Buy what you love, not what matches

According to designers, eclectic design is "in."

"Today's homeowners like the eclectic look because they feel it adds character," said Anne Hildreth, a designer in the Vernon Hills Steinhafels furniture store. "They don't want to go in and buy an entire collection of furniture and have their house end up looking like a page from a catalog. They want their homes to look like they have accumulated the pieces over the years, but have developed a cohesive look."

Steinhafels offers both traditional and contemporary choices, as well as "transitional" pieces, which is a marriage of the two. So, when selecting furniture for your bedrooms, living rooms, family rooms, dining rooms, recreational rooms and so forth, every piece doesn't have to "match," or be in a single style. Keep in mind that eclectic is "in."

When shopping for wood pieces, Hildreth advises you purchase warm walnuts and dark espressos, which she feels are timeless. Those are her "go to" suggestions because then clients can easily and inexpensively change their comforter and walls when tastes change and they want a new color palette.

Currently, gray is all the rage for walls and comforters, but a few years down the road that will certainly change. Homeowners who follow this rule of thumb can get a whole new look for relatively little money.

She also recommends that when decorating your bedrooms, forget about making everything match.

"Right now, it is all about being eclectic in your bedrooms. People have moved away from buying entire suites of matching bedroom furniture. Instead they are mixing upholstered headboards with mirrored nightstands and a wood dresser. Or they are choosing wood headboard and nightstands and then choosing an accent piece as a dresser with a funky mirror," Hildreth said.

Hildreth also advises that when you are furnishing the more formal areas of a home, like the living and dining rooms, you should keep your base items - couches and chairs - neutral. That way, you can change the rooms with pillows and other accents to coincide with the seasons and only make more substantive updates, such as changing the wall colors and accessories, every seven to 10 years without replacing big-ticket items that are still perfectly fine.

Steinhafels' Vernon Hills store has five in-home consultants like Hildreth who are available to help homeowners make their choices.

"Many people come in and they just don't know what they want to do. They bring in magazine pictures and items they saw on Pinterest, but they just don't know how to pull it all together to achieve their dream of creating an interesting room," she said.

Since Steinhafels charges an hourly fee for its design services, designers there are not "trapped within our walls" when advising clients, Hildreth said.

"We will go shopping with our clients at other stores to pick up finishing touches and interesting items, but over the past year, Steinhafel's has done an increasingly great job of bringing trendy rugs, pillows and accessories into the store. To be honest, I seldom have to go outside for the finishing touches anymore. But I certainly will if we need something especially unique," she said.

"In fact, last spring I had a job that involved choosing carpet, paint, lighting and window treatments. A huge part of making a house into a home and creating coziness involves choosing the accessories - and we help our customers do all of that," Hildreth said.

The designers also ask questions of their clients, such as how much abuse do you expect the furniture to take from children and pets? Are you furnishing an apartment or your dream home?

These kinds of queries help both the consultants and the homeowners zero in on the desired price and durability levels of the furniture, factors that should be considered.

"If you are furnishing an apartment you plan to keep for a few years and then move into a house, you probably won't want to spend a lot on your furniture. But if you are moving into your dream house, more high-end furniture is probably in order," Hildreth said.

Steinhafels is a fourth generation family business that was founded in Milwaukee in 1934 as Mueller-Steinhafel Furniture. The Mueller family was bought out in 1944 and it has been Steinhafels furniture ever since. Today, it has ten furniture stores in Wisconsin and one in Illinois and it recently broke ground on a new store in Greenfield, Wisconsin. It also has seven mattress stores because Steinhafels manufactures its own line of mattresses.

"Our store in Vernon Hills opened in 2011. They decided to expand into Illinois because they were getting so many Illinois customers coming into their Kenosha (Wisconsin) store," Hildreth said.

Steinhafels is located at 569 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Vernon Hills. For more information, call (847) 281-0050 or visit www.steinhafels.com.