Opposites attract: Add drama to your room without cluttering the stage

The goal in designing this room was to show respect for the formal features of the room—the high ceiling, crown molding, Ionic columns, chandeliers, portrait, and antique furniture—without allowing the room to feel stuffy. The challenge was to make the room feel comfortable and welcoming but not casual.

If you’re looking for ways to add excitement to your room without creating a visual cacophony, try this simple trick. Choose two fabrics that oppose each other and let them wake each other up. The opposing fabrics might be materials that contrast with each other’s texture or finish, such as silk and sisal. Play up the contrast and pair silk curtains with a sisal rug. Or take a different route and choose fabrics with patterns that mimic each other’s design, but in reverse.

What does that mean? In the photo above, you see two loveseats with sapphire blue ikat motifs against an off-white background. The off-white background lightens the tone of the room and amplifies the limited natural light that streams through the patio windows. But the seating area in the foreground could use a dramatic counterweight to keep the room balanced.

Ikat fabric in accent pillow: Sapphire Ikat by kimsa (spoonflower.com). The accent pillow is big—24 inches by 24 inches—which works with the size of the room and with the high ceiling.

The ivory colored sofa in the foreground also lightens the tone of the room and helps amplify the available natural light. Now for the contrast: The large accent pillow on the ivory-colored sofa accentuates the ikat pattern in the two loveseats. That is, the ikat pattern in the accent pillow reverses the design layout of the loveseat fabric, with a sapphire blue background and off-white ikat motifs. The motifs in both fabrics are different, but each echoes the ikat theme, and the two colors featured in both fabrics—sapphire and off-white—are the same. The result is that each fabric makes the other more interesting, without competing and without creating visual clutter.