Decor and You DC: Don’t Underestimate Serendipity
By Mary Gilliatt
Serendipity is such a good word to roll around the tongue. It’s an even better word to describe the fortuitous luck, the un-thought of touch, which can creep into decorating to make effects that we had not anticipated but for which we are nevertheless grateful.
I shall never forget the change made unthinkingly by a friend who had left a Purple cardigan behind in a living room that I had designed. It was undoubtedly a pretty room. The walls were glazed a pale honeysuckle, the geometric carpet was Indian red and green and honeysuckle on a white ground. The curtain fabric was a Colefax & Fowler design of honeysuckle with Indian red stamens and fresh green leaves on white. The sofa and classic modern Italian chairs were nicely neutral. Books and paintings added more color and texture and there was the elegant bonus of a pair of stripped pine columns and old double doors in stripped pine as well.
I was pleased with the tranquil effect. Yet that one left-over cardigan nonchalantly resting on the back of an armchair gave the room a shot of vivacity that I had not realized was missing. The little slash of purple made the space look glowing without in any way losing its former tranquility. And from then on I made sure to always have a vase of irises, or a small jug of violets, or bowl of anemones’, or whatever appropriately colored flowers were in season, and if they were not, just a purple throw, to introduce a subtle amount of that felicitous color purple against the prevailing honeysuckle.
So always be on the look out for some fresh and accidental introduction of color into a space. And its not just color. It could be a quite different texture; a painting, or a piece of sculpture, or a new large plant, or antique or sculptural occasional chair or side table or even a screen or an accidental re-positioning of things come to that.
You never know your luck – or when that serendipity will come your way.
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