How To Create Transformative Eclectic Style


By Paul Miller

Interior Designer

Read Time: 6 Minutes

When I ask clients how I can help, they most often tell me they need my vision to pull things together. Whether you are starting from scratch, working with a fair amount of things you already own, or as is most often the case something in the middle, your primary concern is how does it all jigsaw together to become one cohesive look.

There are many ways to create cohesion, which I’ll write about below, but the best place to start is with a quick primer on eclecticism. This is a term designers use to describe a mix of furniture periods and styles, trends, colors, and textures.  

 
Get expertly styled eclectic design with our tips that you can do right now with what you have.

Photo: Andrea Hubble

 

Eclecticism is by no means a new idea. Victorians kept eclectic homes to show they were traveled and cultured. Today the concept of eclecticism is considered appealing for a variety of reasons. One is that juxtaposing pieces of differing styles can enhance both pieces, if their differences are marked, such as with a highly carved antique chest and a sleek new sofa. Another reason that eclecticism resonates with us is that it offers the sincerest reflection of our lived experiences, allowing family heirlooms and flea market finds to coexist with sophisticated modern furnishings.


Eclecticism...offers the sincerest reflection of our lived experiences, allowing family heirlooms and flea market finds to coexist with sophisticated modern furnishings.

Eclecticism Is Not Careless

A jumble of things kept in one space is not in and of itself pleasing. When putting together an eclectic design, all the principles of good design apply: scale and proportion; rhythm and harmony, pattern, texture, color, and light. To help you get comfortable experimenting with eclecticism or to help you further polish what you’ve already created, here are some of the ideas and tactics I find most useful.

Reinvent Your Inventory

This means looking at what you already own to see what can be used differently or find a new interpretation. Be less rigid about what belongs where. A china cabinet might move to the family room and become a joyful hub for books and cherished collections. Or you might reupholster formal living room seating in vibrant, relaxed Sunbrella fabrics and put them in your sunroom.

Another way to freshen up furniture is to paint it. Be less concerned about covering up a prized wood and focus instead on what you think the paint will do - not only for the room but for the piece. Given where it is placed, a strong color might guide your gaze to a nice architectural feature or distract you from really appreciating the room as a whole. Consider if the piece wants to be a quiet element or a bold one. My advice is to take your time selecting the right color and be mindful that the slicker the sheen, the brighter the resulting hue will appear. In general, I recommend a satin sheen level because it most emulates the glow of a waxed finish.

 
Try art in different rooms to bring new life into old pieces.
arrange a gallery wall in a new room of art that you already have.

Photos: Matthew Lofton

 

Reinventing your inventory applies to art, too. In our Stewart Cottage project, we hung our client’s map collection in the dining room. His father’s collection before his, it had always hung in a study in past homes. The fresh context helped our clients see their art anew and sparks conversation with dinner guests. Given the role that world travel has played in the evolution of historic and modern cuisine, the maps seemed to me like an intuitive choice for a dining room.

Just as painting furniture can give it a new identity, reframing art transforms your perception of it. Replacing a stuffy and ornate frame with something simpler can take the chill off the art, just as the inverse can make a piece have new whimsy and charm. As a rule, I suggest neutral matting for prints and watercolors. Colored matting, except in rare scenarios, can become dated easily and - more importantly - overwhelm the art.

Connect The Dots With Color

Color is the great unifier. In our Handley Boulevard project, we brought a collection of new and old seating together by choosing fabrics that were similar in hue and lightness, but varied in texture. This created some uniformity at a glance, but kept true to the need for variety on closer inspection. In this room, vibrant wall color in a warm hue kept the vibe welcoming and relaxed.

 
Bring the whole eclectic design together with a bold paint color choice. The number one way to make an eclectic home or room more cohesive is to paint the walls.

Photo: Matthew Lofton

 

The more disparate the items you display together, the more important it is to use wall color to create harmony. You might find one tone that seems to repeat itself in so many pieces of art, for instance, that it seems the clear choice. Another tactic, if your collection represents a broad range of colors, textures, and forms, is to opt for neutral wall color, light or dark, that takes a back seat to the contents of the space.

Confident Pattern Mixes

Remember that patterned wallpaper or fabric is another great way to pull disparate elements together. Maybe all your assortment of pieces needed was a unifying textile. This was the case in our Tudor Creek project, where a stylized, watercolor floral introduced taupe and coral to a palette that needed to also welcome a painted green family piece.

 
How do you stye painted furniture in an eclectic room? Designer tips on mixing colors and patterns in a living room.

Photo: Matthew Lofton

 

Not only did the chair fabric broaden the color palette, but the pattern offered up much needed curvilinear lines in an art style that was relaxed enough to harmonize with the primitive style of the pie safe. Again, eclectic design is anything but careless.

Sometimes More Is More

When I worked in a firm with about a dozen designers a number of years ago, I learned a lot from my colleagues, but perhaps one lesson that stuck with me most was the power of adding more. As a designer, I often preach the gospel of less is more, and I believe it, too. Most of the time.

What my colleague was able to do for another designer who struggled to pull things together was to show him that when he was stuck with two fabrics that were fighting, it sometimes took three or four more in the form of drapery or pillows to actually flesh out a relationship between the disparate elements. More than once I saw her dash to the fabric wall, pull a few samples down, and turn lemons into, well, a beautiful design.

 
How to get the designer eclectic style with painted and vintage furniture. Bring an eclectic room together with wallpaper and an area rug.
 

This is true in eclectic room design and not just in fabric mixing. In our Snowden Ridge project, we put a fairly whimsical mid-century china cabinet together with a primitive farm table and French bistro-style chairs. But we didn’t stop there. A polka-dotted trellis wallpaper and an airy modern light fixture further brought all the pieces together. Here a certain calmness of color helped create harmony, but the mix is very broad and it works because of precisely that. Taking any one element out of this design would diminish its originality and playful charm.


Look for elements that have some unifying connection - not based on style so much as scale, texture, or color.

Strip It Naked

Perhaps the best way to curate your collection is to do what I figured out a number of years ago when I was learning visual merchandising for showrooms. Take everything out of the space and as you do, group things together that have like colors, regardless of scale or style. This will help later when you add back in the details.

Once the room is naked and you’ve chased off the random cobweb, sit with the space for a while and let yourself see it anew. Then bring in the thing that is most loved and needed. Repeat with the next most loved or needed piece. Look for elements that have some unifying connection - not based on style so much as scale, texture, or color. Pause frequently and ask yourself if this is where you’d like to stop.

If you have the room to store away all the items that didn’t make the first cut, I recommend holding onto them for a little while. After you sleep on it or live in the room for a couple of days, you might see the worth of a piece and bring it out of exile.

Ask For Back Up

When all else fails - or if you simply don’t have the time or passion to go it alone - you can always call an experienced design professional. With our knowledge of furniture construction and design principles, we can help sort the wheat from the chaff, knowing when a piece is or is not really worth reinventing, or seeing a latent relationship between elements that may not be apparent to you.