What's Your Style?

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sanctareparata

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I thought this would be a fun thread idea - how do you decorate your home, if you do decorate? What’s your style?

Do you like quilts and patchwork bunnies and stoneware - Country? Or do you decorate with china dolls and ceramic vases, doilies and dried flowers - Victorian? Or is your home decorated in simple, sleek lines and curves with bold, bright colors or lots of blacks and whites - Modern? Or is it mission-style? Or conservative? Ritzy? Rustic? Oriental? Shabby Chic? Classical? Southwestern? Eclectic with a bit of it all? You get the point…if you want, post pics of the room in your house that shows your style the best.

As for me, I think we’re just conservative/contemporary. I don’t even know if I have a style - it’s not Modern or Country or Victorian, just Comfy. 🙂

If you don’t have a style, what would you choose if you could afford to decorate in whatever you wanted?
 
sanctareparata said:
I thought this would be a fun thread idea - how do you decorate your home, if you do decorate? What’s your style?

If you don’t have a style, what would you choose if you could afford to decorate in whatever you wanted?
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I’m sort of in between decorating and being able to AFFORD how I’d like to decorate, LOL!

I LOVE mission style furniture… dark solid wood with straight lines… with a modern/tropical twist!
Well, that’s my DREAM at least… right now we’re living on 35 year old couches and a broken coffee table… :rolleyes:
 
We decorate in the “childproof” style 😃

You’ve seen pictures of my house, Sancta, what would you call it? I think I’m like you–no real style, just try to make it pretty. 🙂
 
As a musician with a very small home, I guess I could only describe my style as “early eclectic.” My living/dining area is less than 300 sq. ft., and a good part of that is taken up by my almost-full-sized organ and a digital piano. Most of what I have is cat-proof – hardwood floor with a cheap area rug, oak table and chairs, and non-upholstered furniture except for the futon which serves as my sofa. I made a cover for the futon mattress which is easily removable and washable, and coordinates with my main colors of off-white, sage, and a shade of beige/tan which complements the color of the oak floors and table. I have few knick-nacks around, preferring a sparse, simple style with fewer temptations for curious kitties (who match pretty well themselves – one is orange tabby and white and the other is a brown and orange torbie). 🙂
 
My style is manly. I decorate my room with a layer of genuine vintage dust. 😉

Seriously, though, judging by what I see when I look around here, I seem to have a problem picking between the white and Earth colours. My window sill is white marble, the walls are white. The chandelier looks like a 19th century Greek inspired piece. The door is white wood and glass. And the photo-wallpaper on the wall opposing the window features a bridge in a forest park in the style of the chandelier. 😉 If you look around, you’ll notice also some other antique themes - Greek replicas and a round disc of Phaistos mousepad (I also have a small clay replica on the shelf, as well as a small amphor and two statues). A Christian Greek element (Byzantine) is an icon of my patron saint.

However, the furniture is solid brown wood and quite warm, as opposed to the cool feel of the afore-described. On the floor is a South-American style rack - dirty brown with lighter beige-ish brown and black stripes on the sides. The bed is brown as well. The blankets are also, but I more often use a furry cape, which is… white. The chair near the wall where the wallpaper is, is brown with blue upoholstery… which fits the the South-American-Indian style window curtains, which fit the Peru-style rack on the floor, don’t they? And there’s a 16th century Spanish sword replica casually leaning against the wall.

You won’t need to look around too much to find tech equipment. The computer is pretty visible - with a case wing removed (it’s still silent) and with two big speakers from a JVC audioset on both sides of an old CRT monitor (CRT ftw! :p) giving a stereo sound I wouldn’t swap for 5.1 (had that for a while, you could then notice additional pairs of speakers behind the computer chair and under the computer desk). Some speakers, headphones, microphones and the like are right on the floor with some other equipment (I’m one of those guys who own more pen drives than they can remember). There are some old devices on shelves, too. I can see a CD driver, a processor with a cooler mounted, an air duct, a removable HDD case, spare IDE cables, CD audio cable, printer cable, two dead fans, a functional webcam.

And papers. Much of paper. Much disorder.

So you’ll find a couple of concurrent themes in my room. 😛

Note that, after all, it does reflect my personality. 😛
 
Gothic-neoVictorian-artdeco-librarian-messy.

Furniture is a mix of old and new – big old wooden bookcases (crammed full, with over a dozen cardboard boxes full of more books) and a few slightly more modern ones picked up on the cheap, glass and steel computer desk, clunky wooden dresser, old wicker-weave coffeetable/tvstand/big blocky chest, antique mahogany card table. Oh, and gargoyle bookends.

