Designer ideas can work in your home
Yes, the house has been on the market for more than $3 million, but you can still get decorating ideas for your own more modest residence.
Whether you want to decorate with "green" style, grab tips for dealing with huge floral designs or create an elegant bedroom, visit the designer showcase house in River Forest.
The house is open through Sept. 28, and admission benefits the Children's Clinic sponsored by Oak Park River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
You would expect upscale decorating in showcase houses like this 12,000-square-foot English Tudor. Features to watch for: Wallpapers and rugs in all kinds of styles and colors and exciting lighting fixtures, especially chandeliers.
But much translates to more typical budgets.
Here are standout rooms and ideas they offer.
Plaid
Marilyn Akins of Oak Brook shows how to mix plaids in the family room, which is adjacent to the kitchen she also helped design. The drapes are a rich blue with red, green and gold. And the blue leather love seat uses the same shades of blue and green in a different plaid on its seat. A big blue and white check brightens the small wingback chairs. Staying with one shade of blue - and mixing in a lot of white - helps make this work.
Wallpaper
Wallpaper is definitely back. One reason is you can affordably achieve the look of hand painting. Bill Walker of Barley Twist in Oak Park spent $700 to purchase the Ronald Redding wallpaper and have it installed on the dining room ceiling, but he says it looks like it cost at least $3,000.
"I love the sense of texture," he said. "It looks like someone spent about 50 hours applying five layers of paint."
Bold
It takes courage, but large yellow flowers on a green background brighten the walls of what was a dark library. Leeann Heininger of Fringe Home Design in Oak Park limited the pattern to the top portion of the walls, and applied a medium stain on wood wainscoting up to chair rail height. A large, gold-framed picture of a young woman also breaks up the pattern. And we won't even get into how she mixed in other colors - including fuchsia.
Tall ceilings
A 12-foot or taller ceiling brings challenge as well as drama to a master bedroom. The team from Designs of the Interior in LaGrange brought it down to size by setting a tall screen across the corner behind the substantial headboard and standing a large, heavy mirror on the impressive fireplace mantel.
Color
When you paint a sky in your sun room you probably won't expect it to come out like this one by Charles Nitti of Forest Park. But like him, you could use a celadon green rather than the expected sky blue. It's softer and easier to look at, said the artist. Designer Jae Berni of River Forest is known for her colorful rooms, but she concentrated mostly on green and pink in this sunroom/sitting room. The silk and wool rug is a yummy combination of these shades.
Sparkle
Jan Debits of J.R. Interiors, Oak Park, put just enough sparkle in her elegant, light blue and white guest room. The walls and ceiling seem the same shade of blue, but a metallic finish has been added to the ceiling. And here and there in the room crystals and sequins catch the soft light.
Green
The drapes fashioned from vintage fabrics, remnants and roll ends might be the most gorgeous and inventive of the environmentally friendly features in the bedroom by Christine Baumbach of Oak Park. But the way the large flowers she painted in clear acrylic urethane on the green walls catch the light is mesmerizing.
Theater
Gail Prauss of Oak Park turned her deft hand to the classic theater colors of red and gold. Painter Charles Nitti stippled the subtly dotted finish on the walls. Prauss' Art Deco touches that make the scene more authentic include grills on the ceiling in the hallway and in door panels.
Pub
Michael FitzSimmons helped Donegal Carpets in Ireland choose colors when it reissued rugs with Arts & Crafts era designs. The glorious one in gold, sages, rusts and reds that anchors his lower-level pub costs thousands of dollars. But the reproduction Tiffany floor lamp could be had for about $1,200, compared with $450,000 for an original. And while the set of late 19th Century prints by Englishman William Nicholson is pricey, a collection of less-expensive pictures could be simply matted and framed in this fashion.
What: Oak Park/River Forest Infant Welfare Society Showcase House
When: Through Sept. 28
Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays. Closed Mondays.
Tickets: $30 at the door
Location: 801 Park Ave. (at Chicago Avenue), River Forest. Free on-street parking.
Extra: Certificates for meals at local restaurants are available for purchase.
Information: (708) 848-0528, ext. 300, or visit www.childrenscliniciws.org