Geeking Out Your Interior Design

Choosing wall colors, cabinet styles, furniture, decor, and making it all work together is hard enough. What about trying to define and capture your own style? Sure, you can cruise Pinterest for hours, days, years and save a million amazing ideas, but how do you take that collection and make it your own?

There’s a reason those Instagram pictures and Pinterest pins of farmhouse, boho, shabby chic home decor have thousands of shares and saves. They’re beautiful. They feel intentional and put together. Personally, I’m obsessed with many of those and strive to make my house look like the pictures I see online, but in reality, I know my house will never look like those. This might be for a few reasons. First of all, those pictures are staged and heavily edited. I know no one who has a family, especially kids, can live in a house that looks like that 24/7 and stay sane. I also know myself well enough to know that I always try to recreate the home decorating styles I see online but my personal style frequently creates an odd mashup that might not be Insta-worthy.

Decor examples from Pinterest (could not trace original author) using a neutral palette with some contrasting patterns or color. *Not my photos*

The common thing about most of those extremely popular decor styles is that most of them are based on a neutral palette. The main base color is usually a stark, clean white, and the majority of the large accent pieces are neutral browns, tans, and creams. Some designs incorporate black as the contrasting color, while some even go as far as to use a single, non-neutral color as an accent.

As much as I would love the look of a neutral palette, I tend to require a little more color in my personal designs. I do my best not to go overboard with color. A little goes a long way. That rule applies to all of the suggestions further in this post. That being said, some bold color choices can make for a playful and interesting aesthetic. Below, I have included a picture of the dining room wall I painted in my last house. I chose a bright teal because it is my favorite color, and I wanted to create a unique “pop” of color among our mostly neutral paint palette. Adding fun, geeky decor to your home is a nice way to hint at your style, but adding just the right color to a wall can brighten your day and put a smile on your face when you look at it.

A bold teal color I chose for my dining room wall. This became my favorite wall in the house because it breathed life into the otherwise neutral color palette and gave a beautiful color contrast to any artwork placed on it.

Getting to design your own interior space can be overwhelming, but it can also be freeing. Take into account the things you’re interested in. If that happens to be neutral, pattern heavy, boho-inspired, green spaces, then good news- there’s tons of inspiration for you online! But if you’re more like me and appreciate something a little more unique and a lot more geeky then I have some wonderful resources and ideas for you ahead.

“Our family is full of geeks. I can trace it directly to my geeky parents.”

Our family is full of geeks. I can trace it directly to my geeky parents. My husband and I have definitely passed it on to our kids. Because of this, I love finding ways to incorporate our personal, geeky style into our interior decoration. It can be tricky if you’re hoping to stay away from in-your-face, obvious fandom references. I have taken the time to compile several extremely geeky color palettes (found at the end of this article) that reflect different fandoms. These colors can be easily incorporated into your designs with subtle tricks such as decorative throw pillows, wall art, and thoughtfully placed knickknacks or more visible, yet aesthetically pleasing, hints like full colored walls, bedding, or murals.

These ideas should be used in small amounts. Too many of these ideas in one place can get a little too busy and quickly become tacky. So, try to spread the geekery throughout your house. It will be more like an Easter egg hunt for your guests to discover and less like a visually overwhelming mishmash from wall to wall. One way to hide geeky clues in plain sight is to add home decor items like the ones below. (All items can be found at ThinkGeek.) These items can easily be accents in rooms where they blend in with other regular decor. The red clock could be used in a farmhouse style kitchen as an interesting color contrast piece. The towels could be used as decorative hand towels, placed on top of solid color towels with similar palette. The constellation light could be a sweet feature on a guest room nightstand to brighten someone’s night.

Small decor pieces like these can easily be worked in to existing decor schemes to add geeky flair. (These items can be found on ThinkGeek.com)

Here is an example of geeky decor that can be added to even the most elegant dining room. These Harry Potter themed plate and flatware sets (also found at ThinkGeek) are a great way to hint at something without being too obvious. Don’t even mention their theme to your guests and see if they discover it for themselves!

Beautiful Harry Potter dinnerware and flatware can be an elegant way to geek up your dining space. (These items can be found on ThinkGeek.com)

If you happen to have a home theater or a movie viewing area, you can always find beautifully done, artistic posters that celebrate some of your favorite movies. The posters below are just an example of the great ones you can find on the internet. Nowadays, there is such a vast collection of artwork like these that you can use to hint at your fandoms rather than being blatant with an obvious movie poster. Take it a step further and put these artistic posters in wooden poster frames before hanging them. It will create an even more sophisticated and intentional look for your media room.

