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Home › Articles › Decorating Your Home › A Little Touchy

A Little Touchy

Add the Timelessness of Texture
to a Room

By Laura Paul

Pages:  1  2  3  

When renowned interior designer, Gary Inman, was called on to design "A Gentleman's Retreat" for the National Symphony Designer House two years ago, he found the project became a provocative study on a forgotten design basic: texture.

As people entered the room, they swooned to the sensuous touch of the walls clad in Pend O'Reille's leather, chenille upholstery and cashmere drapes. Texture, Inman says, is the design equivalent of comfort food. "The interesting thing was that as people toured the house, everyone said, 'Don't touch. Don't touch. Don't touch,'" he says. "Then, when they came into our room, we invited them to touch the walls and touch the cashmere drapes. You never have seen such excitement because they had been walking through this house feeling like they were in a museum."

Inman, president and principal designer of Chatsworth Interiors in Richmond, Va., finds people are obsessed with color. They forget how important it is to create a tactile response to a room.

Fabrics of Choice
Inman says he favors organic products because they come from nature; having a polyester throw rug is not the same as a wool or chenille throw. "I think people enjoy touching linens and fine cottons and woolens," he says. "They have been used as materials for centuries. They have a longevity and there is a sort of comforting effect to that you can't get from synthetic fabric." He selects refined fabrics such as cashmeres and wool flannels for upholstery as well as velvets.

Nancy Colbert, an interior designer with Design Partners in Great Falls, Va., says she finds chenille and other soft fabrics give people the nesting feel. "One of the things most people tell me in an interview is they want their homes to be comfortable, and they think of soft fabrics as an avenue that can provide them with that soft feeling and sense of comfort," Colbert says.

Colbert views texture as a way of contrasting surfaces. "Everything in a space brings an element of texture," she says. "You want to contrast rough and smooth, shiny and dull, soft and hard. You can have texture in wood furniture as well. You can have crackled finishes on a piece or a tortoise shell finish."

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