How to Mix Patterns

Cori Place (0:00)

Today, we have a really fun episode. Yep. This is one of those things that as a designer, you know, but it's hard to put it into words. What's so funny?

Suzanne Hall (0:09)

Sorry about the mint.

Jessica Bennett (0:10)

Just my reply to it. I have a mint in my mouth.

Cori Place (0:14)

It's seriously strong.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Dear Alice. Today, we have a really great episode. This is one of those things as a designer, you know instinctually, but you don't quite know how to put it into words. So we have disciplined ourselves to say, let's write a formula for how to teach people what kind of patterns go well together.

Suzanne Hall (0:35)

Pontificate.

Cori Place (0:36)

Because we are in a high decorating era.

Suzanne Hall (0:39)

Yes, we are.

Cori Place (0:40)

Everybody is loving the pattern on pattern thing. And we have a question from a listener, Sophie. She asks us, what kind of patterns go well together? For example, a small floral and a ticking stripe or what clashes?

Would love some advice as I don't feel confident in the process. And then Andy asks us kind of similar to that, how do you make all the fabrics that you're using in a living room mesh well together? I think people know that there's a pattern on pattern play and how do we do it? And I think the 80s taught us well from the old wallpaper books.

Suzanne Hall (1:13)

Sure did. You need the organic with the structure. Sophie, what you were saying as far as doing like a floral with a taking stripe, that's exactly kind of the rhythm that we're talking about. But again, large organic with structure and then understanding the skills. That's what we're going to kind of be talking to you about as you look at your room as a whole, understanding how to layer these materials with each other. We've kind of talked about just architecturally and like hard stuff against the walls. When you're doing tile with slabs, with those things, I feel like we've talked about that. Now we're going to get into more of the soft coverings when you're buying furniture and understanding, okay, I'm going to do custom lampshades. What should I do them in? How will it pair well and not clash with everything else?

That's what we're going to get into.

Cori Place (1:53)

Yeah, there's different scales of patterns, and that's where some of the magic is going to lie. One of the things that was really fun at High Point last fall, was walking through and seeing all the pattern sofas.

Suzanne Hall (2:04)

Oh my gosh.

Cori Place (2:05)

We're not just in neutral sofa land anymore. This is really fun because you could walk into a furniture store and say, I'm not interested in that one off the floor. I want to go choose my own fabric, I want to try a pattern on, or I want to do a color because I know I'm going to be using all of these patterned pillows and I know that it's going to go with this wild chair I have and this antique whatever and I'm going to cover the daybed in a stripe. It really is such a pattern play, not to mention the rug underfoot, not to mention the tile underfoot or the herringbone wood floor.

So we're really layering these in and this is where your doctorate degrees in decorating are really going to come in clutch.

Suzanne Hall (2:41)

And you know yourself as a designer, you know your client, what they're going to feel comfortable with for now and for the next 10, 20 plus years as they live with these decisions. If they're like, yeah, I'm down for a pattern sofa.

This is going to be a really, really fun episode for them. And then even for the person that's just like, I'm more of a solids girl, but I do want to incorporate pattern. How do I do that successfully? I feel like we've been asked to do both. And so we're going to kind of bring that knowledge to the forefront here and kind of tell you our rules.

Cori Place (3:06)

And I was going to say, if you're new here, welcome. We're so glad that you found us. We are the designers behind Alice Lane. We've been designing homes for about 20 years now, and we're just taking everything that we're learning and we're bringing it here to just share it. It's so fun to learn things, or if we fail at something to go, oh, this is a good thing to pay forward so that nobody else has to fail at that.