Design Public

I looked for months for the perfect black and white bedding, and wound up settling on some random duvet from Target that I really liked until I realized that the waitress potential fourth wife on Big Love had the same one in her messy apartment. I was into a big black, white, and yellow phase that I am still in. What I like about black and white is that you can change up your color scheme so easily and still incorporate it. So if tomorrow I decide I hate yellow, I can switch out a few accessories to turquoise instead.

Think of how many different ways this Elle Decor room could incorporate different colors:

This room uses black and white in a much heavier way, with fabric from Michael Devine:

I think this room shows how anything can go with black and white bedding. You know, I’m not even sure this is black and white bedding; I just always assumed the rug and the bedding were b&w. Anyway, you get the idea:

I love the crispness of black and white in this room:

Zebra and the orange are working for me here as well:

Anyway, even though I work on this blog all day and I get a FAT discount (right guys? haha), I hadn’t looked through the latest in black and white bedding that DP has to offer. There’s almost way too much to look through, so I picked out my favorites.

One of my favorites is from our friends at Dwell Studio. It can go light and minimal, like below, or it could be incorporated into a much more ornate regency room. It’s called “Talon”:

(black and white cowhide thingee that looks like spilled oil on the floor has got to go, however!)

Thomas Paul “Nest” pillows would look good with just about any color: (more…)

Sorry for the delay guys - I thought I published this 12 hours ago but I guess I back posted it to June 19th! Sorry for the confusion/delay! -Becky

I found a few more images for our Nature Study series. Click on these links if you missed Part I or Part II. So far we’ve gone from Thomas Jefferson to Tom Scheerer. The first two photos I found via meeting the guys who work at Moss in Savannah GA. They saw my post that mentioned them and then led me to their flickr collection (links below). I love it when that happens!

photos from flickr member meashman

from Tom Scheerer via Patricia Gray

from Coastal Style photographed by Paul Massey

via Habitually Chic. It’s funny, I was going through my tear sheets and found I’d cut this out too, but I can’t remember from which magazine (H&G?) or the photographer. If you know, please email me or comment below so that I can add the credit.

via katiedid from Elle Decor, photographed by William Abranowicz

As a design blog reader, I am guessing you may have a tour-worthy home. There was a fun article in the AJC recently that included the following advice for those who are getting ready to show off all their hard work:

Thinking about putting your house on tour?

Chris Wilkinson has some advice.

1. Use common sense about your things. If you have something special you’re worried about, put it away for the weekend.

2. Recruit your friends to work in your home during the tour. It’s a lot less stressful when you know the people who will be sitting at your house. I told my friends there would be beer and snacks and I expected each one of them to give us two hours. They willingly obliged, and I very much appreciated it.

3. Make up a fact sheet about your house and then let people ask you questions if they want to know more. Offering a guided tour will just exhaust you.

4. There will be lots of strangers and you might hear something you don’t like, but overall it’s a positive experience.

5. Relax and enjoy yourself. Then the people who come to your house will relax and enjoy themselves, too.

Have you ever participated in a Home Tour? How was the experience? I hear horror stories from friends about busting nosy neighbors poking through their medicine cabinets during Open Houses when they put their homes on the market. O.K., maybe they were neighbors in need of an intervention for something besides nosiness. Anyway, I’d be very flattered if someone asked me to participate in one, but I’m not sure I’d ultimately be comfortable with it.

I am SUCH a sucker for books about dream homes - my dream home can be a rustic shack, but it needs to have a view of water. Preferably not the muddy snaky polluted Chattahoochee River here in Georgia, but rather a nice lake or the ocean. Since that’s never going to happen, in summer I try to beach-i-fy my home a little bit, whether it means pulling out Gram’s wicker chairs or painting my bathroom blue. Here’s a list of some great books to inspire you:

1. Island Life (the one by India Hicks, not Grace Jones)

2. Coastal Style

doesn’t this one look like sfgirlbybay styled a beach house?

3. Studios by the Sea

4. Seaside Style

(more…)

My brother just sent me the funniest email and I thought I’d share:

Hey!

I took this by my house yesterday, D.O.T. at their finest:

Good news! If you do not yet have your tickets to the Dwell on Design 2008 exhibition in Los Angeles, our friends at Dwell are now offering free passes to Hatch readers (free entrance to the exhibition only).

To get the goods you’ll need this code: BDODEC.

To register, follow this link: http://www.dwell.com/peopleplaces/conferences/17691009.html. All the details about the event can be found here. Enjoy!

Just a quick drive-by to let you know about a Dorothy Draper exhibition at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale now through June 23. Here’s the 411 from them:

This retrospective features rarely seen drawings, sample books, vintage photographs, furnishings, and products from some of her most famous projects, including the Carlyle, Drake and Greenbrier. Items are displayed in galleries that evoke “The Draper Touch,” a theatrical amalgam of baroque ornamentation, over-scaled stripes, cabbage rose prints, black-and-white checked floors and high-voltage color. 

So if you are in the area, go ahead and get Draperized! Perhaps you need to be reminded to banish the beige! Also, I hear that the renovations at The Greenbrier are complete. It looks like  Draper’s former associate Carleton Varney did an amazing job. It’s also the perfect time of year to be in West Virginia.More information and pictures about Dorothy Draper are here. You can buy Mr. Varney’s book about her here.• Photo one from MoAFL• Photo two from greenbrier.com• Photo three from Southern Accents online 

We were all called to the conference room today for an “office discussion.” Untitled and spontaneous meetings normally produce a jolt in nervousness, mass amounts of nail biting, and can send imaginations flying. Instead, Matt announced that he wanted to have an ice cream party. He scurried to a stash hidden amongst Fatboy boxes and produced a cooler full of brownies, three different toppings, whipped cream, granola and of course…ice cream. We all looked at each other with wild eyes like “What’s the catch?” No catch…just a totally unexpected ice cream social. Shizam!We ate with absolute glee.

Whoa. They are selling the Dunkin’ Donuts neon sign from the Brighton Mass Dunks! If I had an amazing loft - which I do not - I would LOVE to snag this sign and put it in my place. Get on it!

I know many of you have been buried in snow recently, but spring is coming, I swear.  In the meantime, enjoy this fun window display from Mitzi and Romano: