Way back when I was living in Minneapolis and working as an interior designer, I used to dread the days that clients would come in asking for a mural for their bathrooms, living rooms, kitchens… Any room, really.
The worst – by far – were the young mothers, with bouncing babes on their hips, in search of the perfectly pink princess mural depicting a fairytale for their daughters’ bedrooms. There was simply no way to avoid sliding down the slippery steep slope to the Land of Kitsch where pastels and faux lattice runs rampant. With a resigned sigh, I would heave the well worn wallpaper books onto the counter and begin the laborious process of thumbing through page after page of peach-cheeked cartoon princesses looking down from the top of their towers onto rolling grassy hills filled with bunnies and baby chicks.
Needless to say, those many evenings spent deciding which celery colored baseboard paint would work seamlessly with the Precious Moments green of the grass on the lawn of the murals left me with a rather poor taste in my mouth in regards to murals in general. I admit it. I judged the mural-lovers.
But recently, my mind was changed when I was reminded that like all things in interior design, it is all about how you put the overall room together…
Now these are some rooms I could have handled. And coming from a woman who annually wears a sparkly plastic crown on her birthday, there is nothing wrong with princesses and pastels. Just please use them sparingly in your interior design pursuits.
(Photos courtesy of Elle Decor)
Faux lattuce?
You are right, we’ve come a long way since the ‘sun going down on tropical beach’ murals.