We haven’t hung anything up on the walls since it’s an apartment, but among other things we have a picture our seven-year-old niece drew of us getting married (that one’s on the fridge), an antique Japanese painting, a big sprawling Escher-like futuristic landscape, a couple of Polish movie posters (we’re not Polish, never been to Poland, and we don’t even speak Polish, but well, try arguing how these aren’t awesome):

Faust:
http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/849/3464pc4.jpg

Kafka’s The Trial:
http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/6029/3054af9.jpg
 
while we had kids at home the style was Early Goodwill with an eclectic mix of curbside rejects.

we sold the house when they all left to marriage or schoool in the same year, (taking all the linens and dishes and most of the furniture) and bought a trailer furnished in pink, blue and grey (80s colors for mobile homes). Moved here and bought a mobile furnished in jewel tones (90s colors for mobiles). When we built our house I wanted something totally different so I found a large area rug for the LR at pottery barn and used that as the color palate–stripes in deep saturated colors, olive, gold, sienna, ocher, red, orange, purple. everything else including dishes picks up on one or some of those colors (dishes are one place setting of each color in hand-painted stoneware from Spain).

my office has the same colors in a lighter palate, with a funky psychadelic area rug as the basis. things in my house do not match (deliberately) but I think they go together

walls are cream because I like to fill walls with art. one wall is Mexican folk art, one is oriental, various needlework and fabric art on the bedroom wall. Guest bedroom and bath are jersey cream with orange and gold accents and some apple green, with mostly a bird theme. Master is blue and green plaid, hunter green spread, green leather sofa, and light oak furniture, plus a dark red lazy boy. art is animals, native American prints, desert flora and fauna in prints and carvings.

LR furniture is used of high quality from an estate sale, dark wood frames with solid upholstered cushions in shades of various greens, cream and black, each piece a different but harmonizing pattern. also have some redwood patio chairs as additional seating, looks great, one is a glider, my favorite, with patio type cushions (which I change as my mood changes right now they are bright orange and gold floral). Lamps, tables, shelves and surfaces are a mix of natural woods, stone, slate and metallics.
 
Our house is country style - or shabby chic (if that’s even a style :D) The walls are a light sage green in the LR, and we have hardwood floors w/ sage/tan area rugs, the fireplace is painted white and there are knick-knacks (mostly of the cat persuasion) on all walls, my curtains are white and dark green gingham. Much to my DH’s dismay, our house looks like a country craft store - except for our bedroom, where he has his Star Wars and LOTR books, comics, dolls… oops sorry ACTION FIGURES. :rolleyes:
 
I try to keep in mind that we live in a ranch-style home built in the 1950s. So no “country.” No “antiques.” No “contemporary.” No “Victorian.”

Just tacky ranch stuff, even a Kit-Kat clock (but it’s Garfield, not the black and white kitty).

Our living room walls consist of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves built by my husband–just unstained wood, but they hold all our thousands of books and quite a few interesting objects (e.g., my “Vampire in a Box” that my daughters gave me several years ago, my piece of the Berlin Wall that some German missionaries gave me, my Army duck, my collection of James Bond action figures still in their original package, my T-1000 action figure autographed in two places by the adorable Robert Patrick, etc.).

Piano is front and center in the living room, of course, but it’s old and very annoying to play or listen to.

Our floors are Pergo (light wood-like) throughout living room/dining room/kitchen–very cat-proof. Bedrooms are hardwood. I dislike carpet immensely–it makes my feet dry out. Our cats slip and slide all over the house–it’s like an ice skating rink to them.

Our bathroom is awful and I wish we had the money to get it fixed up. If you ever hear about a woman falling through the floor of her bathtub and lying naked and wet in her basement all day, that will be me when our rotted bathroom floor caves in while I’m in the shower!

My husband is capable of doing a lot of fix-up and remodeling, but he doesn’t have the time because of his job. He’s on call a lot, so he hates to plan any big projects because they will probably get interrupted and he won’t get back to them for weeks.

