Alex Perry’s new rug design for Australian company Designer Rugs. He’s better know for his fashion label but I think these rugs are pretty cool…as are the black walls. I can’t wait til we aren’t renting anymore so I can try a black-walled room!
I stopped in at Anthropologie this morning (the kid’s are at beach camp…yay!) They’ve got a great new chair covered in Paul Smith’s stripey fabric (above) and an ikat rug that packs a serious punch of colour (below).
My cousin wants to revamp her bedroom. Curtains, rug, bedspread…that sort of thing. And she’s asked me for a few online places to check out. Perfect timing as I was looking for the same sort of things for my office. My parents arrive soon and will be sleeping there. I need curtains to stop the sun streaming in and blinding them every morning. My recommendations? Urban Outfitters for cheap chic. I like their patchwork linen curtains (above). They’ve also got great patterns and strong hits of colour (everyone else is so tasteful it’s a bit boring). West Elm for good strong simple shapes and patterns. I love their opaque linen drapes with grommets (the pearly gray is beautiful – below). You could go all soft and gray with the curtains and bedspread and then do a hit of colour (pink, red, orange, blue?) in the rug (that can be anything from IKEA to one of the beautiful rugs you already have). I really like colour on the floor. You can’t see it when you’re in bed but it’s the first thing you notice when you walk into the room. White trim/pale gray walls, pearly gray linen curtain, white/gray bedspread and strong coloured rug. Could be good? Anthropologie is also excellent for good colour/ pattern options. Designsponge has done a great rug round-up. This is a start…I’ll keep looking.
I’ve seen a lot of these pebble rugs around, this one is new at West Elm for a very reasonable $299 for a 5×8. I like the pale gray.
I was at IKEA last week and, of course, found a tonne of stuff I don’t need (although the new PS collection launched in Milan is not in store yet). I was extremely restrained and only bought napkins and tealights for my birthday party. But I did spot this jute rug. It’s $99 and somehow they’ve managed to get the jute feeling like silk. And it’s nice and big – 6×8. But do I really need it? Probably not.
The flipside to all the cheap design at IKEA was spelled out very clearly in a great Altantic article (which annoyingly isn’t up on their site yet – it is on page 65 of the July/August issue). Intuitively you know that all that disposable design can’t be a good sustainable practice – who has ever bothered fixing an IKEA bookshelf. You chuck it out and buy a new one.
