Black accents add contrast and drama to interiors with nuanced pale neutral hues. Black accents in neutral rooms can be as subtle as picture frames or small pieces of furniture. Or, black accents can be bold --like the beams in the bedroom of a rustic Scandinavian cottage. Here, cream-washed stone is combined with black-brushed ceiling beams and iron support rods that … [Read more...]
Vintage Tablecloth to Ottoman Cover
My TV room ottoman has a new life and a bright look thanks to a repurposed vintage tablecloth. I repurposed a vintage tablecloth — natural linen with royal blue cross stitch embroidery — to recover an ottoman and I love the stunning result. The tablecloth was embroidered by my step-aunt Jeannie and my mom may have passed it along to me. While clearing out things in my basement … [Read more...]
Grand Picture Walls
Grand picture walls offer maximum impact and color in any space from a hallway to a gabled room. Grand picture walls present themselves in a variety of ways. A wall can be considered grand due to the size of the pictures. The amount of wall space covered by pictures — or the sheer number of pictures — can create a grand scale, even in a small room. How pictures are arranged on … [Read more...]
Five Colorful Striped Décor Ideas
Five striped décor ideas create colorful originality and eccentric chic in a Long Island country house. Striped decor can be a no-brainer or a tough sell. That’s because stripes are always bold as we’ve shown in various posts on striped décor over the years. Usually, the focus is walls -- from tent-stripe garden rooms by Miles Redd to a classic green striped bedroom by Celeri … [Read more...]
Dovecote Shed Style
Crazy old-fashioned, this architectural dovecote is an outbuilding with unique style and purpose. Incredibly charming and beautifully constructed by hand, this dovecote was built in Somerset England by Gerry Peachey, a craftsman who used traditional hand-made methods for its construction. Not just a decorative shed, the dovecote has a specific (if arcane) function — similar to … [Read more...]
Double Freestanding Showers
Freestanding showers are constructed against glass partitions, making the enclosures nearly invisible. With freestanding showers, finished shower piping becomes a skeleton that performs. The idea is radical to most of us and we don't see these very often. Here are two double showers with different finishes, features and aesthetics. Each is interesting in its own … [Read more...]
Attic Reading Room
What luxury to have the benefit of a large space at the top of the house dedicated to quiet pursuits. The concept of an attic reading room is novel today -- no pun intended. It also seems ideal for chess enthusiasts or avid card or backgammon players. My next door neighbor converted his attic into an enormous master suite and over the years we’ve shown attic spaces … [Read more...]
Pale Green Kitchens
Pale green kitchens are looking neutral as colors become subtle and complex. It's easy to think of pale green kitchens as falling into the Nordic/coastal category but, for me, they have become as neutral as gray or beige. That’s because pale colors tend to be mutable — which means they can take on hints of gray, yellow or even blue while retaining the spa-like aura. I’m … [Read more...]
Royal Copenhagen Fashionable Christmas Tables
This year's fashionable Christmas table tour features inspirations from European clothing designers. For a fashionable Christmas “Think Pink!” Designer Charlotte Eskildsen certainly had a rosy view of her minimalist Christmas table --a riff on that fashion anthem. Even Royal Copenhagen’s streamlined White Fluted porcelain goes blush here. The monochrome table looks like … [Read more...]
Blue and White Backsplash Styles
Blue and white kitchen backsplash tile style varies from flowers and folk figures to geometrics. These days, blue and white backsplash chic is geometric. That makes it versatile since geometrics can go in most any direction. One road leads to patchwork [top] wonderfully expressed in the Novecento tile collection from Made a Mano, a tile house located in Copenhagen, London and … [Read more...]
Heirloom Barbecue Sauce
Barbecue sauce season gets kicked up a notch this Independence Day weekend. I already can smell the chicken and ribs on the grill. And those aren't memorable without a great barbecue sauce for marinating and basting. So ask yourself: what’s in your pantry? If the answer is store-bought barbecue sauce, I would like to offer a super easy homemade alternative. It’s an heirloom … [Read more...]
Color Picture Walls
Compose a color picture wall using frames, mats or a vibrant background with neutral or colorful images. I’ve fallen in like with the idea of a color picture wall. In my dining room, I have pale green on the wall behind the pictures and my frames are white -- very trad. So I was extremely intrigued by a few different strategies I spotted for adding color to walls. Many prefer … [Read more...]
How to Buy the Best Front Load Washing Machine
Ignore brand jargon and look for key basics that produce cleaner, healthier laundry. A few weeks ago, my friend Cheryl asked for advice on how to buy a front load washing machine when her relatively new high end top loader broke down. It’s the second time I’ve had this question recently. Cheryl had a life-long top-loader routine based on stopping the machine to let loads soak … [Read more...]
Mirror on Mirror
In a mid-century dining room, mirror on mirror blurs the lines between reflection and transparency. Applying a window style to a full wall of mirrored squares divided by white ribs helps to double the space of a dining room. At the same time, the ribbed divisions in the mirror fracture the reflection. Still, French doors across the room and seating in the adjacent room are … [Read more...]