Happy Fall Y’all!

We have experienced the first official day of fall! It was Monday the 23rd in case you missed it. The change is very subtle but definitely in the air. In Florida, fall presents itself in the morning and in the evening first. The humidity is gone making the mid-afternoon temperatures fully tolerable. The sunsets create skies that are a palette of brilliant hues. We crave pumpkin spiced foods and soups from crock pots to go with crusty breads. The stores transform from an ocean of teal colors to rusty orange, autumnal gold, and apple greens. However, what if it was the opposite for example in your home décor? What if you had autumnal colors but really wanted to add a touch of teal year round? In the world of decorating that can be a tough challenge because normally we cannot get rid of everything and start over. Let’s take a peek into a Gardenia living room that was infused with teal but worked well with the rest of the house that was all autumnal all the time, somewhere in the heart of The Villages.

• Repaint Gardenia Living room
The original wall color was sage green and made the space look dark. I always caution against sage green unless the house is bright because sage takes light from the space. We re-painted in Patience 7555. This color gives light to the space and is the perfect creamy-golden tone on the wall. I think this color is practically fail proof! Remember to use an eggshell or satin finish with all your wall paint. Flat paint looks chalky and absorbs light even if it is a light tone.

• Re-position the furniture
The Gardenia living room is often set up with the entertainment unit in between the two windows. When light shines toward your eyes, everything in front of the light looks darker than in reality. So, a dark entertainment unit between the windows will only look dark. We can change the space by moving the entertainment unit to the second largest wall in the space. This wall is opposing the sliders so that now the light will be shining on the entertainment unit and it will look lighter in the space. We placed the sofa on the wall between the windows and because the sofa is light, it will show better. This allows the true focal wall to shine with a brighter look and lighten the entire space. The reclining love seat was moved onto the smaller wall opposing the entertainment unit. This allows the homeowners to look at the TV from a straight forward position. We positioned the remaining barrel chairs with a palm tree print looking inward toward the sofa. One chair is flanking the entertainment unit and one chair is flanking the reclining love seat.

• Large art
We hung a large canvas 40” high by 60”wide over the sofa. So now the focal wall has something to focus on that is light and bright! The canvas has lots of sunny gold and greenish teal which will work with the teal in the rug and the blue greens in the palm tree print chairs.

• Gold is the unifier
We placed the original rug from the living room into the dining room, which had no rug. The original rug was very autumnal in colors with rusts, greens and golds. I decided that the color that would unify the dining room and living room would be gold. Since the original rug was heavy on gold it only made sense that the new rug would be heavy on gold. The new rug had touches of teal green embedded within and lots of gold weaving. Though the rugs were completely different in style and print the gold color visually unified them.

• Lamps
We added new lamps that highlighted gold and maintained light. The pierced porcelain white lamps with a gold rim looked wonderful by the sofa. The white showed up well even though light was shining behind the lamps. We added a light green hand hammered lamp between the love seat and the palm tree printed chair. The green lamp pulls the green color from the chair and both look great with the teal in the rug.

• Dining room
The dining room received the rug that was in the living room and it looked fresh and new underneath the table. We hung a large piece of art over the buffet that pulled the green color from the chairs in the living room and worked well with the teal rug. Also the teal green in the canvas above the sofa looks very good with the green in the art over the buffet. We added sconces and a large arched mirror and the room was complete!

P.S. –Attention all club presidents! We give free decorating seminars. It is lots of fun and very informative. Call and schedule your club today. Also, we are on-line check out our web-site at www.ruthdyer.com and you can always e-mail us at ruth@finishingtouchfl.com or Call Ruth your full service decorator at 352-804-2056.

Before and After Pics Below