Nothing like antique silver to give a room expense and impact. Also nothing like new shiny stuff to make a room sparkle and dazzle. Like many people, I'm a bit of a Magpie for extravagant use of shiny silver and I think it improves anything you slap it onto. Like my little Deco bedside table here, which was looking decidedly dingy before it got a glamover.
A glorious fireguard harmonizes with silver grey walls.
All out glamor, this silver paper brilliantly reflects the vintage burl woods.
With a slight brush of silver on the antler chandeliers and silver accessories, this room takes on a fairytale quality.
Luxurious glitz is a feature bay at this Moroccan poolside lounger.Stunning!
Silver leafed walls complement this phenomenal bath with city views.
Shabby silver walls make for a high impact backdrop.
Clever couch! Without detracting from the overall color theme of the room, the touch of silver lifts it beyond the ordinary.
This chair!!
Silver chrome bath beautifully finishes off the crisp bedroom. The superbly chosen lush textures of the bedding have a muted sheen of their own.
Gold used to mean tacky, ostentatious and over the top. Rococo was out of fashion and only Middle Easterners swamped their houses and cars with gold everything. Because gold means prosperity, and no better way to flaunt it than to have a lot of it. When living there, I found it curious why little home decor, there and in Chinese markets, featured silver or chrome. The answer, I was told, was simple: silver was cheaper and therefore not an indication of status.
With the rise of metallics being used for all sorts of contemporary themes and the rules out of the window on decorating walls, chairs, cabinets, you name it, in shiny reflective glossiness followed by the mass appeal of everything that speaks of old in Shabby Chic, gold has made a comeback. Not just as a picture frame, or an accent, a lamp stand. But as a fully fledged color in its own right, to be the feature and the main attraction.
Stately grandeur has always been drenched in it, Baroque, the big brother of Shabby Chic, is now appraised and appreciated again for its impact and fantastic, fairytale ethos. Let's have a look at some old extravagance and some new takes on it. We're Going for Gold in a big way!
Gates into a bedroom...how delicious. But it's the bed that gives the whole room importance.
Another amazing antique bed paired with simple white, just stunning.
Autumn comes to gold grandeur! Wonderful imaginative realization.
Bit of a sucker for gold wall decor, this one is a real statement.
Pastel golds give this room such dignified expense.
A gold bath. I'm there.
Incredible ornate doors give off a warm glow.
Old school Rococo done beautifully.
I use this a lot when decorating - all woodwork in a room, frames and coving, gold. It yells fab.
Such feminine authority in this designer. Absolute instinct on what is right and how to mix it.
Crazy about the antique screen.
The frame is picked up and matched by the chairs. It's just enough.
Empire greatness. See how the gold decor makes the amber glow of the wood tone sing.
What a mirror!
Staggering mirror action going on there!
Man, how gorgeous is this antique screen seductively giving a taste of the impressiveness to come.
A delicate tableau, expressed delightfully.
Note how the wonderful fireplace is faintly echoed in the pale wallpaper and the elegant filigree of the furniture. Perfection.
Hello green and gold chair! Who needs more than that?
Restrained expertise.
Lastly...I'm digging the gold glass crystals in the chandeliers. Lovely!
Cool, clean, crisp and calm, white rooms have been a mania since John and Yoko drew back the drapes on the Imagine piano.
You can't really go wrong with white. It magnifies any natural light in a room. It comes in an astonishing amount of shades, for having no supposed color. Did you also know that white is the color of mourning in the Middle East? If you see a woman wearing it, she's a widow. Possibly it's the reason they fight shy of using it in their homes, but here we celebrate it. I'm going to start off with, just because I'm on an Abbey Road voyage today, a little white room with an appropriate quirk. You'll see why.
All photo credits here
Hope you were dazzled by the brilliance!
We love a bit of clutter, us Brits. Striving for imperfection, aiming for the middle and all that. But underneath it all, we're really quite pleased with our mess and how artfully we can arrange it to look deliberate. God forbid anyone should seem as if they're trying too hard, or worse, as if a designer had darkened our doorstep. No, we happen by accident and nothing great ever came of military precision.
Let's have a romp through the rumples, the clutter and the glorious mayhem that makes greatness. Photo credits here
What I like most about English beach chic is that it's disordered. Lived in. Purposeful. Mismatched. You won't find a Cape Cod designer cottage type of thing with pristine white couches dressed in the perfect nautical cushions. Maybe the difference is that the English actually are rather shabby round the edges naturally, and Americans sort of have to create designer shabby. Tell you who I loathe...Rachael Asshole, the doyen of US Shabby Chic. Because real expression comes from re-purposing what you have or serendipitously come across, using your own individual style. Organic, natural. It isn't buying a mass produced in China, specifically rusted bird cage online, with a few fairy lights strung over it because it's the must have thing on a hot shabby chic site. OK, rant over. In the spirit of our special relationship, and because half of my family are in fact American, this disordered Brit will include some American cleverness. See if you can guess which are which without first checking the link!
