Pillow Up

Spice things up with a simple, and fluffy, solution – the throw pillow

By Dana Carman
CTW Features

Image courtesy Design Within Reach/ Maharam Pillows

If your living room is feeling stale, freshen it up with pillows. They’re an easy way to add color, texture and energy to a room and they don’t require a whole lot of effort. The key is in properly “pillowing up.”

“Pillows are the easiest way to incorporate different colors into a room so you don’t have to commit to a bright color on the couch,” says Linda Merrill, owner and principal designer of Chameleon Interiors in Duxbury, Mass. So if you’re really loving red but it feels too loud for a couch, incorporate your favorite color with pillows. Merrill notes that using pillows to embellish a room is a quick way to re-fashion a room cost-effectively.

That can change, however, if you overdo it, which is something to avoid, says Merrill. Too many pillows on a sofa or chair can render the piece unusable by guests who are unsure how to navigate it. Another pillow don’t is matching your pillows with your drapes, says Debbie Frank, owner of D. Frank Designs in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Choose coordinating colors and maybe a smaller pattern that mimics the pattern on the drapes if it has a pattern,” she suggests.

Avoid pillows for the sake of pillows also. “The sofa is typically the most embellished piece,” Frank says. “If you put pillows on a sofa, you may not even need pillows on the accent chair or chairs. Sometimes it takes the interest away from the pillows and just looks cluttered.”

When choosing pillows, you want complimentary colors but, similar to the drapes, you don’t want pillows that match your wall color or sofa identically. Frank gives this example: “If you have a red wall and a beige sofa, why not accent with teal? This will add some visual interest.”

Frank suggests some other visually engaging types of pillows, such as a kidney pillow in the middle of a sofa, with a painted design or crystal detail, or creating your own pillow out of a silk scarf you no longer wear, or adding a vintage piece of jewelry as a button. “It is a great conversation piece and you’re repurposing a piece that you cherish,” she says.

Layer textures and designs for some extra splash. “Use solid colors or smaller patterns behind larger patterned pillows,” Frank says. “The solid pillows ground the patterns of other pillows.”

Your goal is to enhance your living room without overwhelming it, so take your time and play with your pillow combinations.

“The nice thing about pillows is that you can buy one at a time, instead of buying a whole mass of pillows,” Merrill says. A little pillow pizzazz in your living room can go a long way.

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