“The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize”
-Clairee Blecher
‘Steel Magnolias’
This is the accessory wall in our Los Angeles warehouse, starring our LA Director Erin!
Accessorizing is the great joy of designers everywhere. It’s the little bits of ‘jewelry’ that allow a home to really pop. Accessories are where a lot of the fun of design comes in. Sofas, chairs, tables, they are all pretty basic and necessary, especially in staging, to show scale and dimension in a room. They are not the sparkly, eye-catching touches, though, that accessories can be.
See our accessorizing installed live in this Seattle home!
In home staging, we walk a fine line between over- and under-accessorizing a space. Too much and it feels like an outlet store; too little and you wonder why the place is unfinished. We carefully craft every room to be the “just right” mix of design, inspiration and excitement that it needs.
Our design philosophy of Aspirational and Obtainable extends to every part of the staging. We use a mix of styles, eras and materials in our accessories. We like to use modern paired with vintage to give a cohesive look. Accessories allow for character, humor, quirk, intrigue, notability. They are the little ‘personalized’ touches that make a staged room have life.
We use accessories to bolster our color stories as well. Each room Spade and Archer designs has one main color story to make it instantly recognizable in an online photograph. We lay the foundation with neutral furnishing and then apply a layer of color with our linens, table top accessories and art. Here is where we can play a little and customize the room to be unique among the thousands out there being viewed daily.
Accessories are meant to show off the features of a space and make a visitor feel right at home!
In order not to script a room too specifically, we use a mix of new, old, bright, muted, angled and soft accessories to give a complete picture while also letting the buyer use their own imagination. For example, in order not to make a pink room feel too ‘girly’, we might sprinkle in some gray or black for a more sophisticated color pallet. All black can feel overwhelming, so we might mix it with other neutrals like white, gray and tan to make the room feel powerful yet elegant.
Pattern and texture are also great ways to use different accessories. Maybe we do like an all-white room, but will choose throw pillows and blankets with different tactile feel. Different fabrics combine to make the color even more interesting. Tone-on-tone patterns also add dimension to a monochromatic space. Mix and match different patterns in the same color family for added dimension and depth to a room.
We are very lucky to be able to use art and accessories from different eras and styles. A lot of our accessories add humor and wit to a room without being too overt. Subtle hints at the past give the room life and vitality. If we were to buy everything from a store it would look like a display and not a home. This is an area where we can have a little fun so why not show off some quirky, one-of-a-kind pieces and impress the attentive home buyer? However they are used, accessories are the special little touches added to every room to make it stand out.