These posters would be beautiful in a family room or theater. What better way to showcase your favorite geeky movies than with these works of art? (These posters can be found on ThinkGeek.com)

Bedding doesn’t have to be boring. Adding some geeky bedding to your boudoir can allow you to sneak in some geek while allowing the rest of the room to be more neutral. Here are two good examples of geeky bedding that aren’t too flashy or juvenile. You could also carefully add in a themed pillow or two, nestled in with some matching, solid colored throw pillows.

These bedding sets are a fun way to use subtle, geeky prints in the bedroom. The example on the left is a Star Wars theme with TIE Fighters mixed in with the geometric pattern. The example on the right is a damask print using Harry Potter artwork for a more elegant approach. (Both sets found on ThinkGeek.com)

A bedroom is also a great place to make use of the fandom-based color palettes. For example, if you’re looking to hint at what Harry Potter house you belong to, you can always choose a color from the House’s palette, paint your walls with it and use the House’s secondary color as an accent in the decor. Here, I have provided two examples where I used the main color from one represented Hogwarts’ house (Ravenclaw in one example and Slytherin in another) and used the room’s decor as the secondary colors used in the Harry Potter movies. This is a neat way to use bold color schemes without overwhelming the visual aesthetics of the room. The remaining colors should stay neutral to keep the room from feeling too visually “heavy.”

Using Sherwin-Williams online color sample generator, I created two examples of room decor using Harry Potter House colors as wall paint and the secondary color in the room decor.

Using bold colors in your house doesn’t have to be scary. In our last house, my husband and I decided to incorporate our geeky personal touches into some of the most visible places. We researched the exact blue color of the TARDIS from Doctor Who so that we could paint our front door to match it. We wanted to make our front door look as much like the TARDIS as possible without being too obvious. So, we chose a door with windows at the top and used the bright blue paint color to give people that “hmm, this reminds me of something…” feeling every time they looked at it. We actually ended up loving the bright blue color so much that we decided to paint our powder room with the same color. It turned out great! It made that little room feel special and different without being out of place. Check out the photo of our TARDIS blue bathroom below.

We used Sherwin Williams 6811 – Honorable Blue as the paint color for our front door and powder room. This color was the closest color matching the TARDIS blue from Doctor Who.

Wall art can be a tricky decorating tool. So much of the wall art that you can buy in stores looks like stuff you see on the walls of a hospital or dentist’s office. Finding artwork that adds a little bit of geekery into your decor without being blatant can be tough too. Here are a couple examples I found that could work in a pinch. Below, you can see the first is a set of prints based on the art found in the newest Zelda video game, Breath of the Wild. That game has amazing visuals, but I liked that this art set was simple and graphic. Add these into a boho-feel room, and they’ll blend right in. You could even convince your guests that you purchased them abroad, haha! The second piece of art is a clever take on a classic piece of artwork. I love this one because it has a lot of color and visual interest. You could pull colors from this painting to add into your room in other decor pieces- pillows, lamp shades, rugs, etc. to bring the whole room together and keep this painting from standing out too much. Both of these examples have a lot of versatility in helping you visually pull a room together with simple decor using either style or color scheme.

Two great examples of artwork you can hang and enjoy in your home. Guests might not even notice the geeky hints!

And don’t forget about decorating outside your house! The front porch is the first thing people see when they come to visit you. If you’re like me and enjoy letting guests know a little about you before coming into your house, a geeky doormat is a great addition. To accent our Doctor Who door color, we found a great doormat that read “It’s Bigger on the Inside.” This was such a fun conversation piece when other “Whovians” would visit our home and recognize the geeky decor hints. Especially since our house really did look bigger on the inside!

Overall, there are a lot of possibilities and ways you can hint at your fandoms with your interior decor. It takes a light, creative touch. This is a subject I could write a whole book on if I had the time! And no, I don’t make any money off of my recommendation of ThinkGeek, but if you’re looking for anything from decor to gifts to clothes that are geeky in nature, that’s the place to go.

As promised, here are my fandom-based color palettes below. Each color has been assigned a hexadecimal color code (or hex code) that can be found at the bottom of the palette. You can read my previous post where I outline several websites I use when creating color palettes like these. These hex codes are used on several of the sites listed in my post to correspond to specific colors. With these hex codes and the websites I provide, you should be able to replicate these colors in other places for your own use.

Feel free to refer to these palettes when needing geeky color combinations, but please cite me as author. I put in a lot of time and effort developing these collections. Also, I would love to hear any suggestions you have of other fandoms for which I should make color palettes. If I use your suggestion, I will credit you in the next color palette post!

