Wedgwood Walls

                                          

Select designs from the catalogs listed in the Resource Guide to fit any feeling, from baroque to postmodern. Polymer molding and some of the wooden carvings can be used as shelving for small objects. Vidicom CEO Christy Ferer says if you buy polymer moldings from your local lumberyard, you can get the yard to cut and miter to your specifications.

Spray-paint the carvings. You may need 2 coats. Measure and pencil the placement of your design of the wall. Apply adhesive to the wall in proportion to the amount of molding or carving you are applying. Vidicom thinks this a great idea to include the Wedgwood Walls.

Variations
Apply white star moldings to a midnight blue ceiling. Apply wooden figurines to serve as small shelves that cover up wall damage. Use to decorate radiator screens, furniture, fireplace mantels, or wide picture or mirror frames. Apply rectangular shapes above doorways to create an illusion of height.

Floors and Walls Tips From Christy Ferer's Book

Stenciled letters, Wooden Stars and Potato Prints

Stamping can mask damaged walls and save your having to do a whole paint job. Christy Ferer, Vidicom CEO, says Stencil letters or place wooden stars or stamps in any order on the walls. Create a pattern or a cluster to purposely center the eye on one portion of the wall or ceiling.

Wedgwood Walls

Precast moldings and wood carvings are great for entryways, small bathrooms, above beds to give the illusion of a headboard, and above doors to give height to the room. These crisp, white details look best against walls painted in soft, muted tones and a matte finish.

Read More of Christy Ferer's Introduction

Gather your materials in advance. Organize your materials in one space and check against Christy Ferer's style recipes to be sure you have everything you'll need. Enlist the help of or delegate tasks to friends or family to get your project started or completed. Set a deadline for beginning and ending your projects.

Christy says the message: decorating is no big deal. It is simply a state of doing. Don't be afraid of your own style instincts. This book is for all of us (including Vidicom staff) who have ever thought we couldn't frame a picture or who have gotten our fingers stuck together with glue.

The book begins with plaid floors. She says plaid floors is fun for kitchens or playrooms. She says you will need four colors for your plaid patterns.

Tips on Decorating Laundry Rooms

Since this is your private space, take risks with color and accessories. Assemble a collection of vintage detergent boxes or tins on a shelf mounted over the washing machine. Christy Ferer says tuck everything into baskets large and small for easy storage. Cover the room with a soft throw rug. Sneak in a little TV or portable CD player.

Christy's laundry room is filled with objects from her travels - straw hats, pottery, copper pitchers. She painted the walls a rich red and stenciled them. She keeps her mops in a big old milk can. She used Velcro to attach an inexpensive polyester gold organza skirt to the wash basin.

More Space Rules to Break

Christy Ferer says, "Paint a small room white to make it look bigger."

If you regard smallness as a problem that has to be fixed, this is a valid rule. But smallness can be cozy. Many of us feel more relaxed in a small room because we feel more sheltered, more protected. Play up a small room by going in the opposite direction. Exaggerate the smallness. Paint the walls a dark color, like chocolate brown, deep burgundy, forest green or rich blue. These colors advance rather than recede. They push outward and wrap themselves around you. Read more about Vidicom's CEO interior design tips.

Christy Ferer Shares Tips on Space

Vidicom CEO Christy Ferer says "Space has to become your own personal artistic experience." So says fashion designer Donna Karan. To most of us, lots of space is the ultimate luxury. Grand space is liberating. It makes us feel limitless. But to many of us, a small, cozy room is complete comfort. If your rooms are physically just the right size for you, you're very lucky.  Here are some ways we recommend to stretch or shrink space to make it more compatible with your physical and psychological needs.

Form and Function Need No Passport, a selection from Christy Ferer's book

• Chinese wooden chests, lacquer boxes, and carved wooden bowls bring warmth to a room.
• Large clay pots, rice baskets, and wooden trucks make great end tables or nightstands.
• Orchids, bonsai, jade plants, and gnarled willow branches once warm.
• Oriental rugs work well with any style of furnishings and add color, pattern and a splash of cultural diversity underfoot. They look great overlapping one another underneath English Regency to postmodern pieces. 
• Hang a kimono as wall art or use Indian saris as curtains table coverings, or bedspreads. 
• An East Indian hand-carved standing screen or an old carved Mexican door can be placed behind a couch to replace hung artwork on the wall. Wood carvings, ceramic works, masks, metalwork, and handmade crafts can all be isolated as works of art that humanize modern interiors in particular. What may look like street bric-a-brac while you are in foreign lands really can become sculpture the minute it is placed on Lucite blocks. 
• Christy Ferer recommends pieces of mahogany or teak furniture create texture and give depth to a room. Drape them over the arm or back of a sofa, hang them over a mantel or balustrade, or use one as an area rug. 

