As you know, I'm attempting to follow along with Apartment Therapy's Style Cure. The "assignment" for this weekend was to get out and visit your favourite places and shops to gain inspiration. We are then supposed to take pictures and share them.
As a real estate agent, I can never tell when I'll have some free time on a weekend and when I won't. With piles of work to do at home (both for clients and on our actual house) I decided to use my favourite websites instead of shops and search for my inspiration online.
This was a fun exercise, and it was quick too, since I had already bookmarked so many pages. I was shocked to discover how similar and recurring elements tend to appear in my favourite rooms:
Obviously, AT was my first stop. I recalled that Apartment Therapy featured a hallway "Before and After" a few weeks ago and I had really loved the overall look. The art, wood floors and vintage Turkish rug all felt like they could be my style. I liked the pup too!
I remember one of my favourite recent house tours was Apartment Therapy's (Andi and Dean's Modern Meets Victorian) Tour. I "collected" two pictures from this tour. In the first, I love the collection of blue vases with the minimalist branch. The second picture is a beautiful mix of both colours and patterns.
Not only do I love the Junction neighbourhood, but I loved Apartment Therapy's Metropolis Factory Tour. I love the colours here and the mix of industrial and happy modern styles!
Another one of my favourite AT Tours was Anne and Richard's Loving Renovation. Everything about the picture below is "wow" for me. I love the pinks and blues working together against the neutral walls. I also love the layered rugs on the floor.
I enjoy browsing the galleries in House and Home and I loved this little vignette. Perhaps it's my love of geology, but I love the scale of that Geode!
I also love the unexpected colours in this House and Home photo.
Of course, this list wouldn't be complete without checking out the talent on one of my favourite blogs, Style by Emily Henderson. I love everything about this photo. The patterns, colours, plants, artwork... You name it!
Also featured on Style by Emily Henderson, is this last room. Again, I love everything about this room!
So what does this tell me?
I'm including our current hallway photos below for your reference.
Aside from the fact that I love blue, turquoise and pink mixed together? I think our new/old house is destined to be more colourful and less minimalist than the condo. After analyzing these results, it's pretty obvious that the reason I hate this hallway is the lack of colour and personality.
I like happy and unexpected rooms. I think I'll need a colourful runner that uses more of our floor space.
I think I'll stick with neutral walls but maybe choose a warm, light grey. I don't think there's enough light to sustain a plant here but I will be throwing some art on the walls. A mirror to bounce the light around would also be nice.
I'll also need to throw some colour and humour into the room in order to really feel at home.
Here it is, facing the other direction and with our shoe organizer mounted back on the wall. (It had been removed when we had our fridge delivered.) This is the anchor for our entrance landing strip, and while it is larger than I would like, the size was necessary to hold Corey's work boots.
I'm hoping the terrible lighting in this photo makes my "after" shots look even more dramatic!
... And just in case you're curious about the state of this hallway the day we moved in, here it is:
