Spring is just two weeks away and, for interior designers, your clients will be eager to clear out the clutter and lighten up their homes with fresh new looks. To help get your creative juices flowing, our team at ECPR has compiled some of our favorite design tips for livening up the home for the days of spring.
Tip # 1 – Welcome Spring at the Front Door
After enduring the long winter months, a home’s exterior will be in dire need of a facelift. Landscaping aside, start your spring spruce-up with the outer focal point of the home, the front door. Encourage your clients to stray away from the traditional red and basic black door, and suggest Farrowand Ball’ s Folly Green or BenjaminMoore’s Venezuelan Sea for an inviting spring twist! Doing so can keep the home from looking just like the Joneses’ home.
Tip # 2 – Think Nature
See the photo below for an example.
Photo courtesy of Midwest Living
Tip # 3 – Participate in Pantone
Shades of green fill our natural surroundings during spring, which is why they translate as the ultimate backdrop for other hues inside the home. Maybe the perfect background is TenderShoots, a vibrant yellow-green that conveys the first signs of spring. Possibly it’s GrayedJade, a subtle, hushed green with a gray undertone, or Pantone’s Color of the Year Emerald, a lively, radiant green that gives a look and feel of sophistication. While these go from one extreme to the next, Pantone challenges you to try combining all three. “Combining all three greens presents an intriguing choice, much like Mother Nature intended,” say the Pantone experts.
Check out Pantone’s complete 2013 spring color report to create your own combinations by clicking here.
After picking your spring color palettes, tie them into the room by swapping out your client’s dark wood bench for a colored wicker replacement, or add layered fabric table skirts to a dark-wood bedside table. Replacing, rearranging or changing select items in the home is an easy solution for creating a new vibe for the season. And, as easy as it is to reset the tone of a room for one season, it is just as easy to change back later.
Tip # 5 – Lighten the Load
Replace your client’s heavy throw on the back of the couch and add bright, patterned pillows to fill the space instead. Follow suit in the bedroom by exchanging the winter comforter, bed skirt, duvets, and pillow shams for ones in light colors, and sheer and silky fabrics like the picture seen below.
Photo courtesy of Midwest Living
Tip # 6 – Let There Be Light
Dark, heavy draperies in the winter are great for fighting off the cold, but come spring, trade them out and let the light shine through! The editors of Better Homes and Gardens believe that sometimes all that is needed to update a room for a new season is a fresh window treatment. Our team recommends a simple floral-pattern or a sheer voile curtain that lets the sun flow into the room.
Midwest Living:
Fabric stripes are also trending.
We are seeing the stripes trend, too. A mix of wide and narrow stripes in a three- to four-color palette seems to be popular.