A few of my other favorite fandoms. The Harry Potter colors were borrowed from somewhere else (author unknown) because I felt that they were already pretty accurate. The rest of the palettes are my creations, most sampled directly from pictures of these fandoms.

5 Best Online Resources for Color Palette Creation

Over the years, I’ve collected many reliable resources for color sampling, color matching, and palette creation. Deciding colors for your home or design projects can be overwhelming when you don’t have somewhere to start. As a graphic designer, these resources are invaluable to me, but I have found even more uses for them as I help design our dream home. Here is the list I have compiled of the most useful online resources for any of your color projects.

Here’s a screen capture of an Encycolorpedia color page. This is only a small sample of what each page details for any color.

Encycolorpedia is a website that I came upon accidentally one night and has since become one of my go to sites for color information. I usually deal in hex codes (six digit codes, using letters and numbers, that represent each color a computer can understand) for colors in my graphic design, or Pantone colors (a collection of color swatches widely used and recognized over a large variety of color-based industries).

Encycolorpedia works like a color search engine where you can input a hex code, Pantone code, color name, or paint name/code, and it finds information on that color for you. Even if you only have one of those designations for your color, it will find and display all of the others PLUS many other pieces of information about your color all in one place. It finds things like the shades and tints of your original color, different color codes from various paint companies, and what your color looks like when seen with different types of colorblindness, just to name a few. I’m totally blown away by the amount of information Encycolorpedia can find about a single color. I’ve already found so many uses for this website, I’m amazed it’s free.

Paletton is another neat website that offers you a color wheel with movable sliders giving you complete control in finding color palettes based on monochromatic, adjacent, triad, tetrad, or freestyle (2, 3, or 4 colors) colors. Each color palette then gives you tinted and shaded versions of each color, plus the individual color codes for each color. This resource is great for choosing colors that can work well together based on color theory. You can also randomize a color palette or give it a few parameters from which to find you different palette options. I’m so excited to use this site more and learn all of its capabilities.

This is the layout for the Paletton website. The lefthand color wheel has several interactive sliders that give you control over your color picking.

Sherwin-Williams also has a great site for choosing colors. Of course, you’re restricted to their list of paint colors, but their list is pretty extensive. You’re bound to find something very close to what you’re looking for. But if you’re worried they won’t have the perfect color for you, don’t! Sherwin Williams offers a paint color matching service. Take a swatch from any other paint brand to them and they can match it perfectly using their signature paint recipe.

Their site offers a large, easy-to-navigate color palette, and each color gives you a visual example of what that color looks like in a fairly realistic setting. You can change the image used in this visual example, you can even use your own image, and the computer will do its best to superimpose the chosen color on your image. This feature works fairly well, but the more busy and complicated your image is, the harder it is to get the computer to put the color in the right place. Each color also comes with suggestions for similar colors, as well as suggestions for complementary color palettes. This resource is great for helping you find colors that work well in your home. Check out how beautiful their color palette looks below.

The Sherwin Williams color palette allows you to click any color to learn more about it or get access to paint swatch information.

Pinterest is such a great idea resource. It’s such an easy way to find thousands of ideas for nearly anything. The fact that it’s so visual makes finding color palettes that fit your interests fast and simple. There are board after board of color combinations to choose from. The best thing about these color boards is that most of them have been compiled by real people. There is something special and beautiful about the amazing color combinations people create. Sure, a computer can give you an accurate color palette based on color theory, but the human eye, personal experiences, and aesthetic preferences make for some very beautiful combinations. Just try searching for “color palette” in the search bar or click the link I have provided to see my personal collection of color palettes. Below, I’ve included a visual example of how you can collect color palettes on Pinterest. Just scrolling through hundreds of these beautiful palettes will spark so much creativity in you!

A snapshot of some of the color palettes I keep on one of my idea boards on Pinterest.
An example of how AskVal picks colors from your pins.

My last color resource is one that works in combination with Pinterest. It’s called AskVal. Valspar is a specific paint brand that developed a neat app that takes any of your Pinterest pins and turns it into a color palette. It can even sample colors from a whole board to give you a color palette. This is helpful if you’ve found a specific pin or board that you love but don’t have access to any color sampling programs like Photoshop. AskVal will give you five sampled colors, one of which is adjustable with an “eyedropper” tool, allowing you to sample a color by clicking anywhere on the image. Then each color on the palette gives you details about what paint brands have a close match, the paint color designation number, and which retailer carries that paint. This app is a lot of fun to play with. It is fairly intelligent in its color choices, which can save you a lot of guesswork.

