Newly-married cou­ples often must work toward blend­ing their worldly goods. There are always a few pieces embraced by one spouse that the other spouse sim­ply can­not stand to look at. Maybe it's a reminder of a for­mer life, or maybe it's just plain or ugly or both! Case in point, the sofa seen in this picture.

curved sofa before

Try not to be dis­tracted by the ghastly pink car­pet! The sofa is cur­va­ceous and fem­i­nine, but a pre­vi­ous dec­o­ra­tor chose to swad­dle it in what appears to be a bathrobe. Blah, bland, bor­ing! My client's first incli­na­tion was to replace it. In exam­in­ing the cush­ions, I noticed the high-end man­u­fac­tur­ers' label and decided to rethink the "pitch-it" plan. (But seri­ously, how is it pos­si­ble to make a VERY expen­sive sofa look so damn ugly? Same designer doubt­less chose the pink car­pet. Enough said.)

As we were work­ing through the meld­ing of house­holds, my clients pur­chased a new home. The own­ers of the home had a very def­i­nite "look" — one that involved the exten­sive use of faux flo­rals with feath­ers — six feather flo­rals in the liv­ing room alone! Yikes. Here's the before (fea­tur­ing four of those florals):

liv­ing room by the prior owners

Frankly, I can't imag­ine any­one sit­ting in this room with­out falling over fast asleep. A snooze-fest of muddy col­ors. It looks like it came from the Bom­bay Com­pany cat­a­log. But notice the room has good bones and great light. It just needs an injec­tion of life and beauty, in other words — my client's personality!

So back to our poor, under-appreciated sofa and my glam­orous, viva­cious client. She favors blues and sil­ver with a lit­tle touch of mod­ernism. Cool, crisp, graphic but not cold. And Bar­bara Barry rides in to save the day — a match made in design heaven.

This is Bar­bara Barry's Inlay, in Delft from Kravet — a con­fec­tion of blue, cream and sil­very gray.

Inlay in Delft, from Kravet

And herein our frumpy sofa sheds her ugly-duckling bathrobe, shows a lit­tle leg and cel­e­brates her curves:

liv­ing room with a seri­ous dose of Bar­bara Barry glam­our! photo credit: Michael Partenio

Improved, yes? The unchanged Baker chairs and the inher­ited art­work are won­der­ful sup­port­ing play­ers, but the sofa leads this liv­ing room sym­phony! Thanks Bar­bara Barry for unmask­ing the swan!