Eclectic Decorating

A successful decorating scheme ensures that objects, colors and textures of your furnishings are pleasing to you.  What better way to combine the best of what pleases you than to decorate your home eclectically?  Eclectic styling can impart a comfortable, lived-in, yet interesting look to any home.

Eclectic decorating enables you to use your imagination to experiment with mixing, but not matching, your home furnishings.  When decorating in the eclectic style, consider using your favorite old items in new ways.  An old coal bin can hold newspapers and magazines.  An antique cobbler bench can become an effective coffee table.  A refinished wooden piano bench might make an excellent side table.

Try combining unique pieces from different periods to create rooms with your signature or unique character.  Add funky old items to pair the rare with the ordinary.   Consider rustic furniture made with natural occurring materials.  Illuminate it all with an Alaskan Stone lamp which, as both lamp and art form, is uniquely rare and rustic and yet also contemporary.

When combining the things you love in an eclectic decorating scheme, think too of creating harmony between objects and around them through the use of a unified color palette.  For example, draw your choice of wall color from your area rug, or vice versa.  Visually connect a grouping of chairs from different areas by refinishing them in the same stain.

If you enjoy earth shades, choose a palette of browns, sienna, mustard, moss, rust or gray.  If fiery colors are more your style, you might select some powerful reds, oranges, or bright yellows.  Or choose from water colors, such as, cool blues, deep greens, or blue-gray.  Stone Age Alaska has Alaskan rocks to fit these three color groups. For example with the earth tones, we offer tan schist stones from the Alaska Range, and white quartz veined gray greywackes from the Chugach Mountains.  In the fiery group, we  propose orange-tan schists and white quartz with reddish inclusions  from the Alaska Range. And finally our abundance of green and greenish-gray argillite lamps would suit the watery world quite well.

Remember, decorating in the eclectic style is a process.  It takes time to acquire objects you truly love and to find the perfect spot for them in your home.  Don’t rush yourself.  This is a style that will last for lifetimes.  Stone lamps are a quirky touch, a bit of panache, to rustic furniture.