Modern Furniture

Restful shades of ocean blues and sea greens call to mind peaceful afternoons at the shore and turn a simple country bedroom into a tranquil retreat. Capture the spirit of water and sky with an aqueous palette that subtly shifts with the day’s changing light.

The colors you choose for a room immediately establish its mood. In a bedroom, color - especially on the walls - can mean the difference between creating a tranquil sleeping space, a romantic boudoir, or a vibrant morning room.
When selecting colors for a bedroom, don’t worry about rules. Each of us has an innate sense of color, rooted in personal history and geography. Trust your instincts.

While a single color palette employed throughout the house can give it overall harmony, the hues you choose for the bedroom don’t need to be perfectly matched to be complementary. Nor do they have to be the colors you’re “supposed” to use for bedrooms or with certain architecture or modern furniture. A neoclassical bedroom suite can be accented with bright fuchsia. A contemporary set can look crisp against restrained, classic colors. A country cottage bedroom can splash out in a modern palette of blues.

Blue is the color most often associated with tranquility and serenity, desirable attributes in a sleeping space. Begin building your palette with the palest blue that appeals to you and use that color for your walls. This gives you the freedom to use deeper hues as accents.

Blue is one of the most popular colors for bedrooms. A single hue might have felt too strong in this low-ceilinged room, but layering blues, whites, and greens throughout lends a comfortable sophistication. A collection of old bottles, right, adds interest without detracting from the sense of serenity.

Vividly colored accessories give an all-white bedroom fresh appeal. Brilliant red against bright white creates crisp contrast. Even in small doses, bright color can make a big impact.

Adding color to an all-white room is as simple as painting on a blank canvas. By gradually layering elements onto a neutral background, with a single color or a palette of hues, you can see how much color is just enough. Begin with bed linens or small accessories that can be easily changed. Once you have a palette that pleases you, continue to add increasingly larger doses of color a bit at a time: on mouldings, a chest of drawers, or the inside of a closet door.

Choose shades that are in harmony with the tint of white in the room. Bright white is best offset by cool blues and greens, or by very saturated colors. Ivory goes beautifully with warm tones such as amber or ochre.

You’ve probably heard lots of advice on the importance of color - its psychological effect on a room, the way it draws the eye, and how light colors make a space seem larger. While all of this is helpful, it’s often difficult to translate when it comes to decorating your own home. If you’re like most people, choosing a color palette comes down to selecting a few hues that you consistently love and some accent colors that complement them. One good way to do this is to use a neutral base palette and bring color into the room through accessories.

Keep in mind how the color makes you feel, and be sure it suits the room’s function.  Pay attention to the modern furniture colors and designs. If blue gives you the blues, it doesn’t matter that it’s a “good” color for a bedroom. There’s a wealth of information available about the effects of color: red makes us feel energized, blue makes a room seem cooler, pastels are quieting, and deep purples evoke creativity. But the trick is to focus on your own reaction to color. Does it appear calming? Sensual? Clean and fresh, or spicy and exotic? You can give a bedroom these attributes simply by using a color that evokes these feelings.

To gain confidence with color, use some simple design tricks. First of all, start slowly; bringing a new color scheme into your home is something that takes getting used to. Introduce small doses of a hue you like, in accessories such as a lamp or a vase. If you’re happy with the hue, gradually incorporate larger expanses of the color into the room’s decor: use it in bedding or slipcovers, or paint an old dresser or wooden chair. If you’re feeling daring, go straight for the walls - or paint just one wall. Featuring color on one wall can have a significant impact. Fortunately, paint is relatively inexpensive, so the consequences of changing your mind aren’t too great.

Perhaps you are drawn to vibrant shades of ochre and crimson in the fall and hues of green and pink in the spring. Choose a color scheme that accommodates your changing preferences. If you establish a neutral background, you can accent it with bedding, drapes, area rugs, and other accents of color. In this way, you can easily transform the feel of your bedroom from an autumnal enclave to a cheery summer space.

Also, take a cue from what’s inside your closet. Hues that you instinctively gravitate toward tend to make you look and feel your best. The same colors that work well in your wardrobe can often work wonders for you in your home.

Sheers in the living room require a little architecture. Hang yours from a pair of hinged elbow rods, which allow you to swing the sheers like shutters away from the window. Or do away with the flutter entirely: stretch the sheer panels taut between two elbow rods, top and bottom, so that they truly function as shutters—a polished treatment .  Both versions give you the softness of fabric without fuss.

Tip: To increase privacy, gather the “shutter” fabric on the elbow rods.

Traditional is a decorating term that describes the general characteristics of the period styles. Traditional implies certain design influences that can be seen in the graceful shapes and stylings of classic furniture designers such as Chippendale or Sheraton. Traditional decorating schemes are not exact re-creations of period styles, but are combinations of an individual’s favorite motifs, colors and patterns from different periods. Lavish and detailed, traditional bedrooms feature rich woods and patterned fabrics in distinctive colors.

Traditional bedrooms are cozy and comfortable, often decorated with a mix of patterns on walls, windows and beds. These bedrooms are the perfect place to express your own personal taste with favorite antiques, family photos and collections of personal memorabilia.

Traditional bedrooms are lavishly decorated with various fabrics, from elaborate tapestries to sateen, with long draperies that flow luxuriously onto the floor. The bed is often dressed with layers of bedspreads and bed skirts. Furniture of rich mahogany or cherry, with intricate details, is common in traditional rooms, as are brass lamps, bishop sleeve curtains, ruffled pillow shams and four-poster beds.

English traditional reflects the cold, damp climate and the warmth that is desired in an English home. This warmth is found in English tweed, as well as hunter green, royal blue, crimson and mustard. Warm English colors also include natural browns, grays and creams, as well as the bright colors of garden flowers.

English traditional style includes Victorian cabinetry, Regency furniture in black and gold, Edinburgh or Waterford crystal and Chippendale desks. A traditional English country bedroom is large and spacious.

French traditional has some similarities to English traditional, but the character and flavor is much different. Since the climate of France is warmer and less rainy, French rooms don’t focus so much on a central fireplace. Pastels don’t work well with the deep, ruddy shades of English traditional, but a French style can be flavored with more subtle shades, such as peach, rose, beige, pale lemon, Wedgwood blue, muted green and rich cream.

The materials used in traditional French rooms are more lush and luxurious. There is much more use of fabric than in traditional British decor. French traditional also includes intricately detailed Austrian shades, with lots of molding, trim and borders.

If there is one universal traditional style, it is wicker. In the East and West alike, the internationally known willow is bent and twisted to a desired shape. Wicker furniture can be found in traditional styles as well as modern, country and Oriental.