Clutter and Accessories Are Not the Same Thing

There are those of us who love "stuff" (accessories) in a room, and those who can't stand clutter.  But clutter and accessories are two very different things.  Clutter messes things up, detracts from the loveliness of a space, needs to be cleaned out (or thrown out!).  Accessories enhance a room's furnishings, lend personality, interest and even intrigue.

I came across the book cover below in my research for this post, and laughed out loud.  Ok, women out there, I think we all have to admit that this is funny...

In my mind, clutter comes in two forms -- visual and material.  Material clutter is just too much in a space, be it furniture, collections, kids toys, even stacks of bills (guilty of that!).   Most of us battle material clutter all the time.  But visual clutter, that's an entirely different beast, but it can be just as irritating.

Visual clutter is when there is just too much going on at once in a space -- your eye can't rest anywhere, and it can make you physically uncomfortable.  The picture below is an example.  The clients told me they wanted to redo the room because it wasn't relaxing.  They knew how they felt about being in the room, but they didn't know why or how to fix it.  This is visual clutter:

 The greatest offender is the window treatment.  Why?  The dark red against the pale wall is too high contrast, and, enough already with the too-short,  inverted roller coaster!  What you can't see from this photo, unfortunately, is that the wall on the left had a different ceiling height, a tall mantle, and built-in bookcases on one side of the fireplace that were yet another height.  When you were in the room, your mind could not focus, for all the distraction in horizontal lines.

I hesitated to show the in-progress after picture (because the photo quality is so poor, you cannot see all the detail in the fabrics, which look like they don't work together, and the client insisted on matching frames, which I did not suggest).  The drapery panels have a gorgeous tone-on-tone bamboo pattern, and the Asian-inspired benches in the back have the same blue-green as is in the sofa (no thanks to the flash), the rug, and the invisible (!) dot pattern on the chairs.  The sofa also got a big down pillow upholstered in a red chinoisere pattern with golds and blue-greens in it. To help with all the differing horizontal lines,  I had the window treatments hung at the same height as the bookcases across the room.

I hope you can see how the visual chaos/clutter is now disappearing...

On to accessories.  They come in many forms -- artwork, lighting, pillows, throws, vases, books, and on...  When carefully chosen, they simply look like things that are meant to be there, and they help tell the story of the room and the person who lives there. And, when artfully edited, never feel like clutter.

All of the following are from Elle Decor's LookBook.

Pay careful attention to how the sum of the parts makes the whole...if you took away the accessories, these rooms would loose their wow factor.

Michael S. Smith

Rose Ann de Pampelonne

Charlotte Moss

Elizabeth Martin

Martial

So, do tell...are you smothered by material or visual clutter?  Or do you have accessories that support your room and help tell your story?

Talk to you soon,
Carol