Gold metallic accents add warmth, light and elegance to a room. While some people are just fine with ornate gold furnishings and accents that rival those of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles, others shy away from adding gold accents to their interiors for fear of overdoing it.
There is, indeed, a fine line between the right and wrong ways to add gold to your living spaces so these 10 ideas will help you to do it with grace and style.
10 Ideas for Adding Gold to Any Living Space
- Accent pillows. If you’re wary of using gold, start small and then add piece by piece. Accent pillows are a good place to start because if you don’t like the look, you can always switch the pillow shams. In this contemporary living room design, which lends itself towards shabby-chic, we used gold-accented pillows on the couch to help increase the impact of the chic.
- Use gold upholstery. You can find beautiful upholstery fabric in various shades of gold as well as varying degrees of shimmer. Use an old chair(s) or couch, or look for a used one with good bones, and reupholster it. It won’t overpower the space and provides the foundation for adding other gold elements as you want to.
- Picture frames. Gold gilded frames will help your art to stand out from the wall but also adds a hint of shimmer and formality.
- Gold art. You can purchase a 3-D wall hanging that is already gold, or spray paint one yourself. Either way, you end up with an eye catching piece that can stand alone or complement other gold accents in the room.
- Go(ld) all out. For the middle of the list, we recommend embracing your gold inspiration and designing an all-gold room. If you haven’t done it before, you may want to enlist the assistance of a professional interior designer to make sure all of your golden hues work together. The result can be stunning.
- Mix it with silver. Gold and silver can be blended well when done with foresight. Metallic furnishings are popular in other cultures so finding the balance between gold and silver in my clients’ living room allowed them to display a variety of pieces they had collected on their travels without clashing or becoming too “blingy.”
- Use it in an all-white space. If you are taking the plunge and designing an all-white space, gold is the ideal accent. It adds warmth and enhances the ethereal quality inherent in all-white designs.
- On the ceiling. As long as we’re discussing the ethereal, take a look at this gorgeous formal living room that used metallic gold stencils on the ceiling, along with an absolutely unique and perfectly ornate light fixture. The blue backdrop only adds to the appeal. Even without the tasteful gold accents in the room below, this ceiling would be worth emulating.
- Light fixtures. And that brings us to light fixtures; because gold reflects light with a warm glow, it makes a desirable finish for lamps, chandeliers and other light fixtures.
- Highlight wall trim and molding. Take any crown molding or decorative wall trim and paint it gold and you will see it in a whole new way. The gold is rich and lustrous and it also helps to highlight the light and shadow of the patterned wall trim relief so it is better displayed. This works even when there isn’t a single additional gold accent in sight.