Altogether, these resources create a powerhouse of color choice, color matching, color theory, and palette creation. These sites are great to have bookmarked in your favorites for those times when you need help picking out colors and don’t want to stand around fumbling with paint chips in the hardware store.

Frosted Glass Painted Dishes

This craft was somewhat of an experiment for me. I’ve made these before but this time around I was able to take the original idea and put my own twist on it to make it unique. I found the original craft tutorial on Pinterest years ago. I would love to credit the original idea-maker, but with Pinterest, that’s hard to do. This craft technique is so versatile. Once you master the original method, you can use this on various materials and experiment with different colors and painting styles.

The original crafter’s idea was to use craft glue mixed with food coloring to create a frosted “sea” glass effect when painted on glass pieces. That method does work and yields a pretty decent result. In my first attempt at this craft, I followed the directions given and was able to reproduce the sea glass effect, but I wanted to try something a little different this time.

Water Lilies, Green Reflection, 1914-17 by Claude Monet

I took the original idea a step further and used the same materials with a different process to create a more impressionistic look. Impressionism is a style of painting (typically done in oil paints) made famous by artists like Claude Monet. Typically, impressionistic paintings use long, visible brush strokes and muted, pastel-like colors, blended together to achieve a soft texture. Here is an example of a well known impressionistic painting by Monet called, Water Lillies, painted in the early 1900’s.

PAINT OPTIONS

The consumer paint industry has come a long way in the last 10 years. It is now possible to go to most superstores (like Walmart or Fred Meyer) and find a spray paint aisle and various specialty craft supplies. In the spray paint aisle, you can usually find paints of different sheens and textures. One novel invention of recent years is “sea glass” finish spray paint. This spray paint has an ultra-matte texture that adheres to glass perfectly, giving it a look similar to a piece of glass textured by tumbling beach waves and rough sand.

These sea glass spray paints work so well that they almost avoid the need for alternatives like glue and food coloring. But if you’re looking for convenience and have glue and food coloring on hand, it will do in a pinch. Plus, spray paint can be expensive if you’re wanting to use multiple colors. Using glue and food coloring is more flexible and easier on your wallet than canned spray paints. I was able to mix 4 different colors initially and 2 shades from leftover colors just from one bottle of glue and a box of colorings.

MATERIALS

Paper to protect your work surface

1 bottle of white craft glue

Desired food coloring(s)

Toothpicks or skewers (the thicker the better)

Tape (any kind will do)

Plastic wrap (static cling plastic food covering)

Various glass pieces (cups, bowls, plates, candle sticks, candle holders, etc.)

2-part Epoxy (make sure it lists “glass” as a surface it adheres to)

1 or 2 paint brushes or sponge brushes

Small dishes or cups for mixing glue and colors (at least 1 for each color you plan to make)

Matte finish sealing top coat (either in spray form or paint-on form like Mod Podge)

dish soap and white vinegar for sticker removal (if necessary)

DISHES

I made it a point to do this craft as inexpensively as possible. You don’t need to spend a lot on this project to get a good result. I got my glass pieces from the dollar store. The dollar store commonly has a dishware aisle that has various glass plates and bowls, most with interesting designs that look good when accentuated with colored glue. Make sure to look also for the home decor section of the dollar store for candle sticks of various heights and shapes. These can be glued to the bottom of the bowls, plates, or cups to offset their heights and give an eclectic mix-and-match look. You can also find many of these similar glass pieces at thrift stores but may end up paying a little more for them. I usually play it safe by shopping for them at the dollar store.

Glass pieces I found at my Dollar Store. All together less than $10.

NOT-SO-STICKY SITUATION

Before you begin this project, you’ll want to remove all the price tags and stickers from your glass pieces. If you have stubborn stickers that leave behind a residue like I had, you’ll want to try my easy removal method. Fill a sink or large tub with hot water and place all glass pieces in the water so that the stickers are completely submerged. While filling sink/tub with water, add a bit of dish soap so as to create a decent amount of bubbles. Then add about ¼ – ½ cup of white vinegar to the water. Let the glass pieces sit in the water overnight, if possible. The longer they sit, the easier the stickers will come off. Once they have soaked, simply peel off the stickers and wipe off any residue left behind with a soft cloth.

