Urano Bed

I wish I had enough bedroom space to have one of these in my room. I think it makes a stunning design statement placed in the middle of the room. This is the Urano Bed, designed by Leonardo Dainelli.
Available from Falegnameria (I wish I could get a link to the specific product, but the website is flash)
Image taken from Cribcandy

Happy 50th!

The iconic Barbie doll is turning 50 this year. Jonathan Adler designed a house for Barbie to commemorate this anniversary, but I'm not sure if this is a punishment or a reward. LAist offers the following shot of the bedroom.
















Okay, this isn't a bedroom - It's a harem. It's sultry, even by Barbie standards. (And she ran for president too! shouldn't she have better taste than this?)

I showed this image to the woman I'll be sharing an apartment with next year. Her reaction was "I WANT MY BEDROOM TO LOOK LIKE THAT!" Actually, if you know her, this room pretty much describes her personality spot-on.

More on mixing patterns

Rule 1: Patterns with similar color schemes and shapes coordinate.
Rule 2: Just because they coordinate, doesn't mean you can do this to a room:

There are areas where there is no pattern, if you can believe that. They're so outnumbered that all they can do is ride it out.
Bedrooms are supposed to be places of relaxation. All I know is that if I went to sleep here, I'd have visions of blue flowers dancing in my head forever.
And the solution to incorporating patterned bedspreads is easy.

Back to bedrooms

We have here three different bedrooms.

Apartment Therapy featured this bedroom a while back as part of a house tour. I love it. I can't stop people from using patterned bedspreads, but I can at least point out how to do it correctly. The walls are a clean color, so the bed becomes the focal point of the room: there really isn't a lot competing for your attention. The blanket adds more color and keeps the room from feeling too dark. At the same time, it covers up the pattern, which keeps that from dominating the room too much. This is how you do it, so take note.

And then, we get to these rooms.

What we have on the walls is the graphical equivalent of an acid trip. Often kitschy, full-wall graphics can sometimes take your mind someplace else. Why you'd want to be taken to a place where you think that your face is melting and strawberries are out to get you is another matter.

Padded headboards are for bedrooms. Padded walls are for asylums.

A thought on patchwork quilts

In these winter months, there's nothing like going to bed under a home-made quilt. Except I live in LA, and it is unseasonably warm here. But those of you fortunate enough to not live in LA get to have nice quilts. But don't quite rush out and buy just any quilt, because some of them are uglier than others. Today, the topic is patchwork quilts.
Now wait a second, you say you openly admit that your favored style is modern, sometimes modern of the mid-century variety. How can you reconcile a quilt with that? Aren't you going to pick on all of them?
Yes, I like MCM and modern design. But I'm not picking on these quilts (or any design things) because they aren't compatible with my favorite styles. I pick on them because they're intrinsically ugly. As in, it doesn't matter how you use them, there is little good about them.
Come on, how bad could some of them be?


Okay, you win


There's nothing wrong with a patchwork quilt. However, these quilts are only as good as the patches they're made of. There are some fabrics which ought never have been made. If the quilt contains any of them, it's not a good quilt.

This (above) is a good quilt. It may be a bit lacking in the color and overall impact department, but it's simple. The 'cabin' quilt from LL Bean (link below) has more color and presence, but I'm not nearly as big a fan of the pattern.

My thoughts?
Keep the colors in harmony. If you simply MUST have big and bold patterns, keep everything else restrained. You can always use pillows to accent.


Quilts from Anthropologie , L L bean