Using pattern in your home decorating is SO important to add excitement and interest to your rooms. While you certainly don’t have to have pattern on every surface, a mix here and there throughout the room is welcome. If you’re just finding us today, you might want to revisit some of the earlier articles about using pattern in your home decorating. I started by sharing designer tips and the guidelines for mixing and matching, followed by a post filled with inspirational photos on where and when to use pattern. There was a post on toile, stripes, and this week is all about floral, organic patterns. Next week I’ll wrap up the series by sharing how/when to use novelty patterns.
What Patterns Work with Florals?
Photo via Color Made Easy book.
A bold toile pattern on the chairs, a floral drapery and stripe rug put a lot of pattern in this dining area. What holds it together? Color and scale. The draperies are fairly subdued so take a back seat to the more vibrant chair covers while the rug picks up the blue and red but adds in some yellow for extra interest.It’s possible to mix different florals together – the key to doing it successfully is to keep some colors the same in the two prints but to vary the scale….one smaller and denser and one larger with more background showing. Plaids and geometrics work well with florals, again keeping the scale/color considerations in mind. Florals and plaids combined often give a room a country or casual feeling while adding a stripe can take the room a little more formal. To me, the easiest and best pattern to mix with a floral is a stripe. You can read all about decorating with stripes here if you missed last week’s article.
Photo via Desire to Inspire.net, photographer Brandon Barre
These two bold organic patterns are balanced by LOTS of white but work together so well because of the difference in scale – see how the carpet pattern is dramatically bigger than the bedding pattern? By the way, another good use of scale is the height of the beside lamps – using lamps that tall helps balance the height of the headboard.
Photo via Color Made Easy book.
Photo via Color Made Easy book.
These two photos show a great room that blends a floral chair with floral and checkered pillows, striped drapes and an organic pattern art above the fireplace. The chair floral is the element marrying the other patterns; it’s dense so the checkered and stripes are larger, more open.
Photo from my magazine archives.
The heavier striped drapes serve as a great counterpoint to the delicate floral on the side chairs and the bolder floral on the sofa pillows. Notice there’s even a narrow horizontal stripe on the lamp shade – a surprising touch.
Photo via BHG.com
Circular pattern on the drapes is a medium scale with lots of background showing and it’s contrasted against super wide stripes on the wall to create a dynamic eating area.
Photo via Color Made Easy book.
Now there’s some floral art! And, taking cues from the art, the pillows below are a mix of a medium scale plaid, a dense floral and an even denser geometric. Notice how the scale of the patterns gets progressively smaller. The corner of the blue striped chair is a surprising addition of a new color (though we can’t see what else is going on in the room).
Floral Patterns in Home Decor
I’ve shared lots of examples of ways to mix patterns with florals in the photos above and hopefully increased your knowledge and awareness of how to mix patterns well. Is this an area you struggle with in your decor? Send us a photo and we’ll be able to make suggestions about how to mix patterns in your room.
RSS Feeds
YUM! Those plaid pillows on “Color Made Easy” book…yum! franki