Because I know myself, and my fickle nature, I keep the big things neutral. In the dining room, the curtains are white and cream, the dining chairs are white, and in the living room the sofa is the color of melted milk chocolate.
When I made some dark purple curtains for the living room last year out of inexpensive tablecloths (one way I've managed to cut the expenses associated with my frequent whimsical changes), the husband predicted they wouldn't last long. They did last longer than he predicted (a year), but yesterday I decided I'd had enough of the palette of purple and silver/grey in the living room - it was time for a change.
Enter Design Seeds. Oh my! Enabling heaven for a fickle decorator like me!
I started browsing with two goals in mind: a new color scheme for the living room that would incorporate not only the milk chocolate covered sofa, but the burgundy of the cover for my harp, and a scheme for the kitchen that would work around our deep purple Tassimo coffee maker. We got a great deal on it, but - surprise! or maybe not - after a year I'm wishing we had a more neutral color like silver or black or brown. But it was deeply discounted precisely because of it's color, and I refuse to replace a perfectly functional coffeemaker, so the challenge was to find a scheme that works with it.
For the kitchen, I'd lately been enchanted by dark blue, but wasn't sure how to work it in with the purple since I'd been envisioning blue and bright yellow. And I'd also recently been drawn to a bright spring green while shopping for some candles. Well, a few minutes of browsing Design Seeds yielded the perfect scheme for me:
Score! Now I'm hoping I can find new hand towels in deep blue and spring green.
For the living room I found this:
Perfect! I'm going to use the 60-30-10 percentages design principle, with the brown sofa being 60%, the burgundy harp cover and one throw pillow being 10%, and a combination of the other three colors as throw pillows equalling the 30%. We have an L-shaped sofa, and need at least three throw pillows - two for me when I sit in the sweet spot (aka the corner) and one for the poodle, so pillows are the primary way that I accessorize with color. {random note: we rent, so painting is not an option for adding color}
I already had a pillow cover in that shade of orange from a decorating theme I had 5 years ago (see? I'm telling you, removable covers - they're the best!). I ordered a set of two covers in the darker honey color from one of my catalogs, and I'll be on the lookout for something in the lighter wheat color that I can throw in as well. Am hoping to find some inexpensive, neutral curtains (maybe the wheat color, if I get really lucky) to add to the windows. We have lightweight, white curtains for privacy - half curtains along the back window, and one that is the full length of the smallish window over the sofa - but I noticed immediately when I took down the purple curtains (which we almost never closed btw) that the living room started echoing - so while we may not need the curtains for visual reasons, we do need them for acoustic ones.
I'd love to have a rug on the parquet floor in the living room as well - that too would help with the acoustics - and now that the westie wears diapers full-time, rugs are a possibility for us again. But ah - the commitment anxiety! How can I commit to a color on such an expensive item, when at heart I'm so fickle? For now the solution is no rug, but maybe someday I'll find something neutral enough to support my oft-changing decorative whims.
