Color and Style Inspiration for the House!

Ever since I moved into my current home, I started planning for what my long term vision for the house would be. We knew we needed to undertake some big projects immediately (i.e., revamping the patio, adding new windows), determining how the house would actually LOOK became a big question mark.

When we originally were house-hunting, it made me even MORE aware of how many different house styles there are out there: My previous home was a 1940s glamazon Bungalow, we looked at a gorgeous old mission-style home that needed a ton of work, and we even saw a few ultra-modern flipped houses. Still, nothing quite felt like home until I saw the house we ended up with: A charming, comfortable 1960′s California Rancher, that wasn’t overly modern, but also not overly traditional either. The house wasn’t perfect, but somehow it just spoke to me.

So what is the inspiration for our current home?

California Living.

For starters, I wanted to let the ease of California-living be something that really stood out. The house has an enormous (9′ deep!!!) pool, which was not on our wish-list…still, the pool is a central focal point of the house. We are lucky to live in an area that we can use our patio about 8 months out of the year, and we wanted to maximize the use of outdoor space, and have a very natural flow between the inside and the outside. I’m a HUGE fan of Eichler homes and they are a beautiful source of inspiration for how to have a nice flow between indoor and outdoor living spaces.

 Green

The one thing that our landscaping is definitely not lacking is a ton of greenery. Our backyard has a hillside, which is covered in bright green ivy. While ivy is not necessarily my favorite plant, there is something really beautiful about the hue it reflects when the sun hits it in the morning. It is always very bright, and brings a lime green tint to the back rooms of the house. I tried to pull in accents of this lime green and really go with it.

Hence our Lime Green front door:

Our Lime Green Dog Beds

and some lime accessories throughout the house.

Calm Colors

You can’t have all that lime green and not balance it out somewhat! Key Lime Pies are only good because there’s just a TEENY bit of Lime in them, and the rest is all eggs and milk. That would be a nasty pie if it were all lime. Geez, my mouth hurts just thinking about it.

I’m a big fan of “Greige”, but I’m very aware of the fact that there needs to be a balance between Greige, other neutral colors, and other colors and textures to break things up, so it doesn’t just become a sea of foggy gray. That would be too sad!

So, all in all if I were to sum it up with a color palette, it would be this:

What about you, where do you go to look for inspiration for your home? Do you just have certain things that you always gravitate towards? Do you make it up as you go along?

Read more about where to find awesome inspiration for your own space, check out these links:

http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/colors/design-blogs-color-inspiration#slide-1

 http://www.hgtv.com/decorating/best-places-to-find-color-inspiration/index.html

 http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/1027652