Delightful Desks

We can't believe it is already "back to school" time. Seeing all the ads for school supplies and dorm accessories has made us think about that stylish yet functional part of nearly every home- the perfect desk area. Whether you use it for studying, blogging, or paying bills, it IS possible to have an office space in your home that looks fabulous.

Here are some inspiring desks!

Kelly Wearstler has toned down her signature look a bit for this study! We love the pair of bookshelves flanking the chest of drawers, and the desk centered in the room. Perfect!

We love the canopy and lantern Nick Olsen added to his fabulous NYC apartment. It looks great, and if you know Nick, you know he probably managed to do his (amazing) work on a budget!

Domino

What a fun splash of pink in this otherwise black-and-white space! We recognize the little ikea lamps (I think they are around $5!) on either side of the desk, and the hot pink chair is just so much fun!

Athena Says, photo courtesy of Elements of Style

Gray and white! We love the moulding here that really frames the desk area perfectly! And this desk has to be one of our favorites, with the curved lucite legs. We would guess that it's from The Paris Apartment. Not alot of storage, but with laptops and jump drives, who needs file drawers anymore?!

Steven Miller Design

Sawhorse desks are popping up everywhere! And we love the unexpected pairing of the clean lines of this modern desk with a traditional, dark wood chair. The pink walls and inspiration board make the space so pretty and feminine. And of course we love the oushak!

Ruthie Sommers



Love the color of the walls in this cozy little corner!

Rayman Boozer, photo courtesy of Style Court


This West Elm Parsons desk is one of our favorites! We love how it is paired here with the ghost chair, zebra rug, and pair of lamps!

Mary McGee, photo courtesy of Decor Pad


For a masculine office, Nate Berkus just nails it! Once again, we love the sawhorse table and the chrome chippendale chair- looks great on the striped rug.

Nate Berkus

Lavendar walls! I'm not sure if I have the guts to do this in my house, but it looks fab here! This room is so elegant (and functional).

Elle Decor

I would happily pay my bills (okay, maybe "happily" is a stretch) in this bright, cheery space! Love the yellow lucite chair, lampshade, and bulletin board. And take note of the silver mint julep cup turned vase (or pencil holder)!

House Beautiful



We are obsessed with Molly Sims' house that was in InStyle a few years back. How fab is the cluster of shiny black framed mirrors over her desk paired with her black jet crystal chandelier? And we love the beautiful wallpaper.

Designed by Kishani Perera, seen in InStyle


This feminine office is our favorite of the bunch! We love the blue walls and white desk, contrasted with the black and white photos. The lamps are gorgeous, and the shades mirror the chinoiserie style of the beautiful desk.

Mary McDonald for Domino


Animal prints really work in a study! We love these gray and white zebra curtains with the gray chippendale desk chair and parsons table. We think you could easily copy this desk chair with this guy and a can of spray paint.

House Beautiful, photo courtesy of Newlywed Diaries


Like the rest of her apartment, we love former Domino editor Tori Mellott's fabulous little office nook! The splash of pink on her saarinen chair, and the pair of lamps on either side of the desk is such an elegant look.

Tori Mellott



Love the idea of elegantly framing children's artwork and hanging over a desk. And this lamp is just the perfect periwinkle blue!

I cannot for the life of me remember where I found this photo. Does anyone know? Thanks!!


Charlotte Moss's desk is definitely over the top but fabulous. What an amazing art collection! I'm not sure I would take it quite this far, but it definitely works for her. And we are really loving art hung salon-style over wallpaper!

Charlotte Moss

Love the yellow and turquoisey blue in this Celerie Kemble designed office. Such a great color combo that we don't see too often, and the vintage feel of this room is so classic.

Celerie Kemble


How gorgeous is this formal-feeling desk area?! The extravagant gold leaf detailing on the desk, the leopard chair, and the zebra rug- sounds like an over-the-top combo, but it really works! And it's refreshing to see an old-fashioned Rolodex every now and then.

