While you can purchase matched sets of furniture for your bedroom, dining room and living room, decorating this way gives your home a very predictable look. However, if you decorated with mismatched pieces, you can create a unique and eclectic look. Using pieces of furniture that aren’t part of a set lets you add charm and personal style that is often missing when everything in the room – from sofas and end tables to lamps – matches perfectly. And even if some aspects of your room’s décor match, you can sprinkle in a few mismatched pieces to add some personality.

Your Home is Not a Showroom

While it’s easy to walk into a furniture store and buy a pre-designed set of furniture that coordinates down to the last wine home decor or metal tree art, decorating your home this way makes it look cold and impersonal. Many professional designers shy away from using only matched pieces of furniture in a room because it tends to result in a “showroom” look. Adding a few mismatched pieces – even just a few mismatched pieces like side tables, lamps or pillows – can help give a room greater personal appeal.

When shopping for furniture and accessories, look for pieces that appeal to your heart and soul; even if they aren’t a perfect match to other pieces in the room, including them will bring some personality to your room and be an expression of your individual style. For example, if you are furnishing a bedroom, you can select a headboard, footboard and dresser that match and then bring in two different night tables or perhaps use vintage nightstands. You can also add a chair that has a slightly different look than the rest of the furniture but has a tie-in with color, fabric or theme. Decorating a room in this way will give the room warmth and personality that is unpredictable.

How to Decorate with Mismatched Furniture

To decorate successfully with mismatched furniture, choose different pieces that share a common feature. One way to do this is to use furniture of a similar style with different wood finishes; or choose furniture with the same finish, but different lines and styling. For example, in a country style family room, you can pick up inexpensive side tables all in different styles and then paint them in a unifying shade of barn red. Then repeat the red in pillows and wall art to add a vibrant undertone to the room.

Accessories, such as toss pillows can be skillfully used to create an eclectic look in a room. If you already have, for instance, a sofa and love seat that match, you can use mismatched pillows to add an eclectic vibe to the room. However, if you start with a couch and loveseat that are not perfectly matched, matching pillows can add a undercurrent of unity. To keep a room from looking chaotic, choose something that is similar – color, wood tone, furniture style, fabric type and pattern – to weave a thread of commonality through an eclectic room.

Where to Find Mismatched Furniture

In addition to creating personal decorative style, decorating with mismatched furniture is also economical. Flea markets, resale stores, vintage and antique stores and garage sales are great sources for second hand pieces that can be painted or upholstered to become a perfect accent or even a focal point for your favorite room.

Red is a bold dramatic color used to generate enthusiasm. In some cultures, the color red has great significance and is a color that represents safety and life itself. Red is also a color that has been shown to whet the appetite, and as such, it is a great color for the dining room.

The Significance of the Color Red

Red is the color of vitality and life; it is the color of blood that maintains and nourishes life. The Red Cross uses the color red to signify their commitment to the preservation of life. Perhaps all this subconscious association with red as life itself evokes an emotional response:  We eat to sustain our lives: Red represents life and when we see the color red, our subconscious responds by stimulating the appetite, which is also stimulating our desire to stay vital and alive.

Whatever the reason and whether we actually understand it or not, many psychological studies have shown that red stimulates the appetite. Advertisers and marketing directors have caught on: Take note of how many restaurant signs and logos feature the color red: What better way to attract hungry customers? Red remains prominent inside restaurants as well, from the local pizzeria’s use of red checkered tablecloths to swanky uptown supper clubs with deep red leather booths.

Using Red at Home

In your home dining room, red can be used effectively as well. Red is a popular and dramatic wall color for the dining room and underscores the entire room with a feeling of opulence and abundance. It looks particularly elegant with crystal and gold, so it’s an excellent choice for a formal dining room. Mix it with black and sunflower yellow and you have the perfect color palette for a French country or Tuscan dining room. Brick red works well with American country looks that feature antique oak furniture, black wrought iron and white ironstone plates hung on the wall. In modern dining rooms, red is a perfect paring with black, white and gray, adding a dramatic backdrop for sleek modern furnishings. And what better backdrop that dynamic red to provide contrast for distressed white shabby chic dining room furniture?

Warm shades of red are the most appealing because they create a warm, intimate glow that is inviting and cozy for guests. If you decide to paint your dining room walls in red, choose a high quality latex paint and plan on applying two coats for even coverage.

Of course, there are other ways to introduce red into a dining room besides painting the walls. Wallpaper and wallpaper borders, window treatments, area rugs and wall art, from grapes and wine decor to metal tree wall art, can all be sources to pull from when adding red to the palette. Red looks very appealing when harmonized with white and taupe, so if your walls are painted a neutral hue, using red in dinnerware, chair cushions, plate chargers, glassware and table linens will provide a dynamic counterpoint.

If you want to create a living room design that looks stunning, then think about using bold patterns that repeat to infuse drama into your decor. Glance around the room and find several places that will let you repeat patterns to increase their impact on the look of the room.

Start by choosing an eye catching pattern, such as one that is vibrant or graphic. Clean lines and bold shapes are perfect for this purpose; for example a bold tree wall art decor or the tendrils of an elegant vineyard grapes wall decor can be your starting point for pattern. Also choose a color that complements your repetitive pattern to lend harmony to the design. For instance, you may have a large round basket on the wall; repeat the shape and color of the basket with round brown pillows on the couch. You might then add candles in a different color, such a burgundy, on the coffee table. Now pick up the burgundy color by adding oblong pillows in the same burgundy shade to the couch or on a nearby chair. Repeating shapes and colors throughout your room design gives it a very comfortable and cohesive feeling.

One of the easiest ways to repeat a pattern is on the wall with paint. For example, you can pick up a stripe in your fabric and repeat in larger scale by painting the same striped pattern on the wall. Use painters tape to create a crisp, clean line for your stripe. Repeat the color pattern in your painted stripe, or you may wish to invert it. You may even what to create the illusion of a chair rail in the room using the stripe.

If you take a small pattern and enlarge it, the pattern will go from being dainty to dramatic. For example, if you take a delicate floral pattern and enlarge it, you get a bold flower inspired design. You can bring a fabric pattern right up onto the wall with a craft projector, and paint it directly on the wall or on an artist’s canvas. If you want to repeat a canvas throughout the room, you can have a giclee printer replicate your painting; this is an affordable way to create a designer look.

The floor presents another opportunity to add a little drama to your room. Quite often an interesting pattern in your carpet can be the perfect inspiration for a dramatic pattern in the room’s decor. If you cannot find a carpet with the pattern that you want, remember that you always have the option of painting your floor. However, if you have beautiful hardwood floors in your home, you will probably want to refrain from painting them, because refinishing them before selling the property is very time consuming.

You can repeat a pattern throughout the room in a myriad of materials, sizes and textures. The round basket hanging on the wall can be replaced by a dark, hammered Mongolian shield. Then the round basket can be outfitted with comfortable bedding for your pet. Or you may find a cylindrical floor lamp to repeat the pattern of the pillar candles.

There are many ways to incorporate pattern repetition in your living room to create a bold and dramatic room design. So take a critical look at your living room, and see where you can repeat shapes, colors and textures to add a little drama to your home.