Today is Day 5 of a 31 day series on creating and cultivating an eclectic home.  For some crazy reason, I have accepted The Nester’s challenge to write on the same theme every day for the month of October.  This may end up killing me.  Or you.  But, I appreciate you reading and welcome your comments.

Not long ago, I overheard two women in a home interiors store having a conversation about using color in their homes.  I heard one of them say, “I love blue.  It’s my favorite color.  But, I can’t use any blue in my living room, because my rug has reds, browns, and greens.”

It took everything I had to not grab her by the shoulders and have a little heart to heart.  There’s no reason why she couldn’t add blue to that room.  So many people are fearful to go out on a limb with color that doesn’t “match,” but color doesn’t have to be such a scary thing – particularly in an eclectic setting.

There are a few easy ways to add color to an eclectic room.  The first thing you can do is add color to your walls.  Although you will likely want to stay away from overly saturated colors (the closer a color is to a primary color, the more saturated it is), the right color on a wall makes a tremendous impact.  In the photo below, the combination of the blue wall and neutral furniture pieces looks great.  This designer added the saturated colors into the room via accessories.  Can you see why it was better to go for blue walls and hot pink pillows instead of vice versa?

One word on wall color – if you want to do an accent wall, please do two.  Perhaps that’s just my early-2000s Trading Spaces hang up, but I personally feel that a single accent wall looks dated.  Color on two walls looks much fresher.

If you are scared of color on your walls, keep them neutral and add a great pop to a piece of furniture.  Now for this piece, you DO want a saturated color so that you get a big enough impact. If the red stool in the photo below was a more muted tone, the room would be quite boring.  As in the first photo, more saturated colors are brought in via accessories.

With brightly painted furniture, keep it to just one or two pieces in a room.  For instance, my master bedroom is all gray and white except for a bright yellow dresser and soon to be bright yellow chair.  I’ll add in some teal accessories and call it a day.  Those yellow pieces do all of the talking in the room.

If you find yourself terrified of wall color and scared of brightly painted furniture, then you need to let your accessories work some magic.  In the following traditional/farmhouse/industrial photo, color has only been brought in through accessories – pink pillows and sea green frames & tray.  These colors are unexpected, but make a gorgeous statement.

Speaking of statement, is that coffee table to die for or what?  I saw a million of these at the Round Top Antique Show last weekend, and I’m kicking myself for not grabbing one.  I’m definitely getting one at the spring show.

I challenge you to add some color to every room in your home.  What will you change first?

Today is Day 4 of a 31 day series on creating and cultivating an eclectic home.  For some crazy reason, I have accepted The Nester’s challenge to write on the same theme every day for the month of October.  This may end up killing me.  Or you.  But, I appreciate you reading and welcome your comments.

It was so fun to read your comments from yesterday’s post on defining an eclectic style mix.  You guys named a lot of creative mixes, and I love that it allowed each person to decide what they love and make it their own.

Now, I’d like to take the style mix idea a bit further.  A lot of you have asked how to put your style mixes together, and the place I always start is with what I consider my base style.  In my own home, I know that vintage is my base style.  It is the single style I am drawn to the most.  I use my base style to define the major pieces my room should have and then let the other styles in my mix (modern and industrial) come in via accessories and flourishes in the room.

Confused?  Well, let me show you some examples (from Pinterest, of course) to illustrate my point.  Take this farmhouse style table pictured below.  You can see that when it’s paired with similarly styled chairs, it really has a farmhouse feel.  This is traditionally what you would expect to see in such a room.

But, if your base style is farmhouse and one of your mix styles is, say, contemporary, you could remove the farmhouse chairs and replace them with something like the ghost chairs pictured here:

Doesn’t that completely change the look of a farm table?  You could even do something a little different if your style mix was modern vintage.  How about these yummy Eames chairs?

That look is a far cry from the first photo, isn’t it?

By choosing a base style and using it to determine most of your large furniture pieces, you will find it less daunting to add your other styles into a room.

What’s your base style?