SG At Home: What Your Clothes Say About Your Interior Design Style
Not sure how to decorate? Check your closet first
Shelly Lynch-Sparks has worked at Anthropologie, HGTV, Sosh Architects, and Homepolish before launching her own design firm, Hyphen & Co. She’s also a good pal and y’all should get to know her.
We asked her, how do you know what home design style is right for you? This is what she told us…
Sometimes finding the right feel for your home can be difficult. Especially if you simply have no idea what you’re looking for. I’ve had multiple experiences with clients where this is the case. That’s why the best design starts with a conversation.
Normally I can sum up a client’s design style by their wardrobe alone. Then I reevaluate and tweak as needed once we have the first conversation. Tell me everything you hate. Ok now tell me everything you love and cant live without. Where do you vacation What are your favorite colors?
TELL. ME. EVERYTHING.
I even want to know about your dog named Skip, the one with only three legs that you had when you were 5 years old. Designers need to know these details, so we can design with a purpose and function. We want to help you fall in love with your home, and making it look f’ing awesome.
Once, while designing for HGTV, I had a client in upstate NY with a house full of antiques passed down from his mother. It was beginning to look like a flea market (not in a good way). This particular client had no direction or style to identify with because everything he owned had a previous life with someone else. So we got to talking, and he mentioned that his favorite vacations were spent at the beach, and that summers in Cape Cod were always a dream but never a reality given his busy schedule.
So we brought the beach to him. That doesn’t mean I decorated the entire house with sea shells, threw sand on the living room floor, and hung a flat screen looping Weekend at Bernie’s and called it a day. Rather, we brought warm hues of turquoise into the kitchen, an opal shell penny tile to the back splash, hand-scraped walnut hardwood floors and sand-colored granite counter tops. His home became a weekend retreat that he got to live in every day.
But finding your style on the home front can be a bit overwhelming, I get that. It’s tough to see the big picture, whether you are reevaluating your living room, bedroom or orchestrating a complete design overhaul. Before you begin channeling Martha Stewart, it’s best to find your interior style. After this, the design part becomes less intimidating. You can start to shop for furniture in the right period and know exactly what to look for and what it’s called. You’ll start saying things comparable to “I’d like to see that 1960’s Italian leather chesterfield with the reclaimed ash feet.” See, it’s fun to impress people other than your mom.
RULE NUMBER 1 (don’t worry, there’s only 1 rule): START WITH YOU
What inspires you? What do you identify with most?
Obviously you came to Style Girlfriend for a reason, so let’s start with your wardrobe.
Maybe you’re the casual hipster type.
I bet vintage stores and mid century modern furniture are the keys to your little tattooed flannel heart.
What about for the 3-piece suit type?
The loves-everything-in-leather type. The fast, expensive car type.
Minimalist, modern Italian furniture, and silk rugs are screaming your name.
For the casual man who works with his hands, let’s break it down to simple elements.
Wood, metal, and stone will give you that industrial feel you’ve been searching for.
For Mr. Mix and Match, there’s a flow with interiors as well.
It starts with an image that best represents who you are; it can even be a favorite piece of clothing or furniture. Just keep in mind the end result and what you want to accomplish. After you find the design direction you want to go in, you’re ready to begin. Go big or go home.
Well I love natural edge wood furniture, and right now my closet is made of plumbing pipes and fittings….so I definitely fall more inline with “the casual man who works with his hands” more than anything else.
I really like that low hallway bench in the photo, I’ll have to make a mental note of that.
I’ve been looking at doing one of those piping setups in my house. How hard was it? How much did your setup end up costing, if you don’t mind?
Photos would be sweet, too.
A picture would be hard to make happen since with the cloths hanging you can’t see much, but I got the idea from the second picture on this page ( http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/creative-uses-for-pipe-plumbin-94655 )
It was not very expensive (about $100) and that’s because I had a lot of flanges and T-fittings. Those things add up so depending on what you had in mind it could be cheaper of more expensive. Mine has a shelf on top and just one center post in the floor, with one side of the post having 2 places to hang things (one bar on top and one in the middle) and the other side just the top and I keep a small dresser under that side. Each side is about 2′ wide and it’s a total of about 6’6″ tall. Once I figured out what and how many parts I needed it took me under 2 hours to put up completely. Super easy, solid as a rock, I love it.
I’m Mr Mix and Match and I love what you have done with that room. Problem is my house is currently full of Lego and kids art. Give it 5 years…
Great post! Trying to complete a look for my bedroom, and want to hang some art/photos, but my walls are only vertical until about waist high then angle at about 30 degrees toward the middle of the room to the ceiling, any suggestions as to how to incorporate art or photographs when all the available hanging space is at an angle?
Hanging photographs or Art on an A Frame is difficult but not impossible! You just need the proper hardware. Security brackets and T screws which can be found at any hardware store. These guys are famous for holding art work in museums, mirrors in hotel rooms, and pretty much anything you don’t want to slip off the wall. If you have standard sheet rock be sure to get anchors for your screws to keep things extra secure 🙂
I’m not really sure what I am. I like all those designs. I guess that makes me mix and match.
I liked all of them too!
Great article and very interesting ideas.
I’m definitely 3 piece suit and the minimalistic apartment style. Problem is I’m new at it and trying to balance the place as being nice and minimalistic but still home-y.
“flat screen looping Weekend at Bernie’s”…Am I the only one who thought that sounded awesome?
I’m very much the mix and match with my wardrobe and my decorating and design. My desk at work is modern tech, a contemporary lamp, framed art ranging from classical illustrations to pop, a Cylon mug, and Harry Potter wand pens. My home is also a hodgepodge of contemporary, classical, and borderline kitsch pieces, partly because my wife and I have different tastes, partially because I have a wide design taste range. In fact, of the examples above, I’d love to mix and match a lot of what’s going on. I love to have the exposed brick of the mix and match with the piped track lighting and the hipster rug and couch. The only thing that doesn’t appeal to me is the minimalist modern look. It’s too stark. I desperately want to paint something on one of those walls.
Any chance of me finding out where that overcoat in the second image is from?