Dan Davis and Paul Johnson, owners of Ferndale-based Dan Davis Design, offer these additional tips for combining high-end and moderately priced items:
- Pay attention to finishes. Let the most important piece lead the direction for all other similar finishes. For example, if you put your money into a gorgeous chandelier of burnished gold, make sure the other coordinating metals in the room of lesser costs don’t look cheap. It pulls down the whole look.
- Great artwork can make a room, but it can also run up the budget. Decide where you want those one or two great pieces to be showcased. Then to fill out the rest of your art needs, purchase interesting pieces that might come from a good student show or a local emerging artist who has budget-friendly pricing.
- Lighting is one place where we like to have a decent budget. The right piece and right quality of light can make almost any room seem richer. Pull the budget back on some of the accessories and make sure the lighting is beautiful, functional, and dimmable.
- If the budget doesn’t allow for all the fabrics to be top tier, choose a couple of pieces to splurge on, and then for the other selections mix up your textures. Textures can help hide the difference between high-end and affordable while still adding interest to the room.
- One or two antique or vintage pieces in a contemporary room can make the whole space feel more collected. When a room feels like you bought the entire showroom display, it feels less thought out and interesting. Mix in an unexpected piece or two.
- When working on a mixed budget, pay special attention to scale. Buying more pieces to try to stretch the budget is often a mistake. One perfect piece in the right scale at $1,000 is often more wisely spent than 10 pieces at $100 each. More is not always more.