Blue Rooms: Classic Beauty No Matter What Style

 Ah, the many shades and hues of blue.  They are all beautiful, and blue rooms are true classics. If you have white walls or grey walls and you are looking for a change, consider the humble color blue. It is instantly calming, can be vibrant or soft and subtle, and suits all furniture and design styles whether lush Old World or spare minimalism modern.
 Not sure what to use with it? Try doing a monochromatic blue and let natural accessories to the room such as books add extra color.  Look at the wonderful library below! Do you really need more colors? And molding painted blue is gorgeous!

 Use blue with crisp white or with cream, 2 classic combinations.
 The hall below is perfect.

 Artwork is beautiful on a blue background.   Below, the blue and gold combination is an oft-used scheme in traditional homes.

 Above, crisp white with a darker blue, very clean and classic.
 Below, a robin's egg shade of blue is appetizing for a dining room.

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    Bathrooms in blue and white look clean and fresh.

   Calming blue is perfect for the bedroom.

Notice the ginger jar below, an easy way to add blue and white to any room.

I love the bedroom, below, with the ceiling painting blue and stenciled.

Classic toile belongs in the bedroom, and is especially good for guest bedrooms.

A blue and cream/white kitchen is pleasant to work in: not overly bright, not too dark. 

Love the kitchen below; perfect if your kitchen has plenty of light.

The Best Rooms Have Art!

I have several home decorating blogs that I read regularly so that I can keep up with decorating trends, (and also so that I can criticize those that I don't like!). I've noticed a distressing trend lately.  People don't seem to be hanging art on their walls.  

Now I know that many young people just starting out in life think that they cannot afford art, and sometimes they really can't.  But I've even noticed that people who are established in their jobs and their lives seem to have rooms that are distinctly lacking in art, especially paintings.  Look at the room below.  I love it! The room that is.  And the furniture.  The chandelier, the curtains, the mirror over the fireplace and the rug. 

But just imagine how much more beautiful this room would be with a painting next to the fireplace (over the bench) or a print or two on the wall to the left. For those going for the no color look, art still has a place in this room. Wonderful drawings, black and white prints, subtle paintings would all work here.

.The same goes with the dining room below.  Now, I do hate the chairs and love the mirror, but this dining room is screaming for art on its walls.

Look at this wonderful room below.  It has color, which I applaud, but this wouldn't be the same room without that wonderful painting over the fireplace.

Below, a very subtly colored room, but it would look like an empty rental without those wonderful paintings on the wall.

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There is no excuse for not having art.  Here the watercolors are hung on the shelves, very English country.

A fantastic wall of art. If that wall were blank, all the personality would be sucked from the room.

In a Parisian room, art runs up the walls and even over the doorways.

I love having gallery walls over sofas.  It's also a perfect focal point when a room does not have a view or a fireplace.

Below, just one painting would make a beautiful difference in this dining room. 

Corners can be used for art, too.  The space does not have to be huge.

The three framed drawings below are quite fitting in this formal room.

The all-grey room below needs a painting between the windows.

Another gallery wall of great interest.

This formal room has formal portraits to match.

I really don't understand the lack of art when there are so many artists out there dying to sell their wares.  You can even find original paintings in thrift stores. Watercolors and drawings are usually much less expensive than oil or acrylic paintings and can look just as good on the wall.  Even museum posters framed would be good for those who have a limited income.

But please, hang some pictures!!!!

Decorating Trends That Will Someday Make You Cringe

First, I want everyone to understand that I am 62 years old. It's important to know that I have lived in houses furnished with the trends of the 'fifties, 'sixties, 'seventies, 'eighties, and the naughts! I have seen what people cringe at years later when they remember how their houses used to be decorated. I have heard people say, "Oh, that looks so 'eighties," as though anything from that time period was anathma while at the same time they were deciding to buy a piece that my mother would have had in her house in the 'sixties! Usually these people are fairly young and I guess that haven't realized yet that everything goes in a cycle. So they will be embracing the very things and colors in 20 years that they are sneering at now. Some of the trends I think that they will be cringing at are as follows:

 Cringe Trend: Painting old furniture from the 'fifties and 'sixties in bright colors.  While I applaud this trend because it reuses and recycles instead of dumping, I think this will be a future trend cringe. What will make this really dated is using very bright colors such as the yellow and the pink that you see here.

