Materials Girl #5 – Coral and Teal Fantasy Suite

I’m a big fan of fantasy moodboards (much like Fantasy Football) and while these don’t really translate into specific rooms, I just find them visually inspiring. I asked you guys recently whether or not you were into the ‘Material Girls’ series and I got a 60/40 with the 60 being ‘meh, I don’t know what it has to do with me’. So we are going to rethink the series, meanwhile we had a few more already shot and denying the 40% of you a pretty moodboard seemed criminal (plus its friday and its been an insane week of good posts and shoots and we weren’t quite ready with our scheduled rug roundup post).

For this one instead of telling you a fictional story about the girl who would have this style (which many of you found unlikable and I kinda agree) I’m just going to explain some of the design principles as to why this works.

1. There is a consistent color palette of coral and teal, with the addition of some highlights and lowlights (the dark navy and the light blue, #8).

2. The four patterns are all wildly different in scale so they don’t fight for attention, instead play off each other. Remember what I said HERE, that a trick is if you blur your eyes and you can’t tell the difference between the patterns then they are too similar.

3. There is a good mix of cool (blues) and warm (coral) tones keeping it feel balanced without being dated or cold.

4. The wood flooring helps it stay grounded (pun intended) and that grain becomes another texture.

Now, if I were to do this again knowing that the point of it would be to write tips based on it, I would probably have designed it a bit differently and given some other neutrals in there to help break up the coral/teal to make sure that it doesn’t go too young and silly.

If you still aren’t into this, don’t fear, because next week we have already 3 pretty EPIC posts being prepped (and you know that typically I don’t overhype posts). So stay tuned. Happy Friday, folks.