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Cover your work space with paper or plastic to protect the surface.
  • Using your tape and toothpicks/skewers, tape skewers to your paper work surface in arrangements that run perpendicular to the lip of each glass piece being painted (see IMG 2 & 3) so as to keep them from sticking to the paper once they are painted with glue mixture. The tape keeps skewers from moving when the glass pieces are picked up.
IMG 2: arrange toothpicks/skewers under glass pieces, IMG 3: tape down toothpicks to prevent them from moving, IMG 4: choose your colors.
  • Using the desired number of mixing containers per number of colors, divide most or all of the bottle of glue between them (see IMG 5).
  • Add about 4 drops of food coloring to each of the divided amounts of glue (see IMG 6).
  • Mix the food coloring into the glue. I used one of the thick toothpicks I had available to mix with because I could throw it away and use a new one for each color. You could use the paintbrush and wash between colors or use a kitchen knife that you thoroughly clean off afterwards (see IMG 7).
  • Once, color is thoroughly mixed into glue, cover each dish with plastic wrap to keep the glue from drying out (see IMG 8).
IMG 5: divide glue, IMG 6: add food coloring drops, IMG 7: mix glue and coloring, IMG 8: cover colored glues with plastic wrap.
  • Add a small amount of colored glue to your paintbrush and paint a thin layer on desired glass pieces. Try to keep each layer of colored glue very thin (see IMG 9). Once painted, the glue will try to pool and drip if too much is added at one time. Thin application allows for the glue to dry faster, creating a more even layer and no drip marks (see IMG 10). But don’t worry if your first couple layers look blotchy, each added layer will even out the color application more and more.
  • **Make sure to paint only the outside of the glass pieces that would come in contact with food. Craft paint and food coloring are usually non-toxic but most sealants are not and you would not want that to come in contact with foods. You can also choose not to spray a sealant on at the end if you’re worried about it coming in contact with food. But be aware that the dried glue surface would be easier to scratch without a sealant top coat.**
  • After the first colored glue layer dries completely, add additional layers while allowing it to dry completely in between. I usually let my painted pieces sit overnight (see IMG 11) to dry but this can take a long time with multiple layers. 1-2 hours between layer applications should be sufficient. If at any time you’re unhappy with the color or application of your layers, you can always wash off the colored glue. Craft glue is water soluble and should wash off with minimal scrubbing. Then just start the layer application process over again once the piece is completely dry.
  • To achieve an impressionistic look similar to what I did, layer complimentary colors with dry brush strokes. Melt colors into each other using an ombré effect. I chose to paint my pieces to resemble flowers, blending a darker green to a lighter green on the candlestick bases to imitate flower stems and using darker colors on top of lighter colors to give the impression of flower petals.
  • Once you have achieved the desired color effects, decide which pieces will need to be glued together.
  • In the areas where two pieces will need to be glued together, colored glue layers will need to be removed. This is easy to do with with a wet towel, rubbing gently in a circular motion until only clear glass is revealed.
IMG 9: keep paint layers thin to avoid drips, IMG 10: this is an example of a layer that is too thick causing drips and an uneven coat, IMG 11: Let your layers dry thoroughly between coats.
  • In a small disposable cup, bowl, or dish, mix the two-part epoxy together with a toothpick/skewer and gently apply to the cleaned glass pieces to be glued together. Less is best in this case so as not to detract from the look of your pieces with globs of glue. The best way I’ve found to do this is to apply epoxy only along the side with the thinnest edge and then place it upside down on the piece you’re gluing it to. This keeps the glue from dripping down the piece while drying. **Make sure all pieces are sitting on a completely flat surface to ensure that pieces do not slip off center while epoxy is drying.**
IMG 12: I found this two-part epoxy glue to work really well for projects like this, IMG 13: this stick is perfect for mixing the two-part epoxy and actually came in the epoxy package, IMG 14: the plastic shell from the epoxy package works well as a mixing dish.
  • Let epoxy-glued pieces dry completely before moving on. My epoxy claimed to have a 5 minute drying time, but I left them drying overnight to ensure a strong bond.
  • Once glue has completely dried, take pieces, work surface cover, and toothpicks outside (for proper ventilation) and spray the painted surfaces with a top coat sealant. This may take a couple layers to achieve completely even coverage. If possible, spray pieces outdoors on a sunny day. The sun helps the sealant dry quicker and more evenly.
IMG 15: arrange a spray area in the sun to maximize drying times, IMG 16: spray multiple, light coats for even application rather than one heavy coat.

FLEXIBILITY

This craft can be used in many ways. I used this method to decorate glass candy dishes for Easter, using pastel colors and flowery designs  for a spring effect. You could also decorate dishes for other holidays or even paint the outside of clear ornaments to hang on a Christmas tree. Some craft stores also sell glass blocks that can be filled with lights or keepsakes, and this craft method could be used to decorate the outside of those. Please leave a comment below and let me know how you’ve used this method to create something fabulous!

My finished products!