The Finishing Touch---How to Accessorize a Room

Furniture fills a room, but accessories finish it. The purpose of discussing accessories is to make you aware of their importance in giving a room personality. Your home should reflect you and your family, your interests, your likes and your personalities. Accessories give a room individuality, warmth, and a feeling of being lived in. Do not be afraid to let yourself show!

Types of Accessories:

There are two types of accessories: functional and decorative

Functional items would be:

• Baskets
• Boxes-brass, ceramic, wooden and leather
• Candles and candlesticks
• Clocks
• Lamps
• Live plants
• Mirrors
• Pillows
• Pottery
• Quilts and throws
• Rugs
• Vases

Decorative accessories include:

Art work, such as:

• Drawings-pen & ink, pencil and pastels
• Paintings-oil and acrylic
• Photography
• Posters
• Prints-etchings, woodcuts and lithographs
• Sculpture
• Stain glass
• Watercolors

Collections, such as:

• Anything you collect
• Baskets
• Glass
• Pottery
• Seasonal or holiday collections

Dried and silk arrangements

Use your imagination!

No money to buy accessories? Then incorporate items not normally considered accessories. For example:

• Antique clothing, such as handbags & shoes
• China-plates and platters
• Cooking utensils-cookie cutters, molds, teapots, bowls
• Decorative building materials-wooden Victorian brackets, columns or pedestals
• Fans
• Greeting cards & postcards put in plexiglas frames
• Hats-sports, ladies, mens, or occupational, such as a hard hat and a fireman's hat
• Illustration from old books & magazines
• Kites-paper or fabric
• Linens-doilies, handkerchiefs or scarves
• Maps
• Menus form your favorite restaurants
• Musical instruments & sheet music
• Natural materials-branches, nests & leaves
• Old photographs in antique frames
• Potholders-figurative/use as a mobile in a child's room
• Sewing notions-dress forms
• Shells
• Shopping bags-fun and decorative ones/can also act as storage if hung on the wall
• Signs-advertisements, farm and street signs
• Sports equipment
• Tools
• Toys-dolls, dollhouses, paper dolls, trains and cars

Elements of Design

Scale and balance are both important in displaying accessories. Scale is the size of the accessories in relationship to each other. Small, medium and large items make for a more interesting arrangement as does using an odd number of items, such as three or five. Stair step down from the tallest to the smallest with medium items in the middle.

The illustration is an example of asymmetrical balance

Balance is the way the accessories counter each other. Is the visual weight equalized or does one piece appear heavier than the others do? Imagine the area where you display your accessories as a seesaw. Your goal is to equalize their visual weight. Stand back to make this judgement.

There are two types of balance: symmetrical and asymmetrical. In symmetrical balance, items are the same on both sides. This is the safe approach! In asymmetrical balance the items are not the same but are put together in a more imaginative way. It is the most interesting but the most difficult to achieve because the visual weights have to be equalized one each side.

Accessories can turn a "nothing special" room into an exceptional one.