Photo by Guillaume Grasset.
Coming across French designer Claude Cartier has made me a believer in love at first sight.
I adored this room the moment I spied it. The whimsical daisy shapes of the side tabletop, the seats of the barrel chairs, and the pillows! The chairs’ sassy rickrack-style carvings! How the mint-green drape gently curves around the rear left corner to soften the room’s shape. And oh, the palette!
Yet for all the candy colors and fun shapes, the room has a substantialness too. The heft of the leather sofa, the black stripes of the rug, and the black finish of the chair frames ground the disparate items. Each element of the room, from the portrait on the wall to the nesting tables to the spectacular Pierre Casanove floor lamp, could command attention on its own. But the dashes of black and dark brown direct the eye and serve as a frame for the work of art that is this room.
The takeaway: Don’t be afraid of colour… but if you’re still worried, use a dark neutral such as black, cocoa, or midnight blue as an armature to hold everything together.