Article:
The Finishing Touch - Accessories complete your home décor
By Shelley Anderson
The Journal Newspapers - July 2006
Accessories, more than anything else in a home, allow your personality to shine through. Give your rooms a pleasing personality and choose the right accessories. A home should reflect the personality of those who live in it through its accessories. You may want to display your prized collections, family heirlooms, or choose the things that give the room a pulled together look. Accessories are grouped as functional or decorative. The functional group includes mirrors, clocks, lighting, books and pillows, while paintings, sculptures, plants and small antiques are some of the items in the decorative category. Without accessories, you may have a beautiful room, but lack a real feeling of warmth and personality.
A good starting place is to consider everything you presently have. Collect these things together in one area such as a table top. This will help you see the relationship of these items to one another. Look at their size, shape, texture and color. Keeping in mind the final location for the accessories, group your items in sets of three or five. There are two things to remember when working with a grouping: an odd number of anything is more pleasing than an even number and nothing should be displayed by itself unless it deserves to stand alone. Vary the size of the items. Create triangular or pyramid shaped collections. All of the items do not have to be the same color or texture- some variation keeps the grouping interesting.
When you are accessorizing larger areas, such as book shelves and cabinet tops, group your displays instead of trying to spread all of your items out evenly to “fill in” the entire area. A meaningful assembly of accessories will have much more impact.
Selecting accessories that are too small is a common mistake. Don’t be afraid of larger scaled items. If your budget won’t allow you to do everything you want to do, consider investing in one “good” item instead of ten inexpensive ones. This will aid you in making a strong visual impact.
Don’t forget to add some greenery, or natural type filler. Tucking in a touch of greens with your decorative accessories will add depth to the arrangement, as well as soften the appearance of the grouping. Bamboo and other dried items work well with more contemporary interiors.
Shelley Anderson has been creating interiors in the greater Seattle area since 1990.You may contact her at (206) 719-6814 or email her at
shelley.anderson@shelleyandersoninteriors.com.