subject: Beach Theme Decorating: How To Decorate A Beach House Without Looking Tacky [print this page] Beach House decorating has a bad reputation of being tacky. The reason beach house decorating is sometimes tacky is because people over-theme a room.
What's over-theming a room? Well often its when a room is decorated with one element in mind such as fish or lighthouses. This element of the beach theme is then applied to pretty much everything in the room from curtains to bed linen to towels to rugs, pillows, decorative objects and more...
A stylish beach house on the other hand is tastefully decorated without going to the opposite extreme of going overboard in theming. Often it's difficult to get the fine balance between too much and too little. As a rule of thumb, if a "set" is available in linen, towels, sheets and rugs-- don't buy it.
When decorating a room in a beach theme you need to put on the pretend hat of a designer. When you see a beautiful home on the glossy pages of a magazine, it's full of elements of surprise, but not shock.
An element of surprise might be a found object, such as an old beach sign you picked up in an antique store. Instead of hanging it on the wall in the living room, you might put it in the bathroom over the tub as a surprise art. Let's say the lettering in the sign was in black with a white background. Perfect. That's now your colour scheme for the bathroom.
This sign is what a designer would call an "inspiration piece." An inspiration piece is something that sets the tone, style and colours for the entire room. It doesn't mean that you now look for any other signs you can find and fill the entire house with signs on every wall... that would be tacky not stylish.
To continue with the bathroom decorating, you would carry through the colours of the black and white into a modern, eclectic style. I would suggest towels in white with a few hand towels in black. Depending on sink counter space you could add a large glass cylinder with black twig sticks and white pebbles at the base.
By adding a simple replica sail boat with a white sail and black hull, you would get a "beachy feel" to the bathroom. I would look for some interesting wall space to place a simple shelf and sit the sail boat up high. To add texture to the room, bring in black lacquered weave baskets. If there is a window consider a black and white striped cotton blind or simple curtain.
Beach house decorating can be fun and simple to create if you stick to a basic colour scheme, a few beachy objects and add elements of surprise and interest.
