What is Coastal Grandmother Design and is it Right For You?

 Depending on how closely you pay attention to design trends, you may or may not have heard of Coastal Grandmother, which had admittedly obscure origins. According to the design influencer Lex Nicoleta, who was credited with coining the term “Coastal Gran,” this decorative motif is for anyone who “loves Nancy Meyers movies, coastal vibes, recipes and cooking, Ina Garten and cozy interiors.” And despite the quirky name, Coastal Grandmother is a legitimate and appealing design style growing in popularity. 

What Exactly is Coastal Grandmother Design?

Coastal Grandmother combines the light, cool tones of coastal design with the warmth and coziness of Grandmillenial. If you have a coastal bent but find the whitewashed décor a bit cold, this might be just your niche. 

How to Achieve Coastal Grandmother

By now, you’ve probably perused more than a few images of Coastal Grandmother rooms on Google, and you’ve made up your mind. But admiring a look and achieving it are two different things, so here are some tips from the design experts at Baer’s Furniture for achieving Coastal Grandmother in your home. 

Choose Warm Whites

White is at the core of a Coastal Grandmother space, but if you choose the wrong tone, you may push the needle more toward coastal than coastal grandmother. For your walls, select a creamier or buttery shade to make the space feel warmer. You can use colder whites or gray whites for the trim or as a secondary color, but if your primary color is white, we recommend warmer shades. 

Textures are Essential

The Coastal Grandmother design requires textures that feel good to the touch. Afghan throws, knitted toss pillows, and warm fabric chairs are practically requirements for the Coastal Grandmother style. With this in mind, you’ll want to be careful incorporating leather pieces. While they may have a place in a CG room, leather can overwhelm the aesthetic. For example, the Candace Curved Sofa is available in both leather and fabric (fabric shown here). For such a large piece, we think that the fabric works best in Coastal Gran.

Add Color and Dimension with Accent Pieces

Coastal Grandmother is more than just a white room with white pieces of furniture, but it also doesn’t have the over-the-top colors and patterns of Grandmillenial. Colors and accents are more subtle in CG spaces. Consequently, Coastal Grandmother style requires muted or neutral tones. Incorporate colors with area rugs, lampshades, drapes, or even an accent chair. The Times Square Accent Chair by Rowe is the perfect addition to a Coastal Grandmother living room or bedroom. It’s warm, comfortable, and even stain-resistant, and the tones are just right for this aesthetic. 

Avoid Clutter

One of the mistakes that people often make when going for a Coastal Grandmother look is leaning too hard into Granmillenial style. While the two styles share common shoots, CG doesn’t have the busyness or overlapping patterns of Grandmillenial. For example, with Grandmillenial, you can have a striped sofa, a pin-dot-patterned pillow, and a plaid throw (if they are from compatible color schemes), but with Coastal Grandmother, you have to make a choice: one pattern would be the rule here. You could drape a patterned throw across the cream-colored Tryp Swivel Glider, for instance, but not its heavily patterned counterpart. 

How Coastal Grandmother is Different From Coastal and Grandmillenial

When two styles merge to create a new look, fine lines are drawn in the sand. If you cross to one side or the other, your space may become coastal or Grandmillenial, but not Coastal Grandmother. 

As the name implies, coastal design celebrates the beach and the coastline. It favors cool tones, light or white wood furniture, light-tone area rugs, nautical themes, and more. The density of the décor should be on the airy, less cluttered side. Coastal Grandmother borrows heavily from the color palette and layout of the coastal theme. 

Grandmillenial is a maximalist approach to design that celebrates the style and furniture of generations gone by. Grandmillenial features prints, patterns, and cozy furniture, among other things. Coastal Grandmother intersperses these design elements throughout what would be an otherwise coastal decorating scheme. If Grandmillenial makes you think of your grandmother's furniture, Coastal Gran should make you think of your cool, beach grandmother.

With millions of feet of showroom space throughout Florida, Baer’s Furniture has high-quality furniture that fits many different decorative motifs, including Coastal Grandmother. Let our experienced sales staff help you with your decorative choices. Shop Baer’s Furniture today! 

X Best Places in Melbourne

 Melbourne, Florida has undergone explosive growth thanks to its prominent position on the Space Coast. The city is a diamond in the rough as it is still largely unknown to many people outside the Sunshine State.

Whether you're a local or a new resident, this list of the best five places in and around Melbourne is for you. The fun, interesting, and useful activities do not stop here — from scenic wetlands to actual space launches.

1. Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands

Featuring over 200 acres of scenic wetlands, Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands is a great place to take a nice walk or a leisurely bicycle ride. Keep an eye out for alligators and look for all sorts of native birds as you explore the wildlife surrounding Melbourne. These wetlands have diverse flora and fauna native to the state of Florida. You'll soak up some sun during a trip to this wetland system, so SPF 30 or higher is definitely recommended. You'll also potentially see some exciting animals and unique plants. While it might be tempting to get a souvenir picture with a wild animal, we recommend you maintain your distance.

