They say you have an eye for design or you don’t. As the owner of Decori Designs, an interior design company she founded 30 years ago, Suzanne Haugland has refined that eye to a masterful degree. After gaining inspiration by traveling around the country and the world, Haugland opened her store 25 years ago, first filling it just with fabrics and slowly incorporating accessories, lighting and furniture. “Little by little it grew,” Haugland says. “And it became more than what it was.”
One name change later—and a move to a new 7,000-square-foot space on 50th and France—Decori Designs has become a one-stop shop for all your home decorating needs, with a team to help. So who better to turn to learn about the top home trends for the upcoming season than the eagle-eyed designers? Read on for their tricks of the trade to help you incorporate these trends seamlessly into your home.
Trend: Color
Suzanne Haugland is no stranger to color. Pop into any of the houses she has designed and bright colors cheerfully await you. “People have been living with things that are sort of monochromatic,” Haugland says. “Now they’re looking for a punch, something that will make them feel good.” Haugland’s favorite color to work with of late is a bright tangerine orange, ideal for creating the vibrant, warm and bright spaces for which she is well-known.
When she began to work on a full-scale remodel of a home in the Country Club neighborhood of Edina, Haugland was pleased to find that the homeowners were just as enamored with color as she was. After coming across a tangerine-printed fabric from Schumacher’s, it served as the inspiration for a color palette that extends throughout the home. Indigo blue was chosen as the other accent color, and a champagne color became the neutral that anchored the bright colors. “It’s a neutral background with lots of highlight colors,” says the homeowner. “But we were more adventurous upstairs and worked with greens, yellows and reds.”
Rather than overwhelm the house with color, Haugland concentrated the accents in the accessories, such as the custom rugs, curtains, pillows and fabric. Decori Designs designer Tim Ricker even commissioned artwork by a local artist at Art Resources after inspiration struck while on vacation in Mexico. “With a neutral sofa, it’s so easy to pop color in with pillows, throws or art,” Haugland says. “The expensive pieces should be your upholstered pieces.”
Trend: Eclectic Look
Gone are the days of matching bedroom sets and coordinated bathroom vanities; in its place comes a more personal, eclectic look. “It’s all about mixing things,” says Haugland. “You want to make it look like you’ve collected it over time.” This means mixing and matching different pieces to create a room with personality that reflects the lives of the owners. “Sometimes that’s where a designer is pretty helpful because it’s harder for people to do on their own,” says Haugland. “It’s easier for people to just get something that matches.”
While working on a home for a long-time client who was downsizing to a condo in the Westin Galleria, Haugland and the Decori Designs crew infused personal touches to make the new space feel like home. “It’s not a change from room to room,” Haugland says. “You have to consider what’s in the rest of the house so it flows well.”
She used all of the homeowner’s previous furniture, but breathed new life into the pieces by using them in different ways. An heirloom vanity dresser received a custom-built marble backsplash and was placed in the powder room off the foyer, which features red ceilings, a crystal chandelier and silver wallpaper. Haugland also created a custom built-in cabinet in the powder room to house the homeowner’s vintage dishware, a more unconventional choice than the typical dining room armoire.
Trend: Wallpaper
The easiest—and most impressive—way to give a stale room a much-needed facelift comes from an unlikely treatment this season: wallpaper. “We’re back to a Marimekko look from the ’70s,” says Haugland. “It’s not the little prints this time. It’s a bigger, bolder look.” To avoid looking dated, look for larger prints that will serve as the focal point of the room. After knocking down walls and rearranging rooms in the Westin residence to create a proper foyer, Haugland and the homeowners decided the space needed to be a showstopper; and what better way to create a breathtaking entrance than silver-and-pink printed wallpaper with a bird and leaf print covering the walls and ceiling? Haugland let the wallpaper speak for itself by keeping the rest of the room simple, adding only a table with two Lucite lamps and a mirror.
According to Haugland, the possibilities are endless where wallpaper is concerned. “You get a lot of bang for your buck,” she says. “Start out with something simple, like one wall in the room and make it an accent wall. Or wallpaper a powder room; it’s not a big space, so it’s not expensive.” Haugland suggests getting a recommendation, but also adds that an advantage to wallpaper is that it’s not a major commitment. “If you put it up and you hate it, you can take it down easily,” she says.
Besides prints, new treatments and textures are also leading the way in the wallpaper revolution. In the Country Club home, Haugland used wall treatments in natural grasscloth (and in the basement where the rambunctious teenagers spend most of their time, vinyl grasscloth), suede and faux-alligator skin in a Bordeaux hue. The treatments create texture in the room but are also surprisingly versatile when done in neutral colors.
Trend: Clean Lines
For the better part of the decade, home décor trends have been influenced by the heavy, ornate look of Mediterranean villas. Rich colors, overstuffed furniture and heavy drapery created rooms that, while sumptuous, sometimes bordered on dark and gloomy. “So many of the pieces were designed for people with big houses,” Haugland says. But as downsizing has become de rigueur for many people, the over-the-top look has also stayed behind. “It’s still a traditional look, but with very clean lines,” says Haugland. “The overstuffed furniture took up most of the room. Now they’ll take those big pieces and shrink it down.”
Haugland dubs the new look “transitional,” combining traditional sensibilities with a more contemporary edge. “The look is warm and cozy without being heavy,” she says.
When decorating the Westin residence, Haugland was challenged by using all of the homeowner’s previous furniture in a smaller and more contemporary space. But by choosing less furniture and placing the pieces in the bright and airy condo (which characteristically already featured clean lines) amid new fabrics, the scale of the furniture shrank and created a more streamlined look. If big furniture has been a feature of your home, Haugland says you can still indulge in the oversize. “They’re still making sofas that fit at least three people,” she says. “But now with arms that aren’t as big and overstuffed.”
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