I really love the Peter Walsh philosophy of clutter-free living, and my husband and I have worked very hard in the last few years to get rid of meaningless clutter in our home. We still have certain areas (the basement) that need to be mercilessly overhauled, but we have really pared down the upstairs, all our closets, our cupboards and drawers, and even our bookshelves. Anything that we have upstairs is stuff that we honor and treasure and use right now, not somethin that we hope to get around to “someday.” (Here is a link to his website in case you don’t know who he is: peterwalshdesign.com/5faq/1_5faq.html)
 
MSParrott said:
Our house is country style - or shabby chic (if that’s even a style :D) The walls are a light sage green in the LR, and we have hardwood floors w/ sage/tan area rugs, the fireplace is painted white and there are knick-knacks (mostly of the cat persuasion) on all walls, my curtains are white and dark green gingham. Much to my DH’s dismay, our house looks like a country craft store - except for our bedroom, where he has his Star Wars and LOTR books, comics, dolls… oops sorry ACTION FIGURES. :rolleyes:
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DH and I currently rent a small loft apartment while we save for a house/bigger place. There are rafters spanning the ceiling (we’re right under the roof. On said rafters sit the Lego pirate ship and Lego viking ship, prepared to do battle. Directly over the bed. Climbing up the angled rafters on the side are Lego viking dragons and Spider-Man.

We have bookcases lining every wall of the living area, I have the corner with the couch for my nice books. DH’s bookcases are full of comic books (about 7000, he has roughly 14,000 total), with various action figures posed in front of them (he has a hilarious “parade” of Batman villains and supporting characters that we call The Caper). Surrounding the computer are shelves containing various Legos, like the Batcave, fire station, hospital, police station…on the top of the bookcases (incuding a shelf that spans the gap between bookcase and wardrobe) he has the Lego train station, Lego houses, etc. Our wedding candle, a vase of flowers, and my statue of the Blessed Virgin sits next to the Lego Viking Fortress. I admit the Mulder & Scully Barbies perched on the edge of the desk are mine.

The reaction from friends and family is comical. The women have such pity for me, the men are in wonder of DH having such an “awesome” wife 😉 I really don’t mind them - the only time it ever got on my nerves was when he perched the dragon atop our nativity set - got an earful from me and his mother for that ;). They’re funny and colorful, and there is room for my nice things (he’s aways willing to move his stuff into storage first). When we have a bigger place, there will be a separate room for his comics, figures, and Legos, and I can have them out of the living/dining area, and hopefully most of the bedroom as well.

My personal style is a mix of French country, antique Swedish (Carl Larsson era); and art deco…I like a lot of unique vintage things, and interesting colors. Right now though, my “real” furniture is in storage, except for my lamps, and we have blonde wood Ikea furniture (bed, bookcases, table, chairs, wardrobe, dressers, desk, etc). Very stark and minimal, but it works for now, and for the space we’re in. DH likes it more than I do.
 
NoxSineStellae said:
DH and I currently rent a small loft apartment while we save for a house/bigger place. There are rafters spanning the ceiling (we’re right under the roof. On said rafters sit the Lego pirate ship and Lego viking ship, prepared to do battle. Directly over the bed. Climbing up the angled rafters on the side are Lego viking dragons and Spider-Man.

I do.
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love it decorating should show off your interests

DD and hubby maintainted the Bart Simpson room for years, since the do collecting, trading and selling of all kinds of these games, toys, and artifacts on eBay. Most of it went via eBay when their first child was born, needless to say, so now that is the Thomas Tank Engine room, since that is the toy that takes up most of the space, and the decorating theme.
 
My apartment is colourful-eclectic with a generous serving of boy-I-wish-I-could-replace-that-under-the-terms-of-my-lease style. I have a hot pink tablecloth, an orange bedspread, a green silk wall hanging, a purple and green couch, a green bamboo rug, red and pink lamps, and colourful modern Japanese prints on the walls (although they keep falling off and I keep having to replace the glass in the frames!).

I also have beige wallpaper with blue and yellow splotches, a mustard yellow fake marble bathtub, and fake wood linoleum flooring that is peeling and coming up. Those are all on the wish I could replace it list. Oh yeah, and windows held together with brown packing tape. :eek: And the cable for my internet prevents the balcony door from closing. If I had a thousand dollars to spare, I’d fix all those things, even if the lease says I shouldn’t. But they’re making noises about tearing the building down in the next couple of years, and I’m paying for graduate school, so I guess I’ll live with the shabbiness.
 
What’s my style? It depends on which room you’re in. 😃 Apparently, I can’t make up my mind to stick with just one theme… Life’s too interesting to just pick one!

The only consistency I have is terra cotta ceramic tile flooring and rounded archways throughout the house.

Kitchen & Nook - Italian/Tuscan (wine, grapes, hickory cabinets, wood pot rack with stainless steel pots/pans, dark green countertops, and soon-to-be dark/medium yellow faux finished walls). Reflecting DH’s Italian roots, it looks like an old-world Italian restaurant.

Living - Irish (dark green drapes with braided tiebacks, Irish countryside tapestry on dark aged copper pole, Celtic crosses, hand-painted Irish roof tiles, framed Irish blessings, earth-tone furniture, and simply constructed wood end/coffee tables). I wanted an entire room to house my heritage.

