Jodi was looking for an inviting, fresh, and natural feel for the living room in their new home. In the before photograph below, you’ll see dark and heavy cabinetry that overwhelmed the space. Replacing the uppers with beautiful, hand crafted, white oak floating shelves and painting the lower cabinets white, lifted and lightened the entire room. The Smiths are very family oriented and open shelves provided a place to display meaningful art, and family photos. They love visiting the beach together so she wanted a coastal vibe without going too nautical. The shelves were quite shallow, at about four inches, presenting a unique challenge. However, we were able to meet for a shopping consult where we chose a few key items that Jodi loved and fit the space perfectly.

When shopping with clients, we target three design components: varying shapes, colors, and textures. Including an assortment of these elements can provide an overall rich and layered feel. With texture in mind, I included a few sheen and metallic finishes, matte, concrete, and clay elements, wood, soft book pages, canvas, wax candlesticks, a woven basket, jute, feathery pompas branches, and a reflective mirror. For varied shapes you’ll notice both vertical and horizontal rectangles, circles, simi-circles, squares, cylinders, scalloped edges, oblong pottery, candle sticks at varying heights, and I even scored an octagonal mirror rich in texture for the adjacent wall! I also layered in several different plants to add an organic fresh touch. When considering color for this project, I knew Jodi wanted to keep the pallet neutral with a slight coastal feel. I turned book spines away to reveal natural pages and stuck closely to whites, greys, tans, shades of blue, black for deeper contrast, green plants, and warm gold accents. All of these elements came together to provide a balanced and beautiful display for the Smith family to enjoy for years.