E-decorating Proposal: Not That Kind of Neutral

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E-decorating, you may be wondering exactly what that is. It’s an interior design service done solely through online communication. Here at Studio Davenue we offer several types of e-decorating services, each with a different level of design detail (Visit our services page to learn more).

To give an idea of what our proposals include, I’d like to you show one. This is an example of the more thorough design options that we offer. It details just about everything needed to complete the room; from design concepts to specific shopping sources, and finally how it would all look put together.

Let’s have a look at the project.

In this case the homeowners had renovated and decorated most of their house, but the family room had become a catch-all for leftover furniture. They were having a hard time with the layout and blending it with the rest of their house’s style. They needed to keep the same wall color and the television placement, but wanted to replace most everything else – they just didn’t know where to begin.

Here’s the room:

They were especially struggling dealing with that awkward row of upper windows and choosing the new sofas’ size and layout. Also style-wise it was important that the room blended with the lovely, adjacent kitchen that they just renovated.

My plan was for them to keep the main items in the room neutral - giving them versatility for future reuse and allowing for lots of acceptable options during their shopping trips. However the trick to making this neutral space interesting space would be to carefully layer and contrast the accessories. Specifically by paying attention to the balance between the feminine and masculine elements in the room.

Mood board

Here’s the mood board we presented:

Main items in the room (sofa, wall color and rugs) will all be subtle variations of neutral tones. Stay close to this palate but variety in textures and tones between these items is good – perfectly matched sets are bad.
Our goal is to layer elements in the room in interesting and unexpected ways, however controlling the palate and restraining contrasts for an overall elegance.
Accent colors, which will be used in throw pillows, tabletop accessories, and other details, are to be a pale wash of pastels. Think of these more as “dusty pastels” instead of “baby pastels”. Also black accents will be peppered throughout the space to balance the pastel tones and to incorporate the black from the kitchen.
Incorporate shiny, sparkly metallic accents where possible – lamps, candle holders, trays, picture frames, etc. (these are feminine details).
Tables (coffee table, consoles, side tables, bookcase, etc.) can be a mix of natural wood finishes. A variety of tones will work well together. But stick with medium warm brown tones (avoid cherry and light oak finishes), and distressed knotted with texture is even better. Industrial metal details/accents will also incorporate very well here (these are masculine details).

As for the physical layout of the room, I suggested moving the seating arrangement closer to the television which would create a new transitional space behind the sofa and would make the seating area more intimate. Another big change was adding wall to wall curtains on two of the room’s walls. The curtains would help blend the awkward upper windows, create symmetry and help balance the seating arrangement.

Renderings

To help visualize the plan, we presented these renderings of the space. The goal of the renderings is for the client see a general idea of how the components would come together in the space, they are not 100% accurate in perspective and scale.

On top of all this, they were given a long list of bookmarks of with shopping recommendations and in-depth explanation of why each element was included in the proposal.

What is shown here is just an overview, if you’d like to see the full detailed proposal document, you can download the .pdf here.

Progress

Now, the most exciting part of all of this, the real progress! They were very happy with the proposal and are following it almost to the letter. The room transformation is still underway, but you can see most of the main pieces are in place. Check it out:

You can see that they’ve mapped out the gallery wall frame arrangement. They’re working on that now, and have a few more pieces to track down to finish off the room. I think it looks great, and am excited to see how it continues to come together!