A Clean Slate!

Starting off on the right foot

As designers, we absolutely love a blank slate. An empty room is like a holiday present to us! Our creativity is uninhibited and we get inspired to have the space meaningfully reflect our clients’ style and lifestyle.

We know that most people don’t feel this way, a blank slate is a bit intimidating. We encourage you to find a clean slate somewhere in your home for the new year. This will allow you to really do what you love and express your style as it is now.

Your blank canvas doesn’t have to be something big like a full room. It can be as simple as taking everything off of a bookcase or your fireplace mantle and starting fresh. Here are 3 steps in approaching your fresh design:

 

Look for inspiration photos – Your goal is not to copy a design but to find themes of what you’re attracted to. Maybe you’re working on a bookcase and I find that you love bookcases with a lot of books, or you prefer a more minimalistic look. Perhaps you’re attracted to neutrals or pops of color.

Begin with something you love -It’s great to have a jumping off piece for the room. We’ve begun with a wallpaper, a fabric, a treasured object, a color, or a chair and designed rooms around those pieces. It is easier to begin with something than nothing and this is a great way to get your creativity flowing.

Select items with purpose – I believe that everything in a room should have a purpose, either functional, aesthetic or sentimental. The wonderful part about a blank slate is that you’re adding back in personal elements. This prevents the space from getting filled up and cluttered and imbues significance and meaning to a space.

These before and after photos show a project in which we followed these three steps. We found inspiration photos for our clients and created design boards. Then we selected some key pieces— the leather chairs, the wallpaper, and the chandelier, and built the spaces around those.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of our favorite parts was combining our clients’ treasured finds from their travels and their family heirloom pieces with new pieces. There’s a great sense of interest and a dynamic interplay when you combine new with old. The new year is a great time to combine new and old, and we hope that you have a wonderful 2018!