I want to talk about buying furniture...

[Pacion]

:lol: I have a dilema. I will be moving house, going from somewhere with built in wardrobe space, to a place without. This means I have to buy a wardrobe. That is kind of the "easy" part. :lol: The difficult part is... what material/colour do I select :( :lol:

I would like for it to be an "investment" ie. not something that I would want to throw out after a couple of years or so. I like wood but there are so many shades of wood/wood stains :( :lol: (I am laughing because I would say I am a typical Librian in that respect... can't decide!)

I also saw some with frosted glass doors so that it does not have the complete heavyness/solidness of wood, which I also liked. I also saw a delicious :shock: deep red set in a highly polished finish but it would be sooooo inappropriate for the new place.

Anyone care to share their furniture buying stories and how you went about selecting your furniture if you were torn between two or more styles?

(For Enquiring Minds :wink: the walls are a cream colour and not red, as some people might think would be my taste :wink: :lol: )

[Medira]

The walls being cream are a good neutral colour. What does the rest of the furniture look like? You can take it in either a warm or cool direction, so you can be pretty flexible.

[Sagitta]

Why would we think red? :?

I like to give different rooms different moods. For instance, my kitchen always has light colored wood furniture. I enhance the airy nature of the space of the kitchen cum/living area.

I have dark red furniture in my living room. This has my TV/DVD VHS player. I play with black/red/cream/steel. I have a couple African figures in black wood, some Tanzanite carvings (green/turquoise), couple dark red frames with pics.... More subdued lighting with some spot lighting so one can read etc, an aquarium....

Bedroom is again different

You get the idea, I hope.
:)

[dancin_feet]

I'm a colour kinda girl. When I moved into my house all the walls were boring off white and I lasted 4 months before I had to change something. I started with my living / dining area, painted it a mustard colour, with colourful geometric curtains off birch coloured wooden curtain rods. I have off white furniture on birch frames and most of my furniture is birch as well. Dining room setting I painted deep chocolate brown with burgundy cushions.

I guess the colour and style of your wardrobe depends on whether you want to keep the beige colour of the room and what style you like ie classic, modern, artsy, etc. I have never liked glass anything for furniture. Glass top tables I'm always terrified I'll crack and the noise that comes from placing anything down on them just bugs me. Much prefer wood. But it's personal preference.

To me a wardrobe is concealing your clothes / life to a certain extent and keeping the room relatively neat. Glass doors (even frosted glass) don't achieve that for me. Just a simple built-it-yourself modular wardrobe would do me in a wood veneer, but then I am very price minded.

If you like the red one, how about you redesign the room around the wardrobe? A nice red quilt set with maybe off white walls and a bit of yellow and / or black thrown around would look quite stunning!

[dancin_feet]

Just to give you an idea of my obsession with colour:

My bedroom is painted purple with yellow curtains. I buy bedspreads that are mainly neutral with a bit of yellow, purple or orange in them.

My spare room is painted blue (none of these are pastel by the way, go real colour or go home is my motto!) with orange and blue geometric curtains.

My computer room is painted green with sheer white curtains with gold stars on them.

I plan on having a red and white kitchen and a predominantly white bathroom with brown paint and highlights and silver fittings. The bathroom is the most neutral because I have sets of towels in red, purple and blue and another colour would just clash badly.

Yes, I live in a rainbow ....... :lol:

[Pacion]

...My spare room is painted blue (none of these are pastel by the way, go real colour or go home is my motto!)...

:shock: :lol: I have seen some people use strong colours to great effect. The red one wouldn't work for a number of reasons including the dimensions and because it is a higly polished material/lacquered finish. I think it would just dominate the bedroom space :( .

In the UK, on the rental market, it is more usual to have a furnished place than it is unfurnished. I have seen a change over the last few years where it is possible to get unfurnished, including houses with seven bedrooms, swimming pool and a games room :lol: The new place I am moving to is unfurnished and I haven't got that much furniture - what I do have is light wood shelves which may or may not work with the darker wood. Why don't I just sell them on? Sentimental reasons? One of my sisters bought them for me when I was a "struggling student"... :D

Re the darker wood and glass wardrobe, one of the things attracting me to it is that it is a corner unit. When I opened the doors, because there is the depth going into the corner space, I had the feeling as if it was a "walkin space" :lol:

[Vince A]

:(I am laughing because I would say I am a typical Librian in that respect... can't decide!)
OK . . . I'm a Librian, and I HAVE N0 PROBLEM DECIDING ANYTHING!

