Pink Design Accents Turns a Neutral Room to WOW

Styling a room for a photo shoot is a lot like spring cleaning.    Take it all out for a good cleaning, and then, look with a fresh eye. Your instincts will direct you to do something different. Add a zing of color, freshen with new pillows,  rearrange your displays, add new exciting accessories, even rearrange the art.

Country Living magazine
Styled by Karin Lidbeck Brent

In this room for Country Living magazine,  I brought in this colorful contrasting rug with pink flowers to ramp up the excitement for the neutral  palette. The rug replaced a tan sisel rug.  Drawing from the colors of the rug, it was fun to echo the pinks and red with accessories.

Adding floral arrangements always adds a statement to a room.  If you are not using the room to entertain, oversize bouquets will dramatize a room. When using the sitting area move it to a side table.

Rug by Dash and Albert

Personality Kitchens; Styling

 

I am always so excited when I find a project where the homeowners clearly have a style of their own. This is the kitchen of a 200 year old antique home, where every room is vibrantly slathered in color.  I  scouted this house, and sold this project to Country Living magazine, which I produced in 2009.

The homeowner, who is fearless  using color,  had been desperately looking for an expressive rug for the kitchen floor. I stepped in to suggest the rug above from Dash and Albert which I brought in for the shoot. The homeowner fell for it, and it became a permanent fixture to the home.

The before picture below demonstrates the before and after effect of styling. You can see the dramatic impact made by the rug, curtains, the additional props, and a beautifully set table that enhanced the setting for the photo shoot.

I could not resist the idea of making homemade biscuits with strawberries and cream for the table.

Styled by Karin Lidbeck-Brent for Country Living magazine May 2009

Photography:  by Johnny Valiant

It is tiny things and attention to detail that make the difference on a shoot. The homeowner had made some curtains with a crocheted edge in another room.  She was totally open to my suggestion that the kitchen window could use a curtain with the special treatment.