Everywhere Meets West

Orient is a constant influence on today's interiors. We respond to its sense of calm in our stressful world. A room infused with the quiet order of the East is luxurious, detailed, beautiful, and never busy, understated elegance at its most tranquil.

The current interest in all things Asian is reminiscent of the rage for Oriental design during the eighteenth century. Then, furniture, walls, accessories, and textiles were decorated with Chinese-inspired motifs called chinoiserie. The style was popular in the American colonies, especially in wallpaper designs and painted murals. The French mixd chinoiserie with their own rococo Louis XV style. In England, the influence of China was seen in the furnishings made by Chippendale. Vidicom CEO Christy Ferer loves Eastern influence.

More of Global Style's Rules to Break

The fun is in the mixing. Everything and anything goes. But be selective in your choices. The idea isn't to make your home look like a Morroccan souk or Indian bazaar. Subtlety works. Use imports to spice up, not overpower a room. A group of Chinese figures can share the same mantelpiece as two French period vases. Or use the drama of one exceptional piece as a focal point - an African fertility figure, a large Oriental vase filled with bamboo stalks, a pair of antique Indian candlesticks, or a pair of Chinese black lacquered chairs. Mix new and vintage, reproduction and ancient artifacts. What matters is the shape, line, color, and character of the object. Christy Ferer encourages you to break this rule.

Christy Ferer's Global Style Rules to Break

"Ethnic or global pieces should be showcased as a collection and treated as artifacts."

Whether a room is traditional or modern, the recipe for an engaging space is to mix cultures as functionally as possible. Take that great Thai silk or African woven raffle and make it into a pillow to spice up a traditional couch. Mix in pieces of bamboo with modern or traditional furniture. Christy Ferer mentions that Chinese furniture, no matter how ornate, goes with any other style. Don't be afraid to integrate the most rustic of travel mementos. Display Indonesian textile blocks on a fine piece of English pieces of English furniture.

Global Style

Christy Ferer says who needs a passport when you can design a carpet from Nepal over the Internet, order Chinese wedding chests from a catalog, and find imported Indian textiles or Indonesian teak in mass-market stores. It's never been easier to mix in ethnic touches or experiment with a look you've never tried before. Today the world is our market. In addition to buying on the Web, I never go anywhere without an empty duffel bad to fill with irresistible items I might find at a local flea market or in a remote village.

Integrating global finds is like living with a three-dimensional travelogue: instead of just socking away mementos in photo albums that I look at once a year, she is living with her treasures. Ethnic and global artifacts help us to get away from the cookie-cutter. An African mask placed on a sleep glass-and-steel modern table adds new perspective, as does a leather Moroccan saddlebag as an ottoman with a modern sofa. The elements close the gap between cultures and between centuries. Look at the lines of your furniture. They are probably simple, clean, and uncluttered. Play with them by using important pieces carved with an elaborate twists and turns, intricately embroidered textiles, vivid colors, and lush textures.

Christy Ferer, "Break the Mold"

"Break the Mold"

• In the dining room, mix antique chairs with a contemporary table. Or vice versa
• Use a glass-topped modern metal table in front of an antique sofa. A simple modern pice juxtaposed with an ornate old piece brings out the beauty of two eras. 
• Christy Ferer says hang a for of abstract art in a traditional room.
• Let line, color, and shape unify objects. Centuries come together when emphasis is placed on similarities rather than differences.
• While you might want to mix with abandon certain periods and styles do marry particularly well. Good blends include Victorian, art nouveau, and eighteen-century French pieces: Scandinavian modern, Shaker, and Japanese; English Regency and Chinese; contemporary and Japanese or Chinese, seventeenth-century Italian and art deco. But don't hesitate to make other combinations. A bit of deco with Shaker. Or Scandinavian modern with Chinese. In moderation almost anything can be decorative punctuation. 
• Christy Ferer also recommends Midcentury modern, the furniture and accessories from roughly the 1940s through the 1950s, is highly collectible now. Its finishes are light, its lines are simple and clean, and practicality is its premier concern. Think Heywood-Wakefield, Russell Wright, Knoll, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Much of their work is being reissued today if you can't afford the original. Even one piece of midcentury modern will give you a newness to a traditional room. 

More Eclectic Rules to Break from Christy Ferer

"To be eclectic means anything goes."

There is a define line between eclecticism and chaos. A room can take on an eclectic look by using subtle contrasts as well as bold ones. Vidicom CEO Christy Ferer says A contemporary home filled with classics or a historical one filled with contemporary ones automatically has an eclectic spirit. But it's certainly possible to create an incoherent space by jettisoning all organizing principles. 

