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If I’m going to continue the theme of red-accented spaces, this unique house is the perfect place to stop next. It’s the home of portrait photographer, Emily McCall.
Why do I love this house? Because it intrigues me and is truly one-of-a-kind. For a start, you’d think a palette of black, white and red would be brash and in-your-face, but instead it’s quiet, almost monastic, but with a twist.
Great mix of textiles from Suzani to sackcloth to leather.
Any place that can combine a white bust with a Panton chair and look great is ok by me!
The bedrooms are like negatives of each other (how appropriate for a photographer!) Here’s the light and airy white bedroom, with a few graphic punches in the form of the pillow, lamp and quirky clock.
And here’s the black bedroom – a perfect foil for a vintage bus route sign….
…and a red velvet wingback chair! Genius. Makes me want to break out the black paint.
Thanks, Emily, for allowing me to post photos of your lovely home. Hope everyone else enjoys them as much as I did!
Check out Emily’s blog here.
I’m always attracted by unusual and imaginative pieces of furniture. But how cool is this jewellery-inspired table? And I guess you could reconfigure the pieces how you like, as the mood takes you.
Spotted on Emma’s Design Blogg, it’s from Swedish furniture brand, the home company.
So inspiring…
I just love these unusual tables (if you can call them that) by Italian designer, Giancarlo Zema (found via here).
This innovative collection is called ‘Bright Woods’ because they’re lit from within by LED lights. That’s right, those white stripes are fabulous, glowing streams of light, set against the most gorgeously smooth and tactile, polished wood. They look like something straight off the set of Avatar. Here’s what they look like without the light.
I think they’re beautiful either way. While they probably wouldn’t work in my Edwardian house (!), I have to say that I find them irresistible. Perhaps that’s because they look like over-sized chocolate swirls! Or maybe I’m drawn to alien life-forms as furniture? Either way, they’re definitely unique.
I read some advice from interior designer Vicente Wolf in a magazine interview the other day. He said that a space should have ‘flow’. “Like water flowing down a river. There might be a little rock here or a little bit of rapids there, but the river never stops flowing”. I take this to mean that the eye should move effortlessly from one end of a room to another – and between rooms – without visual obstacles or interruptions. His words struck a chord. The fact is, when you’re exposed to hundreds of photos of gorgeous interiors every day, it’s easy to confuse interior design with the creation of a still life. Recently, I have found myself thinking about how a room would look in a photo, rather than how it would feel to be living in it. I’ve been thinking about the placement of furniture and the layering of textiles and finishes as a two-dimensional composition. It’s an easy trap to fall into when the world of design is influenced by heavily-styled and meticulously arranged images. But it doesn’t make for a truly successful interior scheme.
So I decided to take a closer look at what Wolf means by ‘flow’ and try to learn some lessons from this. First, he uses a lot of white to create continuity through an entire space. He does the same with color by picking up the same tones in fabrics here and there throughout a home.
So far, so obvious (although I’ll admit it requires considerable discipline to stick with the same palette throughout a home – most of us need to express another side of our design personality by experimenting with different looks in different rooms). Wolf also eschews pattern, preferring instead to keep his spaces clean. Oops, having just decorated three rooms with ‘feature walls’ using wallpaper or contrasting paint, I can see the appeal of a ‘clean’ background, as Wolf puts it, allowing the shapes of the furniture to speak for themselves.
Studying his work, it’s clear there’s more to this idea of ‘flow’ than color and pattern though. The way Wolf uses interior space is unusual in that he isn’t at all constrained by structure. He says he likes to avoid putting up boundaries in a scheme, but I think he goes beyond that to create living areas that seem to float within a room while the walls and ceilings seem to melt away, using reflective and transparent materials. Sometimes he achieves this just by the way he places the furniture, refusing to hug the walls or follow conventional layouts.
Wolf mixes up styles and eras fearlessly, which helps create a more organic, relaxed vibe. Thinking again about that idea of flow, if you look at the way these contrasting pieces of furniture are arranged, you’ll see that they’re meant to be appreciated by someone sitting at the table or on the sofa – not just by an outsider looking at the room through a lens.
That’s not to say you won’t find great styling in his spaces though. Throughout Wolf’s interiors you see antiques and artifacts from his store, VW Home, arranged in pairs or multiples. These must be the ‘rapids’ he talks about: they certainly inject energy into a space.
It’s tempting to conceive a room scheme in the same way you’d frame a beautiful photograph, but it helps to remember that an interior must look and feel cohesive from every angle.
Credits: All images except the first one are from Vicente Wolf Associates‘ web site. The first image is from House Beautiful.
On these cold winter days, we look for ways to make our homes more cozy and inviting. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn at the moment to images of spaces with lots of wood. I’m particularly attracted to warm woods with lots of texture. Even better if they have that sheen that comes from years of careful polishing. From individual pieces to entire walls and floors in beautiful wood, here are some of the images that have grabbed my attention lately.
The entire house in this post via Automatism is stunning, but this image appealed particularly. (Come to think of it, that’s probably because it looks so similar to my blog banner!)
I think this is my all-time favorite look: warm wood, neutral colors, white ceramics and a bit of sparkle. Via Smart Alec.
Love, love the idea of a stairway entirely in chunky wood. But I have to admit this image makes me want to shrief in a grandmotherly way: watch your footing in those socks, dear! Via Seen and Said.
These giant armoires are just beautiful. Via Bloesem.
