Everyday Modern ~ sensationally beautiful modern living

I would like to start this week’s post with an apol­o­gy, as undoubt­ed­ly many of my faith­ful read­ers prob­a­bly con­tract­ed the rare case of lack-of-new-Every­day-Mod­ern-con­tent-depres­sion.  Con­trary to what you might think, I was not, in fact, sip­ping mar­gar­i­tas in some trop­i­cal loca­tion.  My time recent­ly has been oth­er­wise engaged in the exe­cu­tion and recov­ery  from clean­ing, pho­tograph­ing, and retouch­ing said pho­tos of the apart­ment in prepa­ra­tion for Apart­ment Therapy’s annu­al Small Cool Con­test sub­mis­sion.  Hap­pi­ly, the judges deemed our sub­mis­sion wor­thy, and we have been gain­ing votes ever since.  Come check us out here and add your “favorite” to the chorus!

All cam­paign­ing for votes aside, this week is the first of a two-part series on how to incor­po­rate flair in your home with­out it look­ing like a train wreck.  As the cor­ner­stone to my design sen­si­bil­i­ty, I find that the lit­tle ele­ments of the bold and unex­pect­ed, when incor­po­rat­ed cor­rect­ly, are what real­ly make the space fun and awe-inspir­ing to vis­i­tors.  How­ev­er, I have also learned that when try­ing to inte­grate some­thing loud and bold, it needs to be done prop­er­ly, oth­er­wise it is just plain bad.  When play­ing with flair, there is a very fine line between a smash­ing suc­cess and a com­plete cat­a­stro­phe, and the fol­low­ing five rules will help you care­ful­ly tread that line and come away with a fab­u­lous room.

Rule #1: Flair is only flair, if it’s not Every­where — Even though every­one knows that thir­ty-sev­en pieces of flair is the rec­om­mend­ed dosage, I advo­cate that flair is like a flour-less choco­late cake — just a lit­tle bit too much, and only good in small mea­sures. And though it is fun to play with crazy ideas, don’t let your­self get too car­ried away.  There should only be one or two main ideas in a room that are com­pet­ing for atten­tion.  If you have more areas than that vying for visu­al empha­sis, it just starts to look clut­tered and messy, and that isn’t flair, it’s just ugly.

Between the loud­ly pat­terned cur­tains and the repet­i­tive sconces, the blank yel­low wall pro­vides a place for the eye to rest.

Rule #2: Visu­al Rest Stops — As I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, you want only a sin­gle big piece of flair in each room.  To achieve this, you need to design areas for the eye to rest.  This might be a blank wall, or just an unadorned sur­face.  What­ev­er you do, if you are going to have some­thing loud and  visu­al­ly heavy (a bold pat­tern, a bunch of bright col­ors all togeth­er, or an area with a lot of var­i­ous items like a book­shelf), it needs to be bal­anced with some­thing sim­ple.  Oth­er­wise, your apart­ment will start to feel like a day­care full of lit­tle ADD-rid­den design ideas all scream­ing for your atten­tion.  This con­di­tion has been known to cause hyper­ven­ti­la­tion and nau­sea to those of us who thrive in a well-designed environment.

This plan illus­trates the bal­ance between areas of flair, and areas of rest (red indi­cates flair, green indi­cates rest)

Rule #3: Back to Basics — One of the first things you learn in design school is all about the cor­rect appli­ca­tion of the Ele­ments and Prin­ci­ples of Design.  And though the Ele­ments don’t play so much of a role in the prop­er imple­men­ta­tion of flair, the Prin­ci­ples method­i­cal­ly list out exact­ly what you need to keep in mind.  And despite the fact that there is enough to learn about Design Prin­ci­ples to keep you busy for at least a semes­ter, I will quick­ly touch on how to take them into account for this pur­pose.  The Prin­ci­ples are: Axis, Sym­me­try, Hier­ar­chy, Datum, Rhythm, Rep­e­ti­tion, and Trans­for­ma­tion.  The most applic­a­ble to this instance are:

Sym­me­try: Sym­me­try real­ly comes down to a mat­ter of bal­ance.  As dis­cussed ear­li­er, when design­ing with flair, one needs to bal­ance out the loud with the qui­et, and this can be achieved though sym­met­ri­cal bal­ance, or assy­met­ri­cal bal­ance.  In the case of the yel­low wall, sym­met­ri­cal bal­ance is implied through visu­al­ly weight­ed items on either side of the blank wall.

Hier­ar­chy: Of the applic­a­ble Prin­ci­ples, hier­ar­chy plays the largest role.  Hier­ar­chy can help deter­mine what the focus of the room should be, and allows you to play around with vary­ing lev­els of flair.  For instance, the Union Jack wall takes high­est pri­or­i­ty on the lev­el of hier­ar­chy, but flair is also evi­denced in vary­ing oth­er lev­els such as the Lego mod­el of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, bring­ing in a con­sis­tent design lan­guage through the incor­po­ra­tion of geek­i­ness and whimsy.

Rhythm: Next, in order of impor­tance, is rhythm.  Like flair itself, a dis­tinct rhythm needs to be estab­lished with­in the room.  With­out being able to pin­point the cause, most peo­ple will have an adverse reac­tion to a space if the rhythm is off.  Rhythm can be achieved sev­er­al ways.  You can sim­ply have redun­dant ele­ments to anchor the flair (such as like col­ors evi­denced through­out), or sim­i­lar­ly shaped, or sized items (for exam­ple, you aren’t going to put an over­stuffed sofa next to a stun­ning low-seat­ed mid-cen­tu­ry mod­ern chair, that would be unsight­ly!).  If the rhythm of the room is right, the flair will work for you, if it’s wrong, the flair is only going to make it worse.

Flair with Func­tion — these old win­dows serve as an inter­est­ing and unique room divider in a stu­dio apartment

Rule #4: Make it Worth Your While — As a vet­er­an imple­menter of flair, let me take a moment to note that, most often, the crazy and unex­pect­ed are hard to come by.  Whether it is that dif­fi­cult to paint crazy pat­terned wall, or a beau­ti­ful­ly uphol­stered piece of fur­ni­ture that is total­ly worth the extra dough because, real­ly, when are you ever going to see a print like that again, flair will like­ly cost you time or mon­ey or both.  So make damn sure it counts!  If it isn’t say­ing some­thing about your per­son­al style or hob­bies, it’s prob­a­bly  not for you.  Flair should be fun, so make it reflect both your style and your home.  Avoid the peer pres­sure, and don’t incor­po­rate flair just because all the cool kids are doing it.

Although I am a strong advo­cate of min­i­mal­ism, the close­ly dis­played array of per­son­al art­work acts as a unique ele­ment of flair in a room devoid of any­thing else on the walls.

Rule #5: Think Out­side the Paint­ed Box — Don’t get caught up in only incor­po­rat­ing flair one way.  Bold­ly col­ored walls are great, but hav­ing a few bright tones does not flair make.  So get cre­ative and start think­ing of oth­er ways you can incor­po­rate flair — per­haps it is a flam­boy­ant pat­tern, a loud piece of art­work, or, my per­son­al go-to, your own exclu­sive brand of geek­i­ness.  As Uncle Mies reminds us, God is in the details, so start hav­ing some fun, grow a pair, and let your apart­ment speak for itself.

For more ideas on ways to incor­po­rate flair, stay tuned next week for the fol­low up post,  but for today, that’s all I’ve got.  So as always, feel free to share or re-pub­lish, just please give me cred­it for my work when you do!  Cheers till next time!