Establish Moods with Patterns
and Home Decorating Designs
Adding home decorating designs with patterns to a room by using fabrics, area rugs, wallpaper, painting effects and even decorative accents will lend a certain character to your interior.
Floral motifs are one of the most versatile and time-honored designs.
- Faded chintz or a small scale floral wallpaper fashions a cottage look.
- Toiles depicting country life are charming and a French country style favorite.
Geometric’s work well with many floral’s. Their simplicity acts as a good foil for more complex and intricate designs.
- Energize with an abstract or soften with pinstripes in a more modern setting.
- Casual elegance shows spontaneity with a hand-painted piece.
- Tradition becomes orderly with stripes and checks as timeless classics.
- Stripes can assume a more sophisticated role when used on wallpaper under molding.
Checkerboard floors are another effective way of introducing fashion into a room.
Walls can be decorated with special paint effects to add understated variation.
Scale is an important consideration when selecting home decorating designs.
Large scale designs are like warm colors and appear to come toward you.
They are lively and stimulating and can be quite spectacular in a large space and at the same time be quite cozy.
Choose large design motifs with care as they can overpower a small space, but don't necessarily rule them out. You may just need to use them sparingly.
Small scale designs appear to recede making small spaces seem larger.
The effect of small designs can be bland in a large room.
From a distance it may read as a solid color. If you do use a pattern of a small nature in a large space, pick one with a vibrant color.
Medium scale home decorating designs of course are the most versatile.
They won't overpower in a small room yet will be large enough to “read” in a larger space.
Match the scale of the pattern to that of the area over which it is to be used.
A general rule would be to use large scale designs on larger size furnishings, medium on medium and small on accents pieces.
For example, a sofa works better in a larger scale design motif than a dining chair.
Many people feel they don't know how to mix and match pattern so they avoid it all together. This can often result in a boring room.
Just think of a traditional patchwork quilt and you can see how a myriad of decorative shapes can work well together and what they can bring to the home.
It's best to experiment by gathering all the samples you like together.
Go to fabric stores that sell decorator fabrics and look at how they are displayed. They will often have bolts of fabric displayed together in color ranges with coordinates. This will give you a sense of how different home decorating designs work together.
Visit furniture stores with design services and notice the upholstery samples on the floor and what they are shown with.
Some manufacturer's will provide coordinating fabrics and wall coverings as collections.
These collections will give you ideas on how different designs work together.
Think of the many colors in paintings.
Find one basic fabric that you love and draw your inspiration around it.
Use a variety of prints including floral, stripes and geometric shapes.
Regularity of checks, stripes and geometric's particularly if small scale and low contrast make them easy to mix with other more showy forms.
Have a similar color in each piece of fabric and unite the patterns with that common color. The most effective link is shared colors or a similar level of intensity between the prints.
Color, scale and motif should be the link among all the elements for greater impact.
A small floral can play off a thin ticking stripe while a cabbage rose pattern chintz may require a bolder stripe.
Gather samples that you like and thinking in terms of proportion, lay them out on the floor or a sample board.
A sofa fabric for example will be a larger swatch than a chair.
Put them in relationship to how they will be in the room then step back to view them together.
Try not to cluster all the home decorating designs you are using in one area of the room. Make sure they are evenly distributed throughout so you room is balanced. You don't want the room to appear “heavy” in one end.
If you have all the decorative forms in one end of the room and the solid colors on the other side, you know you need to readjust.
Some designs will become dated faster than solid colors, so it may be best to use them on items like pillows, rugs, and accents which can be
rotated to other rooms
or updated.
A room filled with a lot of busy forms is not usually conducive to relaxation. Not the best place for a complex pattern.
The busier shapes can be saved and used judiciously amid blocks of plain color. Doing so focuses the attention and eliminates any confusion to the eye.
Uniform designs on fabric and wallpapers are good for calmer spaces that need a sense of order, while free flowing asymmetrical shapes are best reserved for rooms where you want to feel energized.
Variety is the key to combining home decorating designs and patterns. Interpret the principle loosely and arrive at your own personal mix by experimenting to see which combinations work best for you.
The trick is to not necessarily always match but to blend.
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