8 Tips for Tastefully Accessorizing Your Tampa Living Room

You may think that creating a living room that looks like a magazine cover is something only a professional designer can accomplish. Wrong! You, too, can create a tastefully decorated living room. After you’ve chosen some great living room furniture in Sarasota, you’ll want to select a color palette to complement it.  After the basics are finished it’s time for the fun part — accessorizing!

1. Accessories Are the Jewelry of Your Home

Just as jewelry is the finishing touch for any outfit, accessories finish off the look of your home. Without a selection of carefully chosen accessories, a living room looks either cluttered and busy or bland and impersonal. Add life, color, and personality with the accessories you choose and watch your living room come to life!

2. A Cohesive Look Is Key

A mood (or design) board is a great tool to help you choose the mood or look you want for a room. It brings together all the colors, textures, designs, images, and descriptive words needed to visually represent what you want your room to look like. It can also help avoid the cluttered look of too many random accessories.

Your design board allows you to visualize how all those important layers of accessories will work together since you can actually layer them on the board. By creating a ‘pulled-together’ look on your design board, your living room will have the same cohesive look as if a designer had done it.

3. Allow Your Accessories to Shine

Start with a neutral backdrop that offers your accessories the starring role. Then cluster your accessories in groups of 3 – 5 for maximum impact.  If you have collections of small accessories, organize them with a complimentary tray, bowl, or basket.

For example, place a selection of organic spheres in a natural wooden bowl, a collection of pretty bottles on a mirrored tray, or the seashells from your favorite beach in a shallow basket. In this case, the holder itself counts as one of the 3 to 5 pieces in the vignette.

4. Showcase Your Personality

The vignettes you create should showcase your interests and personality. Visitors should leave knowing just a bit more about you through the items you’ve chosen to display. Too many small vignettes can make a room look busy, so be sure to include some larger accessories. This is where your outside interests can really shine!

For maximum effect, group your treasures together by theme. You can also group them by coordinating their colors and/or materials. Including different heights, shapes, sizes, and materials within your vignettes give them an artistic feel.

5. Blend Vintage with Modern

Vintage items make fascinating vignettes, especially when they’re grouped with modern elements. They can add a touch of mystery, drama, history and nostalgia to your vignettes that make them that much more interesting and intriguing.

6. Don’t Forget to Add Texture! 

You can add interesting textures with pillow and throw fabrics, wall hangings, throw rugs, and other accessories. Play with the juxtaposition of different materials like wood, metal, stone, and glass to create intriguing looks.

Organic materials like leather furniture, natural textiles, and plants help soften the look of a room that features a lot of hard surfaces. Now, aren’t you glad you started your Tampa living room design with that sumptuous leather chair and sofa?

7. Add Bright Colors or Bold Patterns

Don’t overwhelm a room with bright, bold splashes of color and pattern.  Instead, confine these bold statements to relatively small accessories like throw pillows and footstools. It’s hard for something that only takes up a square foot or so of space to overwhelm a room!

On the other hand… If your room is generally understated and neutral, a statement rug in a rich color or strong, graphic pattern can look pretty amazing. It will also keep the room from looking a bit too understated. As in… bland!

8. Consult a Design Professional

If you need help in creating the perfect accessory collection for your living room, contact us. Our experienced designers will help you design a stylish and functional living room that showcases your personality and sense of style. Don’t hesitate to make an appointment at one of our five conveniently located showrooms.