The Elisabeth Entertainment Center from Urban Dwellings Design adds an extra design element to any living room and increases storage space too.
Design & Decor
Spring’s Inspired Styles
Adding some of the season’s most fashionable pieces will revitalize your usual decor.
BY
Brooke Pearl
PHOTOGRAPHY
courtesy of Urban Dwellings Design

Spring Fashions for Your Home


The Sienna chair found at Urban Dwellings Design can freshen up any room. If you don’t want to buy a new chair, try reupholstering one of your favorites.


Silk plants look great year-round, but terrariums bring “life” to your home. They’re “a huge interior design statement this year,” Lloyd says. Find them at Suburban Lawn & Garden.


The ’80s were totally awesome, right? Well, bring them back with the chrome and orange Blaze Light Table from Home Decorators Collection.


Brighten up a room with the Atwood End Table with an aged teal finish for a hint of cottage charm. Available through Home Decorators Collection.

This spring’s style is about adding furnishings, accessories and colors that will immediately change your home from ‘regular’ to ‘remarkable.’

Jenny Villhauer, owner of J design in Kansas City, Mo., says the trends are about “peacefulness, lifting of spirits and soothing spaces.” Neutral base colors, especially green and gray, are accompanied by pops of color like aqua, coral, purple and yellow. “The warmth of yellow tones increases happiness, promotes physical healing and enhances positive outlook,” she says.

If you want to enhance an already elegant room, add toile in your fabrics and wallpaper for sophistication and color, or update an old pillow or chair with the resist-dying technique of ikat fabric for an engaging motif pattern.

Every woman, of course, has her own style, but this year more emphasis is put on metallic and silver shine, calming nautical themes and ecological spaces, with hints of the ’80s and retro styles coming back. Whatever you choose, cool, calm and uncluttered is the goal. You can even mix   and match a little too. “Mixing styles is more and more popular,” says Jaclyn Banash, owner of Urban Dwellings Design in Kansas City, Mo. “It is all about what you love, and I personally have so many styles I can’t decide on a specific one to decorate with.”

If you’d rather stay with one theme, “Seaside is bigger than it was last year,” says Lloyd Parker, co-owner of L&L Home Goods & Gifts in Briarcliff Village. “It’s not so much about coral but sand dollars and shells incorporated in table tops, lamps and carpet. It’s just gotten really big in the Midwest with those who have a fantasy for living by the ocean.” Rounding out the shop’s ocean-themed accessories is its collection of prism boxes, which create a different beachscape no matter which way you turn them.

Seaside aside, the beauty of nature itself continues to make its way into homes. With the green movement in full force, shoppers are considering the environment before they buy. And the best way to go green is to support your local economy by buying from area shops and artists. “Popular items I will be carrying are tote bags and storage bins made of recycled plastic bottles,” Jenny says, as well as real rocks made into lamp oil candles, a lamp made from banana leaves, and sofa table and matching lamp made from coconut shells.

Likewise with the garden, continue to look for recycled, refurbished and reused. L&L strives to outfit homes with upscale yet earth-friendly garden items like hummingbird feeders that are made out of recycled glass and make a natural statement in a classy way. Even bringing a little piece of your garden inside — think colorful tulips — spruces up the look of any tabletop or mantel. Giving them as a gift is nice too.

Whatever space you’re looking to jazz up this spring, don’t forget to make it all about you. Here are a few of the latest items you might want to consider incorporating into your home this season.