{decorating with style} My Home Style: Modern. Graphic. Family.

If you’re like me {and I’m betting you are} you love an opportunity to peek inside someone’s home and get a glimpse of their style! And this week, you are in luck because I’ve teamed up with 19 other bloggers to open our doors and take you on a tour of our personal decor styles.

The “My Home Style” blog hop is hosted by the lovely Stephanie of Casa Watkins, and it kicked off yesterday with seven talented ladies. Today the event continues with 7 more bloggers, and now it’s my turn to share my own personal home style!

If you’ve just hopped over from My Life From Home {or from any of the other participating blogs} – WELCOME! I’m so glad you’re here and I’m excited to show you my style…

My Design Style: Modern, Graphic, Family

For a long time I struggled with what to call my style. The terms modern and contemporary always seemed the obvious choices, but neither on its own really seemed quite right. About a year ago, I took one of those online design style quizzes, and the result was surprisingly accurate – as if they knew me better than I knew me. It described by style as “Modern Metro with a touch of Urban Funk,” and I’ve stuck with that description ever since.

But for this home style blog hop, I was challenged to describe my style in just three words. And after much debate {too much debate} I finally settled on MODERN, GRAPHIC, and FAMILY.

MODERN

I’m sure there is a design textbook definition of modern, but when I look around our home, modern shines through first and foremost in our furnishings – both in style and in color. Without exception, every piece of furniture in our home is black, grey, white, or nearly-black venge wood. The lines of the furniture are sleek and simple – leaning toward mid-century in style.

While our furniture is fairly monochromatic, the colors in our home are actually quite bold. My favorite colors are shades of teal and blue, but I also love pops of warmer colors, like red, pink and orange. I have no fear when it comes to painting – so you’ll find much of the color in our home taking center stage on the walls. And any walls that aren’t dressed in bold colors are grey {with the exception of the beige hallways that I hope to banish soon}.

As I was preparing this post, I realized that I’ve never properly photographed our basement. I thought about taking a couple of quick photos yesterday, but would have had to move my boys large Thomas ride-on train that is currently filling the space between the couch and the tv, so instead a photo from last December’s Christmas home tour will have to do.

If you look past the stockings and Christmas trees, the basement family room is a good example of my tendency toward bold, saturated blocks of color. While most of the house features some shade of blue, I wanted to take advantage of the basement being a completely separate space and use a color palette that I’ve always loved – grey and orange.

As much as I love pattern, I tend to choose monochromatic, tone-on-tone rugs and pillows with minimal or subtle patterns in order to balance out my love of bold graphic art. And when I do use patterns on rugs and pillows, it’s most often a simple classic – like the stripes on the rug below the basement pool table.{You’ll notice that the picture below was taken before we added the tile to the basement fireplace – and what a difference that sleek, metallic tile makes!}

GRAPHIC

That brings me to the graphic elements of my design style. The straight lines of our furniture, and the minimal pattern on our rugs and pillows helps balance the bold, graphic art that fills our home – like the larger than life orange microphone print in the basement photo above.

But it’s not just art that makes a graphic statement – in our recently redesigned master bedroom, it’s the giant typography on the drapes that steals the scene. And that funky, industrial inspired light hanging above the chair is one of my favorite lights in the house!

Because of my love of typography, I refuse to listen to those who say that wall quotes are “so last year.” I’m not a very good design “rule” follower, as you may have already picked up on! I don’t think anything ever really goes out of style, as long as you do it in your own unique way that fits your home and your personal taste. On the wall of our guest bathroom, I created a floor to ceiling wall quote – and I still love it just as much today as I did the day I first installed it. Like the rest of our guest bedroom and bathroom, the quote is inspired by our honeymoon travels in Greece.

Throughout the house, it is the art that really reflects our personalities and our interests. For example, the art above the bed in our master bedroom showcases our love of all things urban!

And this urban theme carries over into our master bathroom, where I took a photo of the view from our downtown loft {where we lived prior to our current home} and turned it into a giant mural on the wall above the tub.

I really love making my own art – whether it be photography or painting, and I love creating it on a grand scale. The giant clock triptych on our living room wall is a photo I took from the inside of a clock tower in downtown Denver, and it’s printed on three stretched canvases.

When we travel, no vacation is ever complete without a stop at a modern art museum to satisfy my love of abstract painting. But since purchasing art can get very expensive, I enjoy playing with my paints and coming up with my own abstract creations. Not only is it budget friendly, it also allows me to make it more personal! In our powder room, for example, I painted a set of four canvases, and then added newsprint circles to each that are cut from reviews of my husband’s shows {I’ve only mentioned it around here once or twice – but in addition to his “day job,” Scott is also a professional musical theater actor/singer}.

