Design

husohem

   Don't worry, this post has no barf, bananas, or any combination thereof and I will not be rubbing dirt, poop, or compost into my hair. I won't be talking about environmentalism, worms, or minimalism. Okay, well, maybe a teeny tiny bit of the latter, but not really!    This post is all about interior design style. As in: I have none.    I spend a lot of time at home. I work at home, I home-school, and none of us are social butterflies - there is a lot of home time. So, while I'm not about to take myself to locked room with a trunk full of Pottery Barn catalogs and look at them until my eyes glaze over and I go into a Pottery Barn induced coma, I would like my home to have a more cohesive and calm look. 

tommie wilhelmsen

  I've always thought this wouldn't be possible because there are things I cannot do and also loathe:

• Match ANYTHING

• Buy curtains (for some reason this really sends me into conniptions - I'd rather walk to Alaska. From the East Coast. Bears be damned)

• Pick out paint colours

• Actually decorate. Meaning: rugs, pictures, candles, blah blah blah. I can't do it and I don't really care. 
  

   Except that I kind of do really care. I mean, I don't care enough to waste a lot of time, but I don't like that my home looks like someone threw a handful of toddlers, fabric, and paint in it and barked, "Get to it!" My brain is a very busy and noisy place - it needs for my eyeballs to tell it that my body is living in a peaceful, clean place.

    I think part of the problem is that I grew up in a very colourful family. My mom and all my sisters have a style I would call Bohemian/Moroccan. It's warm, sensuous, intricate, and decorative. My mom loves apricot hues; my sisters are all fiends for reds, blacks, and purples. Everyone but me. I'm uh, pretty Nordic. I like white. And a blue I like to call pool, very pale with a hint of aqua. And that's about it.  I've killed myself painting the rooms in our house so many times because it never felt right but I didn't want white because everyone said it was boring. And not warm. And boring. But now I realize I like it because it's not distracting. Also, our house is depressingly dark due to lack of windows and white makes it lighter. I think what confused me was that I love my mom's house. I feel comfortable there. It's cosy and wonderful. I think that and the fact that everyone else I'm around is into warm colours and sumptuous fabrics convinced me I was going about decorating all wrong. After years of well meaning people telling me that all white is too cold, too uniform, and too whatever, I've just learned to accept that it's what I like and I'm going to stick with that next time something needs doing around here. Plus, seriously? These pictures? Don't they blow the whole white is boring out of the water?

   

English Muse  

   I think the reason I'm able to see this now is because I've worked hard to downsize our stuff. It looks much better, which kind of got me thinking about my yellow walls and red curtains. I know. Shudder.

  

   Design magazines and catalogs typically don't inspire me. There are usually too many items in the room and it just looks cluttered and ridiculous. But because I'm design stupid, I tend to need a security blanket to go back to and boy am I happy I found this blog:

My Scandinavian Retreat

    She collects photos of Scandinavian style from everywhere on her blog. It's like taking a long sigh of relief to sit down and look through it.

    So I'm off to buy a bolt of white linen and replace the red curtains. There might be some whining on the part of The Simple Man because he is a red lover, but he'll get over it. As long as the room looks habitable, he's fine.

What's your design style? And have you allowed others to influence it? Against your will, dangit?!

ETA: All photos are from the blog I mentioned, via or otherwise, original sources under photo when I could find it!