Modern Eclectic Designing Inspiration Board: Pulling together a cohesive look for your home

Clients starting from scratch with an empty room who are shopping for rugs and furniture at NW Rugs often tell us they are having trouble putting together a put-together look for their home.

Here's a sure-fire way that will not only get you started but will give you a road map for pulling together a look that is uniquely you and fulfills your dream of a beautiful space to share with family and friends for the long-term. For this project the overall design theme is 20th Century Modern Eclectic.

Often times a designer will start with a rug and work their way up from there when pulling a room together. You can settle on s style and get your color palette from the rug this way. Here's another idea that can take you from beginning to end, no matter what you start with.

There's a lot to work with in that color picker isn't there? The Sherwin Williams ChipIt app is fabulous for pulling a color palette from anything - a rug, a painting, a favorite photograph, patterned furniture, or fabric. Or, if you are not starting from scratch, turn to something you love dearly and get inspiration from that. In this case we started with a painting.

Let's step back a moment and look at the outline for this exercise and how it can help you move forward with your decorating plan. Here's how it works:

Visit a favorite home furnishings website. In this case we visited 1stdibs, a collective of fine furnishings and antiques dealers from around the world showing their offerings.

As you scroll through, select an item you love, disregarding price points. Paintings, one-of-a-kind rugs, rare furniture pieces are a great first item for your home décor inspiration board. Pick one. Read the description. Now you have a visual aid AND keywords that define your style.

Now go find the other items for the room, matching the 2nd item to the first, then the 3rd item complements the first two, and so forth until you have a completed room.

The Inspiration Board can now serve as a road map guiding you to the completed room. The next step would be to find items that come as close to the original as possible, but in your price range.

If you have this picture and all your room measurements stored in your phone you will be able to reference them when you come across something you think might work. Compare what you have found to what is on your Inspiration Board.

TIP: If it is not a mass-produced item that can be ordered, make the decision to buy it right then and there, because if you go back next week (sometimes even the next day), it will be gone. Guaranteed!

So, now let's see if we can put a room together that might replicate the mood and feel of our inspiration room.

We'd love to see any inspiration boards you come up with and hear your tips for "pulling it all together". If you are on Facebook, check out all the tips and interior design inspiration we have posted there.