Pillows Give Versatility

By: Andrea Schuch
You may have noticed that we stock our floor with very neutral sofas and chairs – mostly in solid fabrics. We do this for two reasons – 1. It is easier to sell a tan sofa off our floor than one in fire engine red and 2. It makes our stock look very different by just switching the pillows and accessories. We have a whole shelf full of pillows in the back room plus the pillows on our floor so that we can change color schemes whenever we rearrange the showroom floor. The reaction we get is amazing when we just swap out the pillows. Designers come up to us and ask about the new furniture and want to find out all about the new product. This is a practice that can be easily put in place in many clients’ homes. As a designer, you could recommend a permanent change or a temporary one – just for a season with a simple pillow switch. Pillows usually come with a zipper where you could easily change the cover with minimal work or storage needed.

Changing out colors of pillows works especially well during the winter season holidays. You could even extend this to the client’s accessories and artwork. There are a few designers that specialize in this. There are many people who don’t have the time (or don’t want to make the time) to spend hours taking out seasonal decorations and then putting them back away again. debi Ross of Inside Looks, who started her company doing this in Orland Park, told me that many people see how empty their house looks after all the holiday decorations have come down and end up purchasing a few things to fill the voids for the rest of the year.

There are other ways to change it up to – what about a very stylish slip cover? Char in our memo room has a great settee in darker brown tones. Last year, she splurged and got a great slip cover in a very light tan that really cheers up the room. She gave me the pictures below to show! Left is before, middle is the new slip cover with the original pillows and right is the after picture. Tammy Paradoski of Daisy Chain (Char’s slip cover workroom) says she finds that several of her clients get slip covers made for seasonal months. She originally comes from Michigan and says that she was making many more slip covers there for seasonal use but still makes a handful here in Illinois.



The only problem with changing everything up is where to put all the out of season items. I know I have problems with lack of storage and I know Char has not switched back to the original settee fabric because she doesn’t have any place to store the slip cover, but I suppose that is a topic for another day!