Pepper Design Blog

How ‘Bout Orange? Rooms Inspired by the Month

With Halloween just around the corner, and orange on the mind, I couldn’t help but seek out some excellent home inspiration surrounding the color. Orange is contemporary, bright (certainly a mood lifter!) and yet it evokes feelings of warmth and coziness in any room — what a perfect (long forgotten & under appreciated by the best of us) color.

Whether you approach it with a bold, this-is-my-color spirit and paint the walls or add a bit of orange glow just for the fall season, you can’t go wrong. How great are these orange-inspired living rooms {above} and bedrooms {below}?

A burnt orange is reminscent of fall leaves… it echos a warm, fire-y coziness and makes you want to curl up all day on a Sunday, newspaper and OJ by your side, in bed. The brighter, pastel shade screams modern and airy — walking into this bright pink and orange bedroom after a long day would wipe all worries away with one big smile.

Working with orange involves a bit of risk… we don’t see it often incorporated in traditional homes. What do you think of orange?

Follow the jump for orange-inspired dining rooms! Read more »

Dining Table Makeover: Chalkboard Style!

This is such a clever way to refurbish an old dining room table. Plus, so much fun for kids (and dinner guests!) — no crayons and placemats required! Kate Leary of Mi Piace Kate Design shared this Before & After with Design Sponge in August after a great Craigslist find up in San Francisco. It’s so classy! The structure of the table is already there — but the bleached wood look had to go.

A bit of priming, chalkboard paint and a Saturday afternoon — and voila, a beautiful table that’s fun for everyone! I love the chairs, too. It adds that modern edge to tie the piece into the rest of the house.

Follow the jump for a more detailed How-To. Do you have a great Before & After project? Contact me to submit pictures and your story!  Read more »

Weekend Room Makeover: 3 {Easy!} Ideas to Try

We all know a well put together room when we see one – we might not know why it’s so pleasing to the eye, but there’s something about the movement, style and colors that draw us in.

In an effort to capture those little design elements that lie behind a well decorated room, I’m using today’s post to highlight three {quick!} fixes to offer ever so subtle modern updates. Perhaps this could turn into a full article on dressing a room top to bottom, but today’s purpose is get the mind whirling on what you might be able to fix this weekend, and not months in the future. So let’s dive right in!

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{Idea #1: Bring in Contrasting Colors}
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Take a look around your room and note the color theme. Perhaps it’s various shades of blue, tan or maybe red. To add an element of design that makes a pop, find an accessory in a contrasting color to add. If your living room is green, opt for fuchsia throw pillows, if it’s red, consider a plum or yellow rug, lamp or blanket draped over the couch.

Weekend mission: Throw pillows are easy-peasy, take your new search to your local design store or hit up eBay for some excellent contrasting finds.
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p{Idea #2: Reorganize Your Walls}

Well designed rooms incorporate well designed wall art. Pull all of your photos and paintings down from their current locations and reconsider your blank wall canvas. Now set up clusters of your favorite pictures at the base of your wall on the floor, and go about your daily business. Come back throughout the day and reorganize your photo/painting cluster until you finally have something that works well for your space and your photos. A simple rule that I like to follow is clustering in odd numbers and keeping larger photos towards the center. When your grouping looks appealing on the floor, mark out your new space with blank sheets of paper on the wall (one piece of paper represents one photo that is temporarily attached to your wall).

Weekend mission: Gather photos from all over the house and match frames that work well together for groupings (frames don’t actually need to match – I love the gold, ivory, brown frame combos, for instance – but you’ll know right away if one photo looks appropriate next to the other). If you don’t have wall art that includes brilliant black & whites of your family or brightly colored framed photos from travels, now’s the opportunity to hunt through drawers and order new, large prints from your favorite photo store – Costco photo, anyone?
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Follow the jump to learn more about patterns & texture, and for the rest of the article! Read more »