Amy Fine Collins in Elle Decor

Another gorgeous chrome sawhorse desk. We love the navy inspiration board (I guess that is the fancy new name for "bulletin board") and the orange geometric curtains. The green tufted chair with a little bolster neck is fab too!

Amanda Nisbet

Which one is your favorite?!

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MoS Obsessions: Vintage Tole Chandeliers

The Matters of Style girls are obsessed with vintage tole chandeliers! Tole objects are made of metal which is hand-painted. It was originally a folk art, but it evolved into something more stylish and really epitomizes classic Palm Beach style to us (think 1950's and 1960's). We love hunting for fabulous vintage tole pieces at antique shops, and in fact, eBay is one of your best resources!

How pretty is this Celerie Kemble office? We love her use of turquoise in this room, particularly on the chandelier. It's such a nice way to add some vintage style to this room.

Celerie Kemble


And of course, this breakfast room designed by Celerie demonstrates the beauty of tole chandeliers. We are in love with the gorgeous painted fruit and flowers on the chandelier.

Celerie Kemble

This bedroom blends not only a tole chandelier, but also a fabulous tole canopy bed. We like the simplicity of the chandelier in contrast to the ornate leafy detail of the bed.

Celerie Kemble


We never dreamed we would like black kitchen walls, but Ruthie Sommers knows how to make it work! The white tole chandelier really pops against the walls, and the turquoise door really brightens up the space!

Ruthie Sommers

Another design of Ruthie's, we love the green trellis pattern on the ceiling with this hot pink tole pagoda chandelier. We would love to see more of this room!
Ruthie Sommers


Tole isn't just for breakfast rooms and bedrooms. It is such an elegant look in this Celerie Kemble-designed NYC store.

Celerie Kemble

How pretty is this white tole chandelier for a dining room? The flowers are feminine, but painting it all-white definitely gives it a modern edge. We'd probably paint the walls a bolder color so it stands out even more!

Annechovie

And the classic tole pineapple chandelier. We love everything about this room and the fabulous vintage style that this chandelier adds. This really says Palm Beach style to us!

Peacock Feathers

For a more soothing look, how pretty is this bathroom? This chandelier may not be a vintage piece, but it does do a good job reflecting the traditional style of a tole piece, and it definitely adds interest to this bathroom!

Decor Pad

We probably aren't brave enough to create an all-white room like this one, but it is really gorgeous! I'm sure this chandelier did not originate as an all-white piece, but we love how an easy coat of paint really brings it up to date!

Decor Pad


For a completely different style of tole chandelier, this green and gold fixture is elegant and seems to have a Swedish influence. It really works in this dressy room (and we love the huge mirror behind the sofa which adds that extra layer of dimension to the room).

Veranda


We wish we had a better picture of this fabulous Ruthie Sommers- designed nursery in the Domino book. The pink and green vintage tole chandelier is absolutely perfect in this room. We definitely are on the look-out for a tole chandelier for a MoS nursery.

Domino (Ruthie Sommers)

And if you want to buy a tole chandelier yourself...

This tole pagoda la tern is so pretty! It could really look great in a number of different rooms, regardless of your style.

Shades of Light $225

We dream of one day owning a Niermann Weeks chandelier or lamp. We can't find (or even guess) the price of this little guy...

Niermann Weeks

And for true vintage finds, here are some of our eBay favorites. Just type "tole chandelier" into the search page, and you will find lots of options! There is a big price range, but a fabulous tole chandelier can definitely be found for around $200.

How fun are these colors? This chandelier needs to make a dramatic statement in a large room.

ebay

We are in love with this fabulous palm tree-inspired chandelier. We think this would look perfect in our favorite Jonathan Adler bedroom.

eBay

This green and white would be so perfect in a small bathroom or a nursery. The miniblinds on the other hand...

eBay

This white pagoda chandelier is one of our favorites. Another blogger found this on eBay for a song (around $80 I believe), while an identical version was pushing $2,000 on 1st Dibs.

eBay


We love the lilly detailing on this fab chandelier. We could do without the fake drippy candles, but those are super easy to swap out.

