A Guide For Mixing Fabrics

The most successfully designed rooms often have an interesting mix of fabrics. By following a few basic guidelines it really isn't that hard to put together a great collection of complimentary fabrics. Several comments on this recent post asked if I could talk about this design dilemma, so I headed out to my local Calico Corners for a fun little exercise in mixing fabrics.

First, if you want to play it safe, many manufacturers offer coordinated groups of fabrics which make it simple to combine two or more patterns. But for more a dynamic result look beyond these collections and create your own mix.

To begin, head out to your favorite fabric store. If there is already a wall color or other set elements in the room the fabrics are intended for, be sure to bring paint chips, upholstery swatches and any other references for these items. With these as your guide, search for a fabulous fabric to become the foundation of the fabric story. Note: if you are starting with a blank slate, finding a great fabric can be the beginning inspiration for a room design.

Once this fabric is found, follow these guidelines in selecting the remaining styles. Vary the scale of the patterns, with a good mix including a small, medium and large scale pattern. Be open to creating a mix of florals, stripes, checks, geometrics and solids. When the scale is varied and you take a lead from the colors in the first fabric, a surprising mix of fabrics can work very well together.

And as a final guideline, don't feel compelled to match colors perfectly but do make sure all of your patterns have at least one color that is similar, even if it is a background or neutral.

With these guidelines in mind, I scoured the store until I found the "foundation" fabric for this exercise in mixing and matching fabrics. I chose Garden Envy, a larger scale botanical pattern featuring inspiring colors.

Next I carried the bolt around the store selecting a group of solid fabrics, based on the colors seen in the botanical print. To keep things interesting each of these solid fabrics has a slightly different texture, including linen and cotton velvet.

This group includes: Henderson Solid in Antique Gold, Brandywine Duck in Natural, Jefferson in Swedish Blue, Milano in Clay and below, Como Cotton Velvet in Avocado.

After this selection of solids was gathered I moved on to stripes. The wide Catillion Stripe in Raffia brings a boldly scaled pattern into the mix.

Finally, I looked for a few smaller scale prints. The Tucker Resist in Indigo looks surprisingly well with Garden Envy, as does Thom Filicia's Euclid in Mineral geometric pattern and the Taddeo in Antoinette Greek Key pattern.

In the end the final fabric mix used in a room would most likely be narrowed down, such as the grouping shown below. But by exploring a wide range of possibilities that could possibly work together, you'll have all the options needed to create a wonderful mix of fabrics for any room.

{all these delicious fabrics are from Calico Corners, not all styles are available online}

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