Butler's Pantry at the DC Design House - Part III

Butler's Pantry at the DC Design House 2015 - Part III

Our blog today is a continuation of our work with the DC Design House and the Butler's Pantry.

One of the first things I wanted to do with the DC Design House Butler's Pantry space was to give the two main colors I'd landed on, blue and green, some more definition.  We are using a subtle spring green which is not too bright and not yellowish.  And then I wanted to bring in the peacock blues which are so big now and also the teals. 

Photo courtesy of Thibaut website: www.thibaut.com

 I wanted to use the wallpaper, shown above, because it is so fresh and fun.  It is like a new take on toile but not in a 1990's sort of way but in a new, updated style.  Thibaut has some of the best wallpapers and patterns around at the moment.  But the repeat on this wallpaper is actually huge, and the walls and areas of the Butler's Pantry were not big enough to have this kind of wallpaper on the walls.  So it couldn't be this one.  But I HAVE to use this someday, somewhere else.  Doesn't it make you feel happy and hopeful for Spring?

  
We decided on a Hines wallpaper instead, which had more white but still with the beautiful green vines.  It was not too busy or too loud so that we could add other elements in the space and there would be a nice balance between all elements.  And, lucky for us, this wallpaper just happened to have a matching fabric, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for us that we did not know about at the time.  We will tell you more about that in our next blog.

We love this fabric and wallpaper from Hines.  See below.

Our next inspiration:  a peacock coffee mug -



 I bought these cups and they were the perfect inspiration for the colors and feeling I wanted for the room.  These will actually be on sale in the space.  And it's funny, because at Bare Bones the other day a lady walked through, looked at my presentation board and said, "These cups were your inspiration weren't they?"  And she was right!  I was going to use these on another project.  Sometimes it happens that way...they can work for more than one project.  I can't get enough of these coffee cups!

Anything and everything peacock is huge in the design world at the moment.  We went to the High Point Furniture Market this past fall, 2014, and there were peacocks in the designs everywhere.  You may have noticed that in the design world we seem to go through stages where some animal is the inspiration for a great deal of design.  In the past few years we have seen frogs, bees, owls ... Quite often the animal goes along with the colors that are big at the moment, and this would be true here since the peacock blue color is big right now.  It will sift on down through everything you see over time.  These trends are fun to watch.  I've always loved peacocks and the peacock blue tones, but it's nice to finally be able to find an extraordinary amount of products with this color and theme.  Makes it easier when designing.

 I love this light fixture above.  This style has been around for awhile, but they have added the peacock coloration now with that peacock eye style.  Beautiful.

 And here is a peacock necklace from Lord & Taylor.  This could be really fun to wear with a black V-neck dress.  What do you think?

And then of course, there is the shower curtain.  How fun is this?

If you Google peacock accessories, you can find much too much out there.  You will be tired of peacocks in about 2 minutes.  So I wouldn't suggest it.  But just a hint of peacock somewhere is particularly enticing. 

Other inspirations for our space just include images, which are always a great way to be inspired, including these below:

Architectural Digest online

Look at the colors here... these tones are so rich and infused with the energy.  This is what I want our Butler's Pantry to feel like... energetic and a bit exotic -- just the tiniest bit exotic.

Archtectural Digest magazine

So when isn't Tory Burch an inspiration?  I've included pictures of her renovated offices in NYC.  Love everything about it.   This was featured in Architectural Digest a few months ago.  You can read the entire article here: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/decor/2014-09/tory-burch-manhattan-office-article.

And then last but not least, an inspiration from an Utterhouse mirror:

Uttermost:  http://www.uttermost.com/c-3-mirrors.aspx

More on our development very soon.

Margery