Melissa Penfold, Australia’s foremost authority on style and design, regularly attracts a worldwide audience of more than 1.8 million to her website, newsletter, and Instagram account. Now she has distilled her three decades of expertise into a single volume: Living Well by Design. This book is an indispensable resource for everyone eager to create interiors in which decorating fundamentals are integrally interwoven with individual style.
Today, you can read an extract from Living Well by Design, in which Melissa Penfold takes the reader through how to use pattern and texture to make beautiful, comforting interiors. Read on …
Photo by Abbie Melle.
Texture and Pattern
Texture and pattern make interiors warm, welcoming, and comforting. Rooms with all matching curtains, cushions, and carpets, however upmarket, lack character. But a mix of textures, patterns, finishes, and colours infuses interiors with richness and depth.
Get the broad strokes right first. A rule of thumb is to pick a palette and work within it, using different textures and patterns in the same colour family. The pleasing combination of chalky, matte paintwork, nubbly linen and canvas, robust wooden floorboards, and woolen throws will be tonally similar but authentic and natural.
If you want your space to feel more luxurious, think of layering it with curtains, throws, rugs, and cushions that can soften hard architecture lines. Each of these layers and textures absorbs sound, makes a room feel rich, and promotes comfort. Stick to muted or neutral background colours for floors and walls, then introduce favorite accessories in a variety of textures and patterns for dramatic contrast. Rattan trays, ceramic plates, books, tribal artifacts, Regency decanters, straw hats, or copper moulds are personal touches that add character and visual interest to a room. If you’ve got a huge collection, don’t hide it away like a secret vice; share it with the world! Display the items in big, bold groups; don’t dissipate their effect by scattering them around. Hang them on a wall, line them along shelves, assemble them on a tabletop. Aesthetically grouped, your collection will give your house soul—and lots of texture.
Textural quality contributes greatly to the pleasure we get from everyday activities: smooth glassware that feels good in the hand and on the lip, quality dinner plates that are a joy to eat from, cutlery that is satisfying to hold, polished floorboards that feel soothing underfoot. Steer clear of anything that isn’t pleasing to the touch: fabrics, rugs, glasses, towels all have to pass the rub test. Pick things up and check the weight and the way they feel.
Decorating is like dressing: you can carry anything off if you have confidence. If you love the pattern or texture of a particular fabric, don’t just use it on a cushion; cover a whole wall or sofa with it. If you’re not sure of a texture or pattern, bone up on fabrics, finishes, materials, and colours. Learn to trust your eye, not the brand or price tag. Once you’ve made the big choices, the rest depends on how you put it together.
Photo by Abbie Melle.
Pair the unexpected. Mix up your genres. Contrast textures: put cotton with silk, linen with velvet, and canvas with cashmere. Opposites attract; when paired, they reinvent themselves. Mix incongruous elements: upholster a French nineteenth-century painted-wood chair in an unpretentious gingham or team a white laminate table on a pedestal base with a couple of antique Irish library chairs. On your travels, hit the stately homes; they’re object lessons in how to pull different patterns and textures together into a harmonious whole.
Unity in colour is important when using different textures. Go for harmony and let each room in your home complement the others. Carry harmony throughout your home to create flow. Your interior will look disjointed if the textures, patterns, and styles change abruptly from one room to the next.
Keep it real. Choose natural fabrics over synthetics, authentic old furniture over reproductions, a cane laundry basket over a plastic one. Humble materials like hemp, rattan, cane, and jute can have a huge impact to a space without feeling trendy or overdone.
They can also be paired with more luxurious pieces for a high-end look. Not everyone can inherit or afford antiques, but cheap reproductions look second-rate even to the untrained eye. A battered and weathered piece with a history has style simply because it’s real. But then so does an object that is unapologetically modern: it will always speak authentically of the age in which it was made.
Photo by Abbie Melle.
Texture can soften or sharpen a room. You only have to think about the difference between matte, satin, and gloss paint finishes. Paint is the most common and least expensive way to finish walls, but there are a number of alternatives that can add desirable textures. Specialty matte plasters with integral colours can give walls an earthy, rough appearance and a stone-like feel that is very calming. Though busily patterned wallpaper may not be ideal, grasscloth adds a natural touch to rooms and comes in many colours.
Be realistic about the way you live; there’s no point making everyone’s life miserable by choosing cream silk in a house full of children and dogs. If you’re on a budget, use special fabrics for small pieces that make a big impact (stools, a great chair, cushions, headboards) and less expensive fabrics for curtains and sofas. But always use the best quality fabrics you can afford—it’s money well spent.
The floor is one of the most expansive—and expensive—surfaces in a home and should be your first consideration when deciding on texture and pattern. Remember, flooring outlives paintwork, so it’s best to stick to a natural surface that will work with successive colour schemes.
Pattern and texture dress our rooms, bringing beauty and comfort to our lives. Light or heavy, the textures and patterns you choose should always have some kind of affinity with one another to give a room a cocooning quality. Use the best you can afford—it will serve you well.
—Living Well By Design by Melissa Penfold (Thames & Hudson Australia) is out on the 7th of October.
Melissa Penfold
Living Well by Design
An internationally renowned arbiter of style and design provides all the decorating advice essential to creating a home that engages your senses and reflects your personality
Melissa Penfold, Australia’s foremost authority on style and design, regularly attracts a worldwide audience of more than 1.8 million to her website, newsletter, and Instagram account. Now she has distilled her three decades of expertise into a single volume, identifying the basic decorating principles – including light and space, composition and balance, and pattern and texture...
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