Friday, Jul. 04, 2008

Avoiding trends in style

Have you ever gone into someone’s house and felt the need to copy something? Same floral arrangement? Curtains? Accessories? Most of us would answer yes to at least one of these. After all, how do you think a trend starts? Something new comes out, someone gets it and someone else wants it, and someone after them and so on.

Is this you? Do you see someone’s style and try to adopt it as your own? It rarely works. If your style is more traditional and you smear thick spackle on your walls with a heavy faux finish, do you feel a bit at odds but just can’t put your finger on it? Have you ever jumped on the wallpaper bandwagon but really hate patterns? No amount of accessories or furniture rearranging can make it right. It’s like there is something wrong but you just can tell what that "something" is.

So many times, I see people fall into the newest trend trap. They want something just because everyone else has it, but in the end it doesn’t make them happy. I know this, because it has happened to me. For instance, I love yellow. Love, love yellow. It’s a great color for summer and is making quite a comeback in home décor. It gets my attention every time. Paired with blue, crisp white or brown, I imagine how my living room, or bathroom, or the "room I hate at the moment" room will look after I paint it a beautiful yellow. I fantasize how my luncheons, which I never have, will be perfect with little finger sandwiches on china plates. I see my clean and well-behaved, spelling-impaired children casually playing Scrabble like spelling bee champs on the new carpet. Ahh.

But then I remember: I hate yellow in my house. It’s just not me. And this I know for sure because one weekend, I stayed up 'round the clock and painted every room a lovely shade of Buff Beige (which trust me, is yellow).

I couldn’t sell my house fast enough and start over at a new address. We now have a custom color that I named Oyster Bay. (which trust me, is NOT yellow). It’s just more "us." It sits right in the middle of tan and yellow, tilting more toward tan. It goes with everything we already have and how we live and relax.

I often tell clients to go with what you love and you will never go wrong. You will love it always.

I learned this a while back from a little Grandma client. She was the sweetest thing ever. And she wanted to update her current window treatments. They were mauve/pink chintz balloon shades. They were straight from 1987. She desperately needed an update she explained over the phone. After several days, she finally landed on her dream window treatment. Taking the place of the mauve/pink chintz balloon shades, she went with canary yellow chintz balloon shades. Same treatment, same fabric—just a different color. No, chintz isn’t current and neither is this particular style of balloon shade, but she wanted it and she got it. She was so in love with them and didn’t want anything else that she even took down the old treatments so I could use them as a guide to make the new ones, to avoid any misunderstandings of any type of alterations.

Upon installation, I got a batch of homemade brownies (with icing!) as a thank you and a little short hug. I see her every now and then and she still gushes about those treatments. She knew what she liked and went with it and never looked back.

She wasn’t swayed with the fancier, more popular styles. I like that. No where else would those treatments look good but in her house, but I must say, they were perfect. They were her.

Listen to your gut. Are you decorating your HOUSE or are you beautifying your HOME? There is a difference. Does your house say something about you and your family or does it say, "I look just like so-and-so’s house?" Making changes to your home can be a big change and a big cost.

Take time to decide what is right for you and your family. And never let anyone else influence you. Remember, you have to look at it every day.