Design Inspired - Emerald

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For my second design inspired challenge, I decided to do it on the color emerald.  Green isn't my favorite my color, although it used to be.  When I was in 7th grade, I painted my bedroom a nice shade of sage green.  I also had dark green bedding to go right along with it; I was already working the monochromatic look!  It's been a long time since I've been that fond of the color, in fact most of the time I just try to avoid it because it just isn't my thing much anymore.  That being said, I figured it was the perfect color to work with this time around.  Maybe next time I'll do something like pink or orange, also colors I'm not the fondest of.

Anyway, I'm getting off track here.  Actually, my inspiration for this challenge was the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz.  I love that movie and my sisters and I watched it a lot growing up.

I haven't see the movie in at least a decade, but I remember two important things about the Emerald City.  1: it was very green, obviously, and 2: the way it was designed and the way the people dressed was weird, yet high class and elegant.  So that's what I wanted to focus on in this design board, just more elegant, less weird.

sources // pink chair / b+w pillow / gold side table / vase + flowers / coffee table / rug / sofa / floral pillows / gold studded pillow / chaise lounger / emerald pillow / gold curtains / gold art / floral art / mirror / chandelier / paint / paintable wallpaper

Since the Emerald City was my inspiration, I wanted the color emerald to be the main focus.  I wanted the room to feel elegant as well, so I brought in gold and velvet and even the marble on the coffee table added to that as well.  I was concerned that the room might feel cold or unapproachable, so I added some playful elements with the pink velvet chair and the Dalmatian spotted rug.  You know, I'm not an animal print fan at all, but I am really loving that Dalmatian print.  It's such a fun spin on polka dots.

Rather than just painting the walls solid green, I thought a nice touch would be to use the paintable wallpaper so that you get the emerald green but are also including a beautiful pattern and texture.

At first I was going to use a gold floor lamp like this or this, but then it occurred to me that if I want the room to feel elegant, a floor lamp wasn't the best idea and that I needed to do a chandelier instead.  I had a hard time deciding between the one pictured and this one.  I love them both and I think either would look great in this space, but when I put them in I decided that the Zanadoo was the winner.  It's more modern and fits my style better, so really in this case it was all about personal preference.  What I think made this the deal breaker was that it was different enough from the other gold elements.  The Leona Chandelier is fairly similar in design to the coffee table and I wanted each piece to not only fit into the room but to also stand out on their own.

So would you consider making a bold color like emerald the main design focus of your space?  I was genuinely surprised by how much I loved the way this turned out and I think I might do this again but for an office. 

Design Inspired - Peacock

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Have you ever watched HGTV's Design Star?  I've only recently watched season 5 because, hello, Emily Henderson won and she's my design icon.  Anyway, in the challenges, the designers are given something to use as their inspiration, but they're not supposed to use the actual thing in their space, although there are some challenges where that is part of the challenge and it just makes it even more difficult.  Anyway, as a way to challenge myself some more, I decided to start doing this for myself.  For my first one, I chose to use the peacock as my inspiration.

I love the vibrant colors, but it was challenging to come up with a space where they could commingle in harmony.  This was good for me though because I need it to be a challenge, otherwise I won't learn anything.  I normally gravitate towards large neutral pieces with small pops of color, but this time I wanted to change that up a little.

sources // wallpaper / sofa / gold pillow / blue pillow / credenza / lamp / rug / coffee table / side table / chair / mirror / ampersand art / love art / oyster art

Big and bold wallpaper like that Lear Gaukur from Anthropologie, while gorgeous, is not something I would normally use in a large space, but I think in this setting it would look beautiful on one wall as an accent or even all the walls.  Even though the birds aren't peacocks, I love that it still incorporates birds and bright colors.  The greens and blues in it fit in perfect with the peacock theme.

The Chester tufted sofa is from West Elm and I chose the performance velvet fabric in lagoon.  Absolutely gorgeous, I want one for my house, today please.

The Safavieh high back chairs aren't really my style, but I love the look of them in this scenario.  I think the high back is kind of reminiscent of a male peacock's beautiful and tall tail.

The surya rug reminds me of the shape of the individual tail feathers and I love the chartreuse so much.

There are lot of things in this room that individually aren't really my style, but I want this setup so bad now!  And this challenge was really fun, so I'm going to keep doing it, looking for inspiration in my everyday life as well as in other places.  Do you have any challenge ideas?  I'd love to hear them.