So you’ve gone through all the magazines and decor books, and you know the general look that you want your room to have. But you don’t want to copy it exactly… so what do you do to get that look with YOUR colors, materials, decor, and furniture? This article deals with achieving the look you want with furniture. Of course, many of us don’t have the option of buying all new furniture. But if we understand how our furniture is affecting the look of our decor, then it’s easier use color, patterns and materials to adjust that look to what we DO want!
Furniture comes in many styles and finishes. From Traditional furniture to Modern furniture, white-washed furniture to mahogany, painted to unfinished, wood to metal, and antique to new furniture… if you can dream it up, someone’s probably made it somewhere some times hand made. But despite this wide range of styles of furniture, there are only two major aspects that must be considered – style, and material or decor.
Considering the material or color of your furniture is easy. Wood finished furniture comes in anything from white-washed furniture to natural pine furniture, oak furniture, cherry furniture, mahogany furniture and a host of other furniture. Painted furniture can be in any color of the rainbow. And metals are finished as anything from white enamel to black wrought iron. All you need to do is consider whether your furniture is light, medium, or dark in color, and how that color will affect your decor. This follows the same basic material principles that I outlined in the “Achieving the Look You Want With furniture ” article; dark colors take up more visual space and look more formal, and light colors take up less visual space and look more casual. So a frosted maple living room furniture set will look best in a casual room and give it an open feel to help it look larger, while a dark cherry living room furniture set will help your room to look more formal and masculine.
The style of your furniture is a more complicated consideration. To help, I will break it down into three aspects of the design for the overall look of your decor — simplicity, weight, and grace.
The simplicity or complexity of the furniture’s design is important to consider because it needs to be ‘matched’ to your decor style. A simple design would be straight legs, straight or simply curved chair backs, etc. A complex design would include lots of carving and curves in the wood or metal. This doesn’t mean that you have to put a simple bedding set and simple curtains in a room with simple furniture; it simply means that you need to balance the simplicity or complexity of your furniture with the decor style of your room to achieve the look you want. If you want a simple looking bedroom and you’ve already got simple furniture, then all you need to do is keep your curtains and bedding simple. But if you’ve got simple furniture and you want an ornate and luxurious bedroom, then you’ll need to get extra-rich looking materials and styles to dominate the room and achieve that rich decor look you want. On the other hand, if you’ve got Great-Grandma’s ornate antique furniture, but you prefer a simple decor style, then you’ll have to go ultra-simple in the rest of your decor to compensate… perhaps simple painted walls, straight elegant silk draperies, and simple table scarves will simplify your room enough to create the look you want.
When considering the weight of your furniture, you need to focus more on the visual weight, and less on the actual scale weight. A simple wrought iron bed could weigh more than a cherry sleigh bed. But the sleigh bed has more visual weight because all you see is a thick solid piece of wooden furniture across at both ends of the bed, while the wrought iron allows you to see the wall behind the bed. The visual weight of your furniture will affect how much room it looks like it takes up, and therefore how large or small your room looks — the heavier your furniture looks, the smaller your room will look. So if you’ve got a small room and heavy furniture, then use other decor techniques such as light colors and simple designs to ‘lighten’ up your room. And if you have tiny light-weight furniture and want a dark, masculine look, then consider using dark colors on the walls, and heavy-looking bedding and draperies to add weight to the room.
Finally, consider the grace of your furniture’s design. By grace, I mean the amount and type of curves used in the design. This is important in determining whether your rooms décor looks feminine or masculine, romantic or modern, and rich or simple country. Gracefully curving legs and scalloped pieces work wonderfully in a girl’s bedroom or a Victorian sitting room. And straight Shaker-style chairs or beds look great in a country kitchen or boy’s room. But again, if your furniture isn’t ideally suited to your decor style, then you simply need to effectively use your other decor options to alter or disguise the look of your furniture. If you’ve got a simple country bed set, and your daughter wants a frilly Victorian bedroom, then plenty of ruffles and floral fabric will easily dress it up. Or if you’ve got a beautiful fancy Queen Anne bedroom set, and a husband who hates frills, then simple, solid-color drapes and bedding should add enough of a masculine touch to make you both feel at home in the room.
To sum it all up, achieving the look you want isn’t as difficult as it may seem. Just take one aspect of your room at a time, and analyze it to determine what it contributes to the room. Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a much easier time figuring out what the room needs. And above all, use what you love… no matter what you do, you can’t create a room you love out of colors and materials you hate. Sometimes we have to compromise on something, but if we can figure out how to balance those items with things we love, then we can still achieve a room that is comfortable, beautiful, and makes you feel right at home in your house.
Have fun!