Dining - Art Nouveau (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau ). The dining room is still developing – We only have furniture and light fixtures as of now.

Guest Bathroom - Tropical/Oceanic (floral cross, “dolphin crossing” sign, stuffed Latin American parrot hanging from ceiling, sea shells, Bob the Coconut Guy [a dude made out of coconuts], a lei gracing an unused towel bar, and random Latin American knick-knacks). I spent much of my childhood in Latin America, so I wanted a really colorful, happy room.

Library/Den - Modern (everything is black and silver, except our wood desks)

Foyer, Bedrooms & Master Bathroom - All “in progress.” 😉 And with babies coming every 2 years (so far), no clue when they’ll ever get done.
 
NoxSineStellae said:
…The reaction from friends and family is comical. The women have such pity for me, the men are in wonder of DH having such an “awesome” wife 😉 …My personal style is a mix of French country, antique Swedish (Carl Larsson era); and art deco…I like a lot of unique vintage things, and interesting colors. …
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Thank you! I needed to read your post as when I think about decorating I can get in a bad mood. My house bears very little resemblance to how I want it to look. It often feels like I’m the only woman I know whose husband has such strong opinions regarding home decorating. I still remember the look on my old college roommate’s face :eek: when she saw my family room decorated very plain and masculine; she knew me from my days when practically everything I owned was pink and/or lacy.

My personal style–my taste is formal and feminine. I love traditional pieces like French Country and classic antiques. If left to my own devise, I’d probably have a modified “Laura Ashley” look in pastels or brights with a few whimsical pieces and some old family heirlooms splashed here and there. Hubby’s taste contrasts that starkly with his strong preference for casual and masculine pieces in mostly neutral colors.

Styles often look best when we accept what we have and work with it, rather than fighting with what we can’t change. I don’t really want my husband to change to frilly and feminine anyway, nor do I want him and our children uncomfortable living in our home. But it’s really hard to take nine different people’s taste and needs into account and then pull together a beautiful home-on a budget no less. I have added little touches of what I like here and there, and overall I like the way our home comes together and blends our different styles.
 
My house was built in 1938, so I have decorated in keeping with the style of that period. It’s kind of English cottage style with Waverly wallpaper, pure white trim and traditional furnishings. The kitchen and bathrooms are black and white tile.

If I had a more modern house, I might go kind of Pottery Barn with some darker, richer colors, black accents and leather couch. But that’s not happening any time soon!

Betsy
 
Our house is decorated in “Eclectic Homeschool.”

There are bookshelves in many rooms, and books in all of them. There are posters of the animal kingdom in the living room, along with Jesus’ family tree and the armor of God. Every horizontal surface is crowded with books, workbooks, papers, schedules, notebooks, pencils, and crayons. Some of the vertical surfaces are decorated with crayon, pencil, ink, and stickers.

My desk is topped by my husband’s collection of shot glasses. The piano is covered with a collection of angels, some of which should be hanging somewhere. The floors are ugly (possibly asbestos) tile that the gonvernment installs in family housing. They are covered with area rugs from Kohl’s and hair from the Collie.

The walls and trim are all off-white, while the kitchen cabinets are dark, depressing wood. We haven’t even put up curtains, so the windows have beige metal miniblinds.

If I could start all over in my own house, I really don’t know what I would do. I can never settle on any one style. But whatever I choose, it will have COLOR!
 
I’m pretty sure our decorating style is considered “transitional.” Most of our furniture is fairly contemporary, but not modern – think about the now-defunct Storehouse Furniture store (actually, we have so much furniture from that store that it looks like the catalog threw up in our house). Bold basic shapes, neutral solid colors. We add interest with accessories and art. Almost every color on the walls of our home is named after a food – Sourdough, Dark Chocolate, Swiss Coffee, etc. We don’t like frilly things or traditional country looks – though I’m warming to “modern country” for our next home. If it has hearts, flowers, or geese on it, it’s probably not for us. It’s been hard for me to find religious elements to add to our decorating because so much of it is fancy or precious – but we have liked the Renaissance collection by Roman and have also added some boldly colored Eastern Icons that look better with the contemporary appearance of our home and have so much meaning. I love the way our home looks (when it’s clean!).
 
Although it’s a little eclectic, hand-me-down right now, I’m transitioning into a farmhousy look. Everything sort of whitewashed and fresh looking. It’s starting to come together. I like a garden look too. Fresh, bright colors with garden touches in each room. My ideas are way more than we can afford right now, but I’m working on one room at a time…
 
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