Want to design a cohesive look for your room and don't know where to start? How about picking a favorite fabric as your starting point? Fabrics bring inspiration in so many ways. They inform the color scheme, they set a mood, and they give the design a starting point. When beginning, don't worry about which fabrics will go where, just play for a little while before you make those decisions.
In the examples here, we started with Thibaut's Asian Scenic fabric in a blue and green colorway, so we immediately had the general colors. Staying within those colors we could go darker or lighter, and could choose which ones would be dominant and which should play a supporting role. This fabric is linen and cotton, giving it a casual feel, and the Chinoiserie pattern makes it feel classic. Generally (there are no absolute rules) when patterns are large and colorful like this one, I find them playful and use them that way.
So with the inspiration fabric in place, we came up with 3 different ways to do the room. In the first example, we used a second colorful fabric with overscaled stripes in similar colors then added a fun hand-printed fabric as an accent. We rounded it out using rich sapphire blue.
In the second version we played up the neutrals and use natural elements like the jute rug. We used the same hand-printed fabric as above, but in a neutral/yellow, instead of the blues. We chose a natural woven material for the windows, and a cute beaded trim for the bottom edge.
For the third option we used the same colorful striped fabric as in the first scheme, a small scale graphic pattern fabric, and a lot of the medium blue found in the Asian Scenic inspiration fabric. We emphasized the green silky fabric and gave it all a little more formality by adding an oversized embroidered border trim.
Now we have 3 great options for the room. Next step is to decide which one suits the client and the space best and to decide exactly how each fabric will be used.
Give this a try. Just refrain from ordering any fabric until you have a cohesive design plan in place!!
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