Designers help nail the right look

When decorating your bedrooms, forget about making everything match, said Anne Hildreth, a designer in the Vernon Hills Steinhafels Furniture store.

"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.

Today's homeowners like the eclectic look because they believe it adds character, she said.

"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."

For the wood pieces, Hildreth is advising the purchase of 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 and homeowners who follow this rule of thumb can get a whole new look for relatively little money.

Steinhafel's 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, its designers 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, Steinhafels 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, I just got a job that involves 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, 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 that should be considered.

"If you are furnishing an apartment that 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.

When furnishing the more formal areas of a home, like the living and dining rooms, she continued, it is wise to keep your base items like couches and chairs neutral. That way, you can change the rooms with pillows and other accents to coincide with the seasons and you can make more substantive updates every seven to 10 years without replacing big-ticket items that are still perfectly fine.

Steinhafels is a third-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 eight furniture stores in Wisconsin and one in Illinois. It also has nine mattress stores since 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 store," Hildreth said.

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