All of the art in the kitchen is also of my own creation, including the Mondrian-inspired martini paintings, as well as the giant silver and black circles painting on four canvases {and even the teal and gray abstract that you can catch a glimpse of in the entry way}.

FAMILY

Ok, now that I’ve talked about modern and graphic, let me explain why I chose family as my third word, because I realize that it isn’t really a style – at least not in traditional sense. As the mom of two young boys {3.5 and 2}, the reality is that every design decision I make is with the kids in mind! But rather than than hindering our design style – it actually allows us to be even more creative and bold!

If you walked in our front doors and just glanced around, your first impression might be that our style isn’t very kid friendly {I know this, because I hear it a lot} – but the truth is that there’s not one part of our home that is off limits to our boys! Scott and I have simply found ways to maintain our own personal style while still creating a home that is fun and safe place for two adventurous little boys.

Even though the boys have a large play area at one end of our long-thin basement family room {on the opposite side of the pool table as the couch}…

…the boys are just as likely to be found playing in our more formal living room, in part because they like to be where the music is, and they love that they can choose songs on our jukebox with no help. The large open floor space is perfect for setting up their large train set, and it is also the site of our daily family dance parties.

It’s important to me that every space of our house be accessible to the kids, so you’ll find one or two stylish toy baskets or bins in each room {hiding the toys in plain sight, as I like to say}. The coffee table styling in the living room is very minimal because I don’t want anything the kids can’t touch – in fact, they are encourage to play with the giant tic tac toe board and often end up wearing the “o’s” as bracelets. The coffee table shelf that used to house my collection of art books is now instead filled with kid-friendly board books all about art, which allows me to share one of my passions with my boys! {Those coffee table corners used to be “baby-proofed” with padding, but we removed them now the boys are old enough.}

In the kitchen, I’m actually getting a bit tired of the glass dining table that we’ve had for over ten years, but it’s so kid friendly that I can’t part with it just yet. Glass and kid friendly?! I know that statement will make some people shake their heads and roll their eyes – and it’s true that I do have to Windex it daily to combat millions of fingerprints – but our glass table really is ideal for our frequent arts and crafts projects. It’s so easy to wipe off the paint, markers and glue that are bound to make their way from the paper onto the table – nothing can stain the glass. And, unlike wood, I never have to worry about it getting dented if the kids write too hard with their colored pencils. The black leather-like chairs are equally easy to wipe off and much more practical with littles than upholstery would be.

Because our house doesn’t have an open floor plan that allows me to see into the living room while cooking dinner or doing the dishes, it was important to me that we make the kitchen do double duty as a place for the kids to play so that I can keep an eye on them. In addition to having baskets of puzzles and coloring books in the kitchen, we also painted a magnetic chalkboard wall, which is a wonderful way to keep the kids entertained. Additionally, we put the boys’ play kitchen in our kitchen {rather than in their playroom}, and they love being able to cook while I cook!

That gives you an idea of how we’ve designed our main living spaces to be stylish while still kid-friendly. But as you venture even further into our home, you’ll quickly see that, in fact, some of the most well designed spaces in our home belong specifically to the boys!

Our modern, graphic style and love of color shines through in the boys’ bedrooms!

Cooper’s room {aka “the nursery”} features bold ombre stripes in shades of teal, as well as bright pops of color.

Beckett’s menswear themed bedroom has a bit more a vintage-y vibe than other rooms of our house {with some pretty cool repurposed and upcycled projects}, but the argyle wall that I painted adds that bold, graphic element that we love!

And then there is the under stair playroom that I created for the boys this spring. This might be my favorite spot in the whole house! We took an under utilized storage space and turned it into a rock & roll themed play space complete with a retro and graphic record covered ceiling!

Designing a house for a family also means that function has to be a top priority! I find that when I create stylish organized spaces, they are much more likely to stay organized for the long haul – which makes our days run smoother and allows more time for fun! I’ll leave you with just one example, but you can find many more stylish organizing solutions in my archives!

The bathroom the boys share has no tub, so bath time takes place in the guest bathroom. Bath toys were beginning to overtake the tub, so I came up with a creative and stylish solution that allows me to put the toys away while still allowing them to dry properly. I think it’s pretty darn cute, but, best of all, when we have guests visiting we can simply tuck the buckets into the linen closet and replace the toys with more luxurious bath essentials.

Thanks so much for stopping by and letting me show you the Modern Graphic Family style of our home. The next stop on the blog hop is Flourish and Knot! You’ll also find a complete list of all the participating blogs below. Have fun exploring all the unique home styles from these talented ladies! I’d love to hear which is your favorite!