24 Mar Hot Outdoor Summer Fabric Trends for 2014
Update your outdoor space to make the most of spring and summer living. Refreshing alfresco living spaces like the deck, porch and patio, offer great returns for your decorating buck since these hot spots enhance your home’s seasonal appeal, comfort and value. Want instant impact? Revitalize your outdoor space with spring/summer 2014’s lushest outdoor upholstery and curtain styles and fabric trends. It’s as easy as 1-2-3.
1. Re-upholster your outdoor furniture in a crisp new outdoor fabric.
2. Upgrade last year’s indoor/outdoor drapery with this year’s on-trend new patterns and prints.
3. Add accents with toss cushions and tabletop accessories that pick up the style of the new fabrics.
TOP OUTDOOR SUMMER FABRIC TRENDS FOR 2014
Vacation brights!
Create a dream staycation venue with cheerful, vibrant hues, especially blues. (Think: Rio or Miami Beach!) Retire your floral or stripe upholstery and refresh your outdoor furniture in bright, beachy solids, or get daring with tribal prints, or Art Deco, or modern-geometric prints.
If you prefer to re-upholster in classic neutrals, choose grey, neutral browns, or white, as they look best with brights. Add excitement via the strategic use of colourful accessories: pillows, area rugs, throws, tabletop accessories and dinnerware.
Large-scale prints
As with vacation-bright fabrics, oversize print fabrics have a dramatic look-at-me effect. You can use this to your advantage on large cushions, but most dramatically on outdoor curtains and drapery.
Oceanic inspiration, exotica (including contemporary chinoiserie, and geometrics are all big, and big on colour too, it goes without saying.
Coastal chic
Not sold on brights? Use high contrast instead. The classic white (or cream) and navy theme is on-trend, and supported with coastal motif-prints (look for anchors, sea life and knots.
Native influences
On the opposite style extreme, consider one of 2014’s surprise trends: Native American-inspired prints and patterns in a palette of sun-washed hues: earth and clay, water, grass, pale mustards. Use textured solids on upholstery, to create a rustic-neutral base, then rely on geometrics, diamond motifs and kilims: it’s a fashion trend that has moved to decorating indoors – and then out – with (understated) panache.