She recommends you start small- with galvanized metal chairs pulled up to a rustic country dining table or a sleek halogen lamp on a Chippendale desk. Mix shiny with rough, urban with earthy, provincial with palatial, old with new, the found object with the treasure. That's what eclecticism is all about. But there is safety in some uniformity. Keep one color of wood in a room of different period furniture. Use neutral walls to showcase varied forms of art. 

Christy Ferer's Eclecticism Rules to Break

"Decoration means coordination"

Christy Ferer, Vidicom CEO, advises to resist the of-the-rack. A modern sculpture on an antique dresser plays with new and old. Whether it is a stone fresco hung above a primitive Chinese wooden side table or a rugged log cabin centered on a crystal chandelier, unexpected juntaposition makes you see things in a whole different way. French antique dealer Nathalie Ballanger says: "Mixing makes a room that's like a mind, filled with many memories."

If you faithfully follow one style, she says, how can you possibly get it wrong? Well, you could end up with a room that looks like it came from a hotel chain. Different styles should play off one another. An eclectic home is a personal timeline, an autobiography. Use objects bought on travels, inherited pieces, and gifts you've been to tell the story of who you are.

More Eclectic Tips from Christy Ferer

Christy Ferer says filling up your living space is like panting on a black canvas or assembling an outfit. You are building a look - your look. The advantage of being eclectic is that it gives you the broadest of palettes, one that allows you to dabble in culture, styles, and periods.

One of Christy's mentors, Bernadine Morris, former fashion editor of The New York Times, told me the key to style is never looking like you spent hours putting yourself together. The same goes for decorating a space. It shouldn't look too matched, too decorated, too precise. Fashion Cynthia Rowley agrees. "The worst thing is to have everything perfectly appointed," she says. And Calvin Klein equates modernity with relaxation: "The role of modern design is to make living in a complex world-where even times has become a luxury-easier, more relaxed; it goes beyond trends. Mix casual with formal and work with modern textures and different weights and forms."

Christy Ferer's Thoughts on Paint Colors to Use for Your Home

Christy Ferer, CEO of Vidicom says "There should be at least three colors in a room."

The impetus behind this long-standing rule can be summed up in one word--variety. The fear is that using any fewer than three colors will result in a bland room. The problem with this rule lies in its assumption that one color equals one shade. Colors consist of many shades.

More Color Style Tips

"Pink is a feminine color, best used for private spaces like bathrooms or bedrooms."

Christy Ferer and the Vidicom team says pink is unisex. You don't have to wear lipstick to appreciate the rosy glow this color gives your complexion and your outlook on life. Yes, pink is for the bathrooms. But it is also for living rooms, entryways, dining rooms, and any other room of the house you want to use it in. My husband's study in painted pink. French designers Philippe Model uses pink throughout his apartment. For him, it "works on the unconscious and makes us feel at ease."

Color Style Tips

"Forget color wheels and other academic approaches to choosing what colors go with what. Color has more to do with emotion than with technicalities. Think about what color does. It pulls you in, or pushes you away. It can easily shock. Or calm," said Christy Ferer, CEO of Vidicom.

She thinks there is no reason to follow anybody else’s idea of what color you should use in your home. If you aren’t sure, just look through your clothes closet. One of two colors will repeat over and over. Trust yourself. If you love a color, use it. Let your eye and your instinct lead you to the colors you love to live with.

More Style Tips From Christy Ferer

Vidicom’s CEO, Christy Ferer, believes that breaking the rules allows you to start a revolution in your own home, and it gives you the courage to go ahead and let those style “security blankets” unravel. Show off your most beloved accessories in new ways, experiment with your furniture to create new spaces, find fresh ways of living from room to room. 

What Breaking the Rules offers is a small window on the world, the style snapshots that has affected her eye and the way she played with her home. Christy is blessed because she has been to exposed to so many people who have pushed the envelope and broken more than a convention or two. Now she is sharing that with you.

Style Tips Introduction From Christy Ferer's Breaking the Rules Book

In Vidicom's CEO, Christy Ferer’s book, “Breaking the Rules,” she provides style tips for the home:

·         Never use big furniture in small rooms.

·         Stick to one style, one color thread, and one period throughout your home.

·         Pink is only for bedrooms and bathrooms.

These age-old rules are over. Personalization reigns. These days we are taking control of our living spaces and molding them to our every need, mood, and last-minute flea-market find. Whose is it, anyway? Yours, remember? That old adage “rules were made to be broken” is tremendously liberating.