picture of my room I'd put it up to give you a good laugh! :)
Have a great weeekend!!

When Something's Off

I was reading Celerie Kemble's new book, To Your Taste & one part really got me thinking. She was doing a showhouse & she added an accent pillow that was a bit off because she wanted it to seem as if the imaginary woman of the house had insisted it be there & had overruled the decorator. Here's a photo of some of her work:


But I got to thinking... there's definitely something to that concept of putting something off into a room. It feels real. Ever since I first saw this house by Leslie Klotz in House Beautiful, I was in love. It's just so perfectly off.

I realized that it's these little inconsistencies & quirks that bring life to a room. When something's just a bit off, the room becomes so right.

Part of it is because it makes the home feel personal & un-decorated, but there's also something intrinsically beautiful about it. Like this painting below that has so much more green in it than blue, but the blues in the work perfectly. It looks effortless & much better than if the tones had matched more closely. The room is deeper & more approachable.

It sounds like it would be easy to do. But it isn't always. Lots of my clients are young people starting from scratch. They don't have any collections. They're busy & they often don't have time to find meaningful things for their home. They may have a few special things that they love with which I can spring off of, but sometimes there's really nothing they want to keep & that's why they've hired a designer in the first place. In these case, it becomes the designer's job to find them meaningful things & to provide them with something a little imperfect. a little fun.

Here's a nightstand I did. The little vase is a rough touch to the glamorous lamp & photograph:

Here's a room from Domino. Check out the gray ticking on the headboard and the lamp. They're not obvious choices for this color scheme:

People may think they want Pottery Barn, but in my opinion it's not real enough. It's too perfect. (I do still love a lot of their things & the photos are beautiful, don't get me wrong-- I just feel they're just missing something.) Pottery Barn:

I know we all talk about using a nice mix of high & low and old & new, traditional & contemporary, etc., and yes, I TOTALLY believe in that... but what I'm trying to pinpoint is something more, something wrong with a picture that makes it right. Something that makes the a place feel like a home. Like these mismatched frames:

Clients give me photographs of rooms they love & more often than not, they tend to be advertisements & furniture catalogs which lack that realness to them that makes a room sparkle. I create inspiration boards from what they give me & then I let the fabrics guide me. So after, creating a beautiful spread of fabrics for all of the furnishings, draperies, etc., I look at my fabrics & try to replace a fabric or add another that will make the whole things feel a bit more normal & less perfect. It's SO tempting to go with the perfection that we see in advertisements (how great is it to find beautifully coordinating fabrics?!) but we have to get past that & create real homes for people. -- add a little something off & make it feel like a home, not a showroom.

In the photo above, it's the brown fabric that's starting to do what I'm talking about. It comes out of nowhere but just works. (A sunroom I'm working on.) You don't have to be seriously off, but just teensy bit out of left field. I'll still need a really quirky thrift store or flea market find to get the room where I want it to be.

In the one above, the reptile fabric is getting us on the right track. (This the beginnings of a Living Room/ Dining Room plan)

Below, it's the table that seems to add the imperfect feeling to the room from Domino. (I think it's Aidan Gray)

I know I'm probably rambling & being really philosophical, but anyway, it's something I'm trying to work on- To make rooms deeper & more real. It's a fine line to walk (if you're too off it'll look terrible) but I'm going to keep trying. The more rooms I do, the more I feel like I can grasp this concept. I'm going to make a serious effot to keep pushing my designs to be more real. Any thoughts?