M & Co's Tips for an Eclectic Interior

The web is wonderful for serendipitous discoveries. Today's is a blog called M & Co, which had a nice set of tips on creating an eclectic interior. The author is lucky enough to live in her grandparents' house, with an attic full of stuff to explore. (This is my fantasy. Really.) I'm going to paraphrase her here, but go read it.

1. Use your color scheme as a canvas to unify disparate elements. Hers is white, grey, and black, and dark wood. Mine is cream, dark wood, white, and gold.
2. It's about layering/choose an accent color. (I think this is 2 tips....) I think layering is the "stuff" you carefully find an add to your home, always a big challenge to get right. My accent color is red.
   
3. Furniture gives structure to interiors so pay attention to scale, balance, and quality. (I learned this from the book Use What You Have Decorating.)
4. Keep the principles of design in mind.
5. Source from everywhere and anywhere. (I'm a fan of thrift shops and have been known to scavenge from my dad's or father in law's workshops...)
   
6. Take your time.
7. Make a list. (in other words, don't buy needlessly.)
   
8. Use humor and surprise. (Isn't this what steampunk is, to most people?)
   
9. Trust your taste. (This is always hard for me, but I find the more effort you put in, the better it gets.)

Pics from the M&Co blog.

Steampunk style for the modern home

It's interesting when I see steampunk style pieces in very non-steampunk rooms. Industrial styling, after all, has become a big part of modern design. (I wish I had scanned the CB2 catalog cover that had a large clock gear in the background for you...)




I ran across this home in today's decor8 -- it's very modern, but worth a look-see for ideas on how to integrate steampunk style pieces into an Ikea-modern home.



There are a number of pieces here I'd be happy to have in a steampunk home -- the exterior tower, the kitchen stools, the Gothic church bench, the spotlights, the leather chairs.

One of my goals this year is to provide a better "service" to my readers -- I think finding and reporting on cool steampunk rooms is a start, but I want to supplement that with some ideas on how to get from where you are to your dream home -- whether that's a full Victorian home, a loft with gothic and industrial elements, or someplace in between. Hopefully this example shows that you don't have to have the perfect house, or a room full of ideal furniture, to start integrating some steampunk into your design.