Hidden Valley Antiques

And this brightly colored chandelier is so much fun! We think you definitely could use it in a way that it's not so Brady Bunch-looking as it is in this photo against the stark black background. Maybe we would paint it white, or who knows, maybe we would leave the colorful daisies!

eBay

What do you think about tole? Outdated, or chic and stylish?

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DIY Turquoise Tole Chandelier

We have posted in the past about our love for vintage tole.  Since then, I've kept my eyes open for tole chandeliers here and there, and I now have them in my breakfast room, baby boy's nursery, and most recently, in my entryway. 

This Ruthie Sommers kitchen is the perfect study of contrasts- black v. white v. turquoise.  Vintage v. modern.  Form v. function.  The solid white tole chandelier is a fun current twist on the classic 1960's style.  It pops perfectly against the black walls, contrasted with the turquoise door.

Ruthie Sommers

Turquoise and tole are a beautiful combination in this Massucco Warner Miller bedroom that has been all over the blogosphere recently.  This isn't the best camera angle to show the detail of the white tole chandelier, but it really stands out against the turquoise wall.

Massucco Warner Miller

Back to my entryway...  Even though I painstakingly painted stripes all over my walls, I have been a little bored with the space.  The first room you see when you enter a home always makes a lasting impression.  Save the storage benches, boot trays, and coat hooks for the back door, if possible. 

I thought a little pop of color, in the form of a tole chandelier, could be just what my entry needed.  You can usually find a good selection of tole chandeliers on eBay and sometimes even on Craigslist. They were popular in the 1960's (check out the fab tole bedroom lamps in our post on Tom Ford's A Single Man). Lucky enough for the tole lovers out there, most people today prefer brushed nickel, so it's possible to find tole fixtures for around $100 or so.

The last time we were at the beach, I stopped by Hungryneck Antique Mall in Mt. Pleasant.  Although I've passed by it a hundred times, I had never stopped in.  I will admit I was expecting Hungryneck to be like Sleepy Poet, and frankly, there is no comparison.  I was hoping that since it was just outside Charleston, it would be full of cast-off fabulous shell mirrors and faux bamboo tables, but that just wasn't the case.  If you are driving by on 17, check it out, but to be completely candid I don't think it's worth a special trip.

That said, while I was there I did spot this tole chandelier hanging next to a pink felt cowboy hat.  It was marked $95, but everything in that booth was 50% off.  Even the cowboy hat.

It was off-white, which is typical of vintage tole chandeliers, but it's not too exciting.

You can see the leafy details here.

It was a rainy day at the beach, and I needed a project, so I decided to paint.

When I was debating what color to paint it, I couldn't get Ruthie's turquoise out of my head.  So I headed to Lowe's and bought some paint.  I decided on Valspar Aqua Rapids.  For a project this small, you only need to buy a $2 sample of paint.  The downside to samples is that they nearly always come in flat finish only, but an easy tip is just spray your object with a coat of clear gloss (found in the spray paint section) after the paint has dried, and you'll have a nice glossy finish!

I used a sponge brush to get the color as even as possible and avoid paint strokes.  As I've said before, spray painting is the easiest way to get an even finish, but your colors are really limited with spray paint.  So the next best thing for a project like this is to use a sponge brush.

My sweet husband helped me hang the chandelier last night after work.  I took his picture, but I guess he's not quite ready for MoS fame yet:).

And the finished product!

I like how it pops against the stripes!

A little more...

The whole look!  You lose a bit of the detail from this far away, but when you come in the door you can really see the leaves and beautiful turned accents.

So what do you think?  Are you ready to trade in that brushed nickel for some vintage tole?

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