Finishing touches are the engaging, comforting, conversation-starting details that enhance, enliven, and transform a banal room into a room you love to relax in. As designers, we are passionate about creating interiors that tell a story to compliment each client’s individuality and style. Finishing touches help weave this story and often include—and are never limited to—ready-made and custom-made upholstered furniture, window treatments, floor coverings, antiques, and one of-a-kind pieces and an array of eye-catching accessories. As these elements are put in place, our relationship with the client becomes increasingly collaborative to produce the most stylish and personalized home possible.
Check out our five must-have finishing touches for your home:
• An art assemblage à la mode of the great Paris Salons. A salon-style assemblage is a classic, high-style way to display and feature your art collection as it grows over time. Compose your collection around a unifying element: all of the pieces may have a similar subject matter, color palate, frame finish, matte color – or – have nothing in common except their standing in contrast with those around them.
• Pillows to illustrate a color story. In lieu of matching pillows selected to provide symmetrical sparks of color—often described as “pops of color”—consider a more eclectic arrangement: choose pillows in an analogous range of colors in a variety of sizes, textures, and styles. Try pinks, oranges, and corals in an assortment of silks, linens, and wovens for play in texture, and place them in staggered gradient in size.
• Cream-colored or white fine-paper dust-jackets to your college textbooks and past-their-prime paperbacks. Clothe each book in custom covers, write their titles in silver or gold script on the spines, and display away—either clustered together, or intermixed with leather-bound volumes or glossy art books.
• Personal photographs or mementos framed in different sizes and orientations all in the same-style frame. Choose a horizontal 3x5, a vertical 4x6, a horizontal 5x7, and a horizontal 8x10—each in unembellished gold. Consider featuring a mix of black and white and color photos of family members, or a selection of bank notes from nations visited in the 90s or earlier.
• A scented candle infused with one of the underlying scents of the man or lady-of-the-house’s signature colognes. If he wears Tom Ford and she wears Chloe, both have hints of amber so, try for instance, Henri Bendel’s Amber candle.
Sarah Baynes Interior Design (sarahbaynesinteriordesign.com) is a full-service boutique interior design firm in New York, NY. Designer Sarah Baynes draws upon her passion for global affairs to curate interiors infused with Caribbean, French, and Indian influences – a synthesis of her studies and travels. The Sarah Baynes aesthetic is layered, evocative, and thoughtful, resultant in interiors that are effortless, multi-functional, and comfortably able to accommodate our clients’ lifestyles. The finished interior is a creative composition that inspires, energizes, and feels like home.
