Mining your motif d’maison

Even an experienced designer can be stumped. Daily, I breeze into clients’ homes and instantly know how to make them better:  move this, add these and ditch that.  A different story prevails in my own house. I recently found myself flummoxed by my living room. 

What started as the innocent desire for a shot of color and toddler-friendly furnishings set off a domino-like cascade of changes.

I swapped two white antique arm chairs for more comfortable, stain repellant and shockingly fuchsia ones. What was I thinking?!  I know better than to add something unrelated to anything else in the house and expect it to work.  My room-- a beige paradise in soft shades of cream to brown-- begged for a color infusion.  But the chairs were TOO MUCH---too bold, too pink…and way too much for me to glare at while watching TV from my muted mocha sofa.

Once panic subsided, I did for myself what I do for my clients- and frankly should have done before I ordered new chairs.  (Haste does make waste, people)!  Herein, Dear Reader, lies the design lesson: mine your motif and marry the dissimilar.  Even when you’ve made a purchasing blunder, a shot at recovery still exists.

I became my own designer-detective, taking a photo and looking at my living room in 2-D objectivity. I realized I employ certain repeated themes:  brown, funky organic patterns peopled with animals and faces. I noted touches of slate blue in the rugs and artwork; the bronze nailhead trim on furnishings, the cache pot.  I needed a BIG, new element to marry all of this-- the fuchsia, the brown, the flora-- together. Throw pillows, perhaps? Patterned pillows possess the power to unite, but I found nothing with major uumph I was looking for. But what about wallpaper? Perhaps a bold accent wall behind my sofa --perfect location since it would be behind me when I lounged, and I would be less likely to tire of it.

Armed with my new insights on my motif d' maison, I found the perfect wallpaper. In dominant tones of brown and bronze, the eclectic flora pattern featured figs in the perfect shade of raspberry and slate blue leaves that called out to my cherished oil paintings. Bonus points for the slate blue! On the fauna side, the paper included a bonus funky monkey or two swinging through the vine pattern, rendering it off-beat enough to make me smile.  I’d found my match. My new chairs were spared; my living room revived.