Makely

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?

Today is Day 3 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.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about defining your eclectic style.  There’s a secret to tying together different styles and not ending up with a room that looks like a hodge podge of whatever you found at a thrift store.  That secret?  You can’t do it all.

Before you take another step towards creating a more eclectic home, you need to define what eclectic style you have (or want to have).  For instance, I consider my style Modern Vintage Industrial.  Yes, that’s a style that I totally made up.  You can make up your own, too.

Why is this important? Well, if I tried to do Modern Vintage Industrial Kitschy Asian Coastal Urban Loft Cottage, it would be too much.  WAY too much.  Although eclecticism is all about using what you love, I think it’s best styled when you limit your mix of styles to 3 (and 4 at the very most).  You will likely gravitate to a few styles that you really love, so narrowing it down shouldn’t be very difficult.

Here are some beautiful examples that I pulled from Pinterest and labeled by style:

Let us know – what’s your eclectic style mix? Can you narrow it down to just three?