Strike a balance in mixing styles

OUR homes are meant to be a reflection of our taste. But how do you create a cohesive environment when your favorite designs span centuries and styles? Is it really possible to have black leather Wassily chairs in the same house as your grandmother’s 19th century dry sink and a Japanese tie-dye silk throw bought yesterday on Sawtelle Boulevard? “Anything goes,” reassures Carol Kipling, a Los Angeles-based designer of furnishings and interiors. When mixing modern with vintage, she says, the key is balance.

Scale: Whether a room’s predominant style is metropolitan or country, Moroccan or Chinese, scale is important. “If you have a beautiful, small-scale vintage piece that you love, but your other furniture is large-scale, it’s not going to work,” Kipling says.

Vintage furniture is often smaller and less ergonomically pleasing. “Humans were much shorter at the turn of the century, so many of the furnishings from that period were made at 15 and 16 inches high,” says Kipling, noting that the standard height for seating today is 18 inches. But vintage seating isn’t bad, she says. You just might choose something else for heavily used areas.

Kipling prefers to use vintage chairs like works of art, pushed up against the wall to make empty spaces look more inviting. “The ends of your walls are blank,” she says. “It’s nice to put a chair there or in your entryway.”

Color: Its effects are physical and emotional. “Studies have shown that the color red increases your heart rate and blood pressure,” Kipling says, adding that greens and blues help to calm. “People hate certain rooms and don’t know why, and it’s because the color is not right for them.”

Pastels and earth tones have been popular, but Kipling sees a trend toward bright colors -- a reaction, she says, to depressing events around the world.

“People need to cocoon more and feel better,” she says. “Brighter colors do that. They are based on emotion. Color can change your mood completely.”

Accessorizing: Accessories are “the jewels in the room,” she says, suggesting that you choose bowls, vases, plates and lamps in a variety of materials. All should have character and stand out. “Pick them out as if you’re picking out a pet,” she says. “They have a personality that you’re attracted to.”

Use bright and beautiful objects such as the yellow Italian vase, yellow Murano glass dish and brightly colored pillows pictured here in Kipling’s showroom. What if you inherit a bright piece of furniture -- say, a turquoise chair? Kipling advises that the rest of the room be decorated in more subdued hues.

Vintage accessories are more distinctive than pieces that are mass-produced, she says. Look to nature for a good analogy: A field may be an expanse of green, but you want to pick only the best flowers among the blades of grass.

Wood: Mixing vintage and contemporary pieces inevitably leads to multiple types of wood in the home. Don’t worry, Kipling says. It’s OK to mix woods. Choices depend on the room’s existing furniture, color and scale. “If you have a large dark ebony armoire and a birch end table that you love, that is perfectly fine,” she says. “You don’t want everything matching.” Complementary pieces are more interesting than matching pieces, she says.

Comfort: Vintage pieces may achieve an aesthetic and fulfill the need to own something unique, but they also can be uncomfortable. So test furniture. Sit in a chair and make sure it’s comfortable. If it’s not, but you still absolutely love the piece, get it anyway and place it against a wall. “Use it as an interesting piece of furniture to look at,” she says.

Heirlooms: What about heirloom guilt? What does she say to clients who have an old, old piece of family furniture that they hate?

“I tell them, ‘Get rid of it.’ ” Kipling says. “Why should you be staring at something you don’t like? If family guilt is involved, put it in a room where you won’t see it very often.”

Experimenting: Don’t use a main piece of furniture as a way of experimenting in design. For larger pieces like the sofa pictured here, Kipling uses chenilles. “If you have kids or dogs, chenille is the most resilient. It cleans easily, it hides dirt easily and it comes in hundreds of colors.” Limit crazy colors and patterns to pillows and smaller side chairs.

Balance: There’s nothing wrong with mixing a chenille sofa with a Barcelona or Wassily chair. Just soften the black leather and chrome by adding color and texture to other items in the room. Mixing and matching, Kipling says, is what makes a home interesting.

With careful attention to color, size, scale and comfort, you can create an interesting home that is distinctly yours. Don’t forget, Kipling says: “You only have to please yourself.”

Lisa Boone can be reached at lisa.boone@latimes.com.