Florals, Stripes, and Unruled Mixing

In some ways our living room design is kind of sparse. The walls are white, the furniture is solid neutral colors, and I try to leave open space wherever possible. In other ways, our living room design is kind of a lot. Double book shelves that are overflowing, lots of black lines and angles between the mirror, tv, and gallery wall. There's always a variety of textiles through fuzzy blankets, bold colored pillows, and whatever stray jacket made its way onto the couch from downstairs. But I think that my favorite part of our living room design, and perhaps the busiest part of our living room design, are the floral curtains juxtapositioned against the striped rug. 

The rug lands somewhere in the middle of the minimalist/maximalist Venn diagram and reminds me of brutalist architecture in its rigid lines and gray tones. Like we've inlayed cement into the floor. The alternating cream stripes, though, warm it up a little. The curtains on the other had are warm, busy, organic feeling, and very pink. I did not purchase these two elements at the same time. In fact, the pink curtains were stored away when I brought the striped rug home. I'm glad that the curtains made their way back out to surprise me with how happy they look next to the rug. 

Were pattern mixing rules a thing at one time? I believe that they were. Large scale patterns paired with a small scale patterns only. Similar color story required. It had to look 100% intentional so that nobody thought you were getting dressed in the dark. But what if our best pattern mixing isn't intentional? This wasn't. And I'm not confident that I could have "intentioned" it to be this good.

(Rug from Ikea, Curtains from Anthropologie)