A unique spin on the traditional wooden kitchen cabinet. This looks like it comes straight from an apothecary shop. Via Katy Elliott from the book Restoring a House in the City.
That piano is stunning and I love the organic shapes of the coffee table and Danish chair. By Amy Lau Design.
A really beautiful polished wood piece can bring all the pattern you need to a room. From Thomas O’Brien’s apartment, via Habitually Chic.
I love the quiet simplicity of this space. Via Make my Day.
Ok, this one is as much about the chair, pendant light and wallpaper as it is about the wood cabinet. Via Houzz.
I’m sure many enjoyable evenings have been spent round this table over the years. Via Decorology.
We’ve had a LACK side table from IKEA in our living room for the past seven years. It has served us well but I’m beginning to think about swapping it for something a little more exciting. Looking around, it occurs to me that a side table is a fantastic, low-cost, low-commitment way to make a bold design statement in your room. Just checking out the major chain stores and online retailers, I’ve found some really unique tables that are totally affordable.
Top of the list has to be these Hexagonal yellow tables from West Elm. They pretty much stopped me in my tracks. Right now, they cost just $229 for a set of two.
West Elm also has this lovely hammered metal tray and medina stand for just $139.
Over at Anthropologie, I liked this copper table with an embossed brass top. It’s quite a bit more expensive though, at $398.
Brocade Home, a favorite source of mine, delivers yet again with these two turned leg tables. This one with a dramatic glossy black finish is $199.
The silver metal version is $299. This would look great next to a boxy white sofa (like the IKEA one we have…)
Now this one’s really different. The ESSEY Illusion side table from Design Public is only $275. Being perspex, it would work really well in a smaller space.
I would love, repeat ‘love’, an Eames walnut stool like this. But at the thick end of $900 it’s out of the question. But this Totem Stool from Room and Board is a similar look for just $399. It’s very tactile – would look fabulous in a room with lots of neutral colors and natural textures.
These little tables wouldn’t look out of place in a Paris apartment. They’re the Jules tables from Crate & Barrel and are made of iron with an antiqued mirror top. The smallest is $199. Top them with bonbon dishes, vintage books, overblown pink roses and you have the ultimate in Parisian vintage chic.
I’m also rather partial to ceramic garden stools. They’re so versatile: you can use them indoors or out, as seating or tables, or just to satisfy a desire to buy something in luscious cherry red. These are from Pottery Barn and are $159 each. Wisteria also has them in white, pale green, pale blue, silver or gold at $129 each. I fancy silver since I’m still in a sparkly mood.
Ahhhh, speaking of sparkly, now we come to the Michael Aram ‘Enchanted Forest’ side table. Ok, so this is not exactly ‘affordable’. It’s $570. But it certainly lives up to its name – this is one enchanting table. It’s made of polished aluminum and looks like it’s straight out of a fairytale.
So, there’s my round-up of show-stopping side tables. Even the most inhibited interiors should be able to step out of the shadows with one of these…
As I mentioned here, I’ve been revamping our dining room. Nothing major, mind you. Just a few tweaks here and there to finish the space. I’ve finally finished it and have some photos to share. It’s not an easy room to photograph so forgive the amateurish attempts. But you get the gist.
So, what did we do? Well, we replaced the Seventies brass and perspex chandelier with a Nelson saucer bubble lamp from Room and Board. We made the photo wall with frames from Aaron Brothers. The black round mirror was a bargain find from Lamps Plus. We bought the tall curvy vase from Wingard and the ginger jar from Bae Home in San Francisco. Oh, and we laid the table!
Today the sky is a particularly luminous shade of blue. Nothing is more likely to put me in a good mood than a bright blue summer sky (even if it is only April). Who said blue was sad? And to prove the point, I scoured the Internet (while sitting outside on the patio, of course) for examples of the perfect, fresh, happy blue.
This is decorator Dawn Falli’s dining room. It first appeared in Domino and then on Apartment Therapy. The blue chairs are a jolt of summer color and look stunning against the gold and white.
What better example of a ‘happy’ blue than the one used in Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment makeover in the Sex and the City movie? Production designer Jeremy Conway combined a particularly uplifting blue (close to Benjamin Moore’s Electric Blue, according to Casa Sugar’s great interview with Conway) with airy white drapes, vibrant rugs and that delightful collection of pictures above Carrie’s bed to come up with a space that simply oozes positive thinking.
With the pale blue wallpaper in this bedroom, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into a garden on a summer’s day. While the style is a little ornate for my taste, this is an undeniably ‘feel-good’ blue.
So, how to inject some of that happy blue into your own home? Graham and Green has the most amazing sapphire-blue bone inlay furniture. It’s an unconventional way to get that clean, crisp blue and white effect, without resorting to blue toile or wedgewood.
The crazy pattern of this blue ‘Squiggle’ rug, by Vivienne Westwood at The Rug Company, is certain to induce a good mood – if you can get over the shock of spending big bucks on something you’re going to walk all over, that is.
Or mix it up with orange and lime in a statement piece like these armoires by Argentinian artist, Lucas Rise, again courtesy of Casa Sugar.
I have loved this Cole chair from Room and Board for ages. It’s simple, inviting and perfect for a scheme inspired by spring skies…
Painting a staircase blue might not be for the fainthearted, but the tropical blue in this Scandinavian house is surprisingly effective. It turns a narrow staircase into a sunny spot you might actually want to linger in. See the full house story on Remodelista and Materialicious.
Who knew blue could be so upbeat?
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