Mixing Styles with Gautreau Interiors

Lola MagazineHome and Entertaining, LAURIE GAUTREAU

How can you mix styles at home and create a blended, seamless effect?
Here are five tips from the designer…

Mix Decades

Take family heirlooms or garage sale finds and combine them with new elements such as upholstery, art, or pillows. Also, try to use furniture or textiles that combine styles. For example, reupholster a traditional chair in a modern fabric. Don’t forget to sprinkle the different styles throughout the room so that it’s not overwhelming to the eye.

Mix Textures and Patterns

Each scenario is different, but always start with a base. Whether it’s a bold rug or wallpaper, or curtain fabric; layer different patterns, colors and textures so that they all complement each other and build on that base, rather than fight each other.

Mix Shapes

If you have rectangle side tables, do a round or square coffee table. If you have two skirted swivel chairs, buy a couch with legs. If your sofa has a track arm, don’t do the same arm on your chairs, mix it up! You can also apply the same rules to light fixtures. Don’t fill your house with lanterns, choose the space you like them the most and then find other styles of ceiling lights like chandeliers, drum shades or pendants to make sure there’s a good mix.

Mix Finishes

Stop buying the complete bed suite from a local furniture store. JUST SAY NO! Buy the upholstered headboard and move on! Try to keep a healthy balance between stained and painted furniture. Laurie loves adding a glass or stone top table to break up the wood pieces in a living room. Keep upwith the trends: Grasscloth furniture is totally in right now and we LOVE the texture it adds to a room.

Mix Metals

The days of doing an entire house in the same metal finish are done. Don’t be afraid to do a polished nickel sink faucet, gilded iron pendant lanterns, and satin brass cabinet pulls.  Start by choosing a metal finish that will be the most prominent in your home and blend one or two other metal accents to add some interest and create flow throughout the house.

About Gautreau Interiors

July marks one year since Interior Designer, Laurie Gautreau, opened her design studio, Gautreau Interiors.  With sweaty palms and shaky hands, Laurie excitedly signed a lease for a one-of-a-kind space nestled in the back of Pierremont Common in Shreveport, where the original Tower Bookstore was located. The studio space is full of charm; it seamlessly blends a mix of styles. It’s the perfect backdrop for Laurie to appeal to all of her clients’ tastes and design styles.

With a traditional exterior, you would never guess that the inside is full of mid-century elements like the unique staircase design and original hanging pendant lights that Laurie kept. Adding her own touch was important; Laurie wanted to create a focal point at the front desk to welcome her clients into the space and get their creative juices flowing the moment they walked in.

Laurie was inspired by a bright floral wallpaper she found in Dallas at the Quadrille Showroom. The bold print was playful, yet sophisticated and, while she would never be brave enough to place the wallpaper in her own home, she wanted to let clients know that you don’t have to be afraid to have fun with color.   She also enlisted local copper gurus, Rick and Jay Carmody of Copper Works Lighting, to design the perfect lanterns to hang above the front desk. In a last-minute decision, they decided to paint the beautiful brass lanterns lime green to match the Gautreau Interiors logo. A risky decision that Laurie has never once regretted!

Resurfacing the desk with a white high gloss Formica and installing a navy barn door with bamboo brass pulls completed the space and, while you don’t typically see these three things together, they all get along well and play off one another perfectly.