Today is Day 26 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.

After my last post on mixing wood tones, I received quite a few emails and comments asking me to go deeper into the topic.  There are many opinions from different designers and other sources on the topic, but remember that those are just opinions.  Always trust your own instincts, because only you know what works best in your home.

In my home, I generally follow three different guidelines when mixing wood tones.  The first, and easiest, is to keep your major furniture pieces the same color wood and bring in other wood tones through accessories.  Wood frames are an obvious choice.  If you have dark wood in one room and a lighter tone in an adjoining room, mixed tone accessories help to tie the two rooms together.  The room shown below illustrates this point nicely.

The second guideline I use to mix wood tones in a room is to have the different tones balanced in the room.  You want to spread the different wood tones out a bit so that the darker woods don’t make one side of the room look too heavy.  I like how the room shown below uses darker wood on the bookcase and it flows through the picture frames to the desk and chair.

Lastly, you can fool the eye by using upholstery or paint to mimic a particular wood tone.  This is a really great trick when you only have one piece in a room that is a different tone that the other wood pieces.  Notice how the upholstered coffee table below ties the light colored credenza into the room.  I love that look.

There you have it – my contribution to the internet’s opinion about mixing wood tones.  Go forth into the world and mix it up!

All photos via House Beautiful.

Today is Day 25 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.

Earlier today, one of the gals I follow on Twitter sent out this message:

Ha!  I can relate.  Just last night I was stressing over not being able to figure out why the lamp dimmer I was wiring into my lamp wasn’t working.  Tom told me to relax, and it made me so much more frustrated with the lamp. I knew that I needed to relax, but I certainly didn’t want someone else to tell me that!

I ultimately got the lamp working, but I realized that the only reason that I couldn’t just put the lamp down and come back to it later was my internal drive to get my bedroom finished.  I’ve been working on this bedroom for months (literally), because I wanted to make sure I was taking my time and making the right choices.  Now that I just have a handful of tasks left to complete, I find myself stressing to get them finished NOW!

The thing is, an eclectic room takes a long time to cultivate – years and maybe even a lifetime.  In order to give your room that “collected over time” look, you really do need to collect over time.  Part of the fun of having an eclectic home is that it’s never really finished.

So, I’m giving you the go ahead to just relax.  Don’t worry that your coffee table doesn’t work perfectly with your sofa.  It’s no big deal that your kitchen chairs aren’t the right look for your table.  One day it will all workout.  Until then, just enjoy the process.

Do you need to allow yourself to relax more when you are putting together a room?