Accessorizing your Spaces

By Story Garvie

Accessorizing completes a room the way jewelry completes an outfit. It’s the finishing touches that make a space feel like home. Good interior design always incorporates the personality of the homeowner, and accessorizing is a fantastic way of doing this. Personalization is the difference between a home and a showroom.

Accessorizing in a tasteful and cohesive way can be daunting, until you learn the basic principles used by professional designers. Let’s look at some examples of beautiful accessorizing.

In a room with a neutral palette, you have a great opportunity to incorporate color with accessories. Clean white bookshelves are a fantastic backdrop for your most colorful books and sculptures. In this room, the color in the bookshelves becomes a focal point, inviting you to grab a book and curl up for a good read.

Lean some artwork against the wall for another layer of design, adding smaller items on the shelf in front of it. This etagere shows how bookshelves don’t need to be limited to books. Framed art, boxes, and pottery work together to show off this homeowner’s personal style.

If you prefer a cleaner look, go with a color scheme like the one in this photo. Books can be covered in fun or neutral paper.  Turn them on their sides to create little display platforms. Blue is carried throughout this space from the chandelier to the handrails to the books and coral sculptures.

For tabletops, statement lamps can feel like works of art. Pair them with books and small mementos that are unique to you.

Walls above shelves and tabletops are an excellent way to add dimension. Look beyond artwork and photography to find hanging sculptural pieces that draw the eye up.

Spaces don’t have to be cluttered to feel accessorized. Even with a minimalist look, there are opportunities for personalization.  Keep objects to a minimum, but make them bold and fun.

Height differences are a key element of accessorizing. Try to find a mixture of different-height objects to fill the space.  In this living room there are tall, mid-height, and short vases on the sideboard, opposite from a couple of stacked books to give the vignette balance.

Plants and natural objects provide organic shapes and textures that offset harder surfaces like stone countertops or metal fixtures.  A little green makes a space feel alive, whether the plants themselves are real or faux.  Plants also give an opportunity for color or texture in the vessel they are placed in. Rustic pottery has a very different feel than a cube concrete planter.  Do what is right for your style.