And right after shopping for . . . 1) clothes for me and Care 2) guitars . . . 3) cars/Harleys . . . comes 4) furniture shopping ) 5 - believe it or not - jewelry for my Care! I consider myself very knowledgeable on jewelry - Tanzanite is the hot buy right now! It is expected to go up eight to times in price, making it almost precious! I almost got into your thread on jewelry. But . . .

I've decorated 6 houses and 1 business, and believe me, everyone of them has been bright vivid colors. It's what looks right.

Our house is painted mostly a neutral taupe color, and has mega-colored tile in the entry, kitchen and nook area, with light-medium gray carpet. The formal living room and dining rooms are a lot less vivid - mostly done in plums!

Elsewhere in the house, we have tons of cobalt blue, reds, yellows, and stainless steel - the only way I decorate . . . and I did the other houses after they saw the "color" in our house! My wife and I have come from previous marriages where everything was 'in-its-place neutral', earth-toned colors (I'm not knocking these colors), boring, put-you-to-sleep decorated houses!

No more . . . we have so much fun decorating with colors, but it's not overdone. It expresses who we are!

Be brave . . . do what you like . . . don't decorate for your guests! Who cares what they like? They don't live there.

I also saw some with frosted glass doors so that it does not have the complete heavyness/solidness of wood, which I also liked. I also saw a delicious :shock: deep red set in a highly polished finish but it would be sooooo inappropriate for the new place.
This sounds great . . . my dresser has two center doors that have clear glass in them . . . I like the idea of glass doors in a dresser.

If you like the red, pop for it! With your cream walls . . . you could do one wall, painted red, opposite of, or centered across from the dresser. Be daring. May I suggest that the painted wall be on an Eastern wall or at least if you don't want a red-painted wall, if you get the red dresser, that it goes on the Eastern wall.

For Enquiring Minds :wink: the walls are a cream colour and not red, as some people might think would be my taste :wink: :lol: )
Red with cream walls sound great . . . a palette (color) wheel probably suggest some yellows, some darker blues, textured whites! Blacks go anywhere with any color!

Let us know what you decided???

[pygmalion]

My guest rooms are done in tans with red. Like a darkish birck-colored red. I was aghast when the decorator suggested it. But it's very, very nice. 8)

[Pacion]

:lol: Thanks for your input Vince.

I almost got into your thread on jewelry. But . . .


Please do!!! :lol:

In the setup where I live, the management provides the property decorated in neutral colours. When I move out, I have to hand back the property pretty much how I got it. Therefore, if I do paint the walls in another colour, the walls will have to be returned to the creamy colour. There is a maintenance team who will do it, but it will cost. If I felt that I would be there for years, I could consider it. But, as I hopefully will only be in the apartment for a year, then I am not sure it will be worth the effort and the cost :?

I do like colour and will incorporate it the curtains/soft furnishings. :D

This year will be a year of a lot of changes so, I think I will leave the red cupboards for when I feel more "settled"...

[cocodrilo]

There is nothing Japanese in my modern Japanese house with the exception of my husband, who is Japanese, and an antique hibachi. The interior is black, grey and white and I have shocking accents here and there- Moroccan ceramics in cobalt, woodblock print in spring hues, and all of my china is blue, pink or green.

[dancin_feet]

If you are only going to be there for a short amount of time, get something cheap that will do the job. Even if you do buy something really nice now, there is no guarantee that it will work in the place you eventually settle.

If I were you I would go secondhand. If it is really awful, you can put a curtain rod across the front of the wardrobe and cover it up! That's what I've done in my spare bedroom because the wardrobe has a big crack in one of the doors. Don't see the point of fixing it or replacing it until I get a second bed and it's time to finish doing up the room.

[Sagitta]

Got a cream colored futon with wooden frame for free. Just need to buy a few screws and out them in. Got a twin bed with mattress for 20 dollars. Lots of reasonable furniture is so cheap here that it is unbelievable.

[dancin_feet]

Just had a thought come to me. What if the place you settle in has all builtins? What will you do with your expensive wardrobe then?

I would definitely be looking at second hand. Then you can paint it red if that's what you would really like. Hey if it's only temporary, you may as well try a few things and get to know what you might like when your living arrangements are more permanent.

[Pacion]

Just had a thought come to me. What if the place you settle in has all builtins? What will you do with your expensive wardrobe then?

My thoughts exactly! The one that I am thinking of, the corner unit, I don't believe is expensive, not by London standards at any rate, but just very nice. So, it would be more the hassle of trying to get rid of it if the new place in say a year's time has builtins :?

I will be calling the maintainance team and asking if one of the guys if he could go with me to the new place and measure up to see if the corner unit could even fit in one of the corners, what with windows and doors and pillars and so on...