Below, you see 2 pieces that have been painted all one color.  The bookshelf/desk could be from anytime in the last 30 or 40 years, but I had a dresser almost like that that I bought in 1970.

Cringe Trend: Making furniture out of old, weathered, marked-up wood without painting or refinishing it. Again, I applaud the recycling, but look at this chair with its markings on the side and the rough, dirty-looking wood and you know that someone just thinks that it is cool as hell. (I really do like the bookshelf built into it by the way). The idea is great, but the unfinished looking state is what is going to be cringe-worthy.

What really strikes me as stupid though is when someone pays an exorbitant fee for this furniture when the whole idea should be to use reclaimed materials to have something cheaper! In the room below, I see nothing that is really inherently beautiful which is why I think someone is going to cringe.

Cringe Trend: Industrial looking lights, lamps, chandeliers.  Again, this is taking something that was basically never considered in the least attractive and using it as though it is.

The lamps above and below are going to be soooooo dated!

And I really don't get this one. Hmmm, we have a chandelier. Let's cover it up!

Trend Cringe: Chalkboard walls and writing on walls.  Chalkboard walls just strike me as messy; as a former teacher I probably have a layer of chalkdust lining my lungs and don't see the allure although I'll bet it's fun for kids.  However, having writing on your walls always has struck me as false cheer. It's probably just someone who wants to fill up a wall space but doesn't have any art.

Cringe Trend: This one is funny because in the early 'sixties so many homes had sunburst mirrors and clocks like this that when I had my own place in the 'seventies, you couldn't have paid me enough money to hang one!  It will be that way again. Maybe you could say they are classic because they go in and out of fashion, but in 20 years no one is going to want this on her walls.

Cringe Trend: Ikat and huge geometric prints.  Been there, done that. Think of flamestitch in the 'eighties.

Please note that I am not saying that people should get these out of their houses. Although there are a few things here that I personally don't care for at all, I'm just saying that in 20 years these decorating trends will look, well, extremely dated and many people will probably say to themselves, "What was I thinking?"!

Trends

Maybe it's being 61 years old, but I have a really low tolerance for certain trends in all things (the "bubble" dress? Didn't bother to buy one!).  Where decorating is concerned, I have noticed several trends that I think people will look at in 10 years the way they do the avocado green shag rugs of the '70s.  These trends won't really make it to classic because they have major flaws of some sort: they are impractical, silly, uncomfortable or sometimes just downright ugly. Any one of these marks the trend as something that in 10 years will seem ludicrous.

1.  Burlap: Uncomfortable, scratchy, and overpriced, this humble textile belongs around feedbags, not in your living room.  It's just ugly.

2.  "Deconstructed" furniture - very popular at Restoration Hardware - the new Pottery Barn.  These pieces are quite expensive when you consider that they are upholstered pieces that are not upholstered. Do you really want this (below) in one of your rooms?

3.  The use of animal skins, especially zebra.  Not fond of being reminded of dead animals.  I like my animals alive, and if you've been to Africa and seen zebras in the wild as I have, there's no way you really want them on your floors.  Animals are living beings that live in family groups quite often (yes, I am a vegetarian).  In this country, not many people need to kill animals for food, so the animal skins are not a byproduct of necessity. And even the faux ones bother me.  There's just something callous about using them.

4. Animal heads and antlers - see #3.

5.  Ugly lighting: includes metal fixtures that look as though they belong in an old-fashioned general store.  Lights with the bulb as a focal point.

images from Restoration Hardware
6.  Sunburst mirrors: I can remember when these were in everyone's living room in the '60s (sometimes clocks instead of mirrors).  Everyone has one; don't succumb unless you want your home to look like everyone else's.

7.  Chalkboards and chalkboard paint - except in children's rooms.  One woman actually put little chalkboards in front of decorative items in her living room naming the decorative item.  Chalkboards can be useful if you use them to write messages to your family - otherwise, are they really that decorative? (I spent 25 years writing on chalkboards and lecturing to students.  I have chalkdust in my lungs; chalkboards are for information, not decor.)

8.  Flaking and peeling paint: not attractive when the paint is coming off in huge flakes or barely there to begin with.  This furniture looks as though it came from the houses of the poor of rural Arkansas or Mississippi.  I just don't see the appeal. It's not the same as the gold leaf flaking off a Louis XV.  Often these are pieces that when new would not ever have been welcome in the house.

image from Hoosier Homemade