Pepper Design Blog

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 »

Fabric of the Day: Nina Campbell

Sometimes one rich pattern can make an entire room or party — it can be the focus of all decorating inspiration as a single, fabulous piece like a chair or ottoman, or for a party as a table runner or dessert buffet backdrop. Nina Campbell provides much inspiration with her fabric line, Perroquet, based off of the whimsical elegance of Paris.

Most of her prints having a collaborating or matching wallpaper — just in case lining the backdrop of a bookcase, framing a beautiful swatch or papering the single wall of your bedroom is more what you had in mind! I love to cut wallpaper into placemats to provide an unexpected, easy to clean plate charger for a meal with friends! Don’t you love these patterns?

Green With Envy Office Inspiration

It’s so exciting coming across some of these great finds — now that online shopping is the new trip to your local paperie store (not that I don’t still LOVE that) — but really the beauty of browsing the web is the ability to pull a room together from so many different sources, all in one sitting. And I find the beauty in blogging is to do the same — give inspiring ideas for pulling together one unique space, all for the reader to peruse in one little sitting.

For some reason over these past couple of weeks I keep gravitating towards office spaces — maybe it’s the enormous challenge of organizing so many files, paper and loose odds and ends (like my home office!) in a functional yet fashionable way (not quite there yet with the office…), or maybe it’s because color and patterns can be so free and reckless when they come in paper mediums like photo boxes, magazine holders or file bins (because they’re temporary — you can love ‘em this minute and change ‘em next month and it’s easy peasy, no major fuss of tearing down wallpaper or reupholstering furniture). OR maybe it’s because organization elements play such a key role, such as shelving, shadow boxes, clothes pin picture rail (cute DIY idea!) and fabric bulletin boards (all of which feel so satisfying at the end of the day when the last book is on the shelf and the last loose receipt filed and zipped away).

Regardless of what it is about office spaces that make them so fun to play with, here are some great green ideas for your next project! To find the home of the goods pictured above, follow the jump!

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