2. The Beach

Go to the beach. No beach in particular as Melbourne has several! However, you should absolutely stop by one of them while visiting the city. Enjoy the ocean breeze, play in the sand, and go swimming.

The possibilities are endless at the beach, and you should absolutely make the most of them. Stop by 321 Jet Ski Rental to spend the day waverunning, or get your paddle on with a kayak rental from Wildlife Watersports. Take cycling to the next level at Space Coast Hydrobikes for some ultimate weekend fun. Enjoy the beaches of Melbourne to the fullest, now that you're there. This is what locals do with their time, so if you're in the mood for some true local flare, this is where it happens.

3. The Brevard Zoo

Although this isn't technically in the Melbourne city limits, we would be remiss if we didn't include this first-rate home to over 900 animals from the far reaches of the world. The Brevard Zoo experience includes touring train rides, kayaks, and for the more adventurous, the ability to scale and rappel a Florida pine and see the animals from a birdseye view. If your zoo visits in the past left you feeling sorry for caged animals, we highly recommend the Brevard Zoo. The animal habitats are as close to the ones you'd find in the wild with top-tier safety protocols built in.

4. Cape Kennedy Space Center

From the days of the Mercury Mission to the incredible James Webb Space Telescope, explore the history of space exploration at this one-of-a-kind travel destination. This modern museum will take you from the earliest space endeavors to the headlines of today's news articles. If you plan your visit well enough in advance, you can get a close-up view of a NASA or SpaceX rocket launch. Of course, we are able to see these spectacles from Melbourne proper, but you haven't lived until you've seen a launch up close. You should be aware that missions are often scrubbed due to inclement weather, so if the launch is canceled the day you're there, give it another try. It's only 40 minutes away.

5. Baer's Furniture Store

If you've decided to make Melbourne your home, we recommend checking out Baer's Furniture store in Melbourne for all your high-quality, designer furniture needs. With dozens of stores all over Florida, you can find the closest one to you here. Baer's Furniture has an expansive space and hundreds of pieces of furniture for the bedroom, living room, dining room, home office, and more. The Melbourne location has 110,000 square feet of showroom space. Whether you're seeking a coastal look to match the beach lifestyle of your newly chosen city or you want a minimalist space to enjoy your leisure time, the design experts at Baer's can help you achieve your design goals.

About Melbourne

Because of its location on the Space Coast, Melbourne is fast becoming one of the biggest tech centers in the nation. In 2022, the city population was just over 86,400, but there are over a quarter million residences if you include the surrounding areas. With mean incomes for households around $96,000 for families, Melbourne is becoming one of the more affluent cities in the state. Whether you're visiting in anticipation of a move or you just happen to be spending a week or two in the Florida sun, these places will help you build fond memories of the Harbor City.

Tips for Keeping Your Pets Off of the Furniture

We all love our furry and fun friends, but we don’t exactly want them strolling all over our furniture, leaving behind hair and… other deposits. There has to be a solution, right? Of course, there is!

We can show you how to keep your pets off of all your furniture in this article, and we'll provide tips for making sure that this change in behavior in your pets is permanent.

Invest in Pet Furniture

An easy way to keep your pets off of your furniture is to give them some furniture of their own!

Get a cat bed or a dog bed, and your pet will have its own soft surface to lay on and, with some training, will no longer feel as inclined to hop up on your furniture. This is easy to teach your animals. Just don’t allow them on the regular furniture, but encourage them to use their own furniture.

After all, imagine coming home to this Bernhardt Addison Loveseat all scratched up from your pet walking on it. You’d be furious, wouldn’t you? Getting a pet bed will demonstrate to your pet that it’s ok to use their own furniture.

There is plenty of pet furniture out there, such as pet beds, cat trees, and even pet sofas. Be sure that if you have a cat, it has somewhere designated to scratch, such as a scratching post or pad. Cats need to scratch, so not having an outlet for this behavior can be the source of a lot of furniture scratching.

Once you have the cat tree/pet bed, you’ll need to still keep your pets off of the furniture “manually” for a little while until they learn the new rules.

A "Furniture Offering"

The next option for keeping your pets off of the furniture is what we like to call a “furniture offering.” This is a situation in which you demarcate one piece of furniture as okay for the pets to use, but not the others. This allows the pet to play on or lay on one piece of furniture in the house, but nothing other than that piece.

Imagine you have a gorgeous Stressless Recliners Classic Chair you absolutely do not want the pets to be on, so you offer them something else instead. This is a good solution to the problem.

You will find that oftentimes this simple move will satisfy the pet’s desire to be on the furniture, and they will not try to get on any of the forbidden pieces. The best way to implement this is to keep your pet off of all the furniture but the designated piece of furniture “manually” until the animal learns where it is allowed to sit. Usually, a few days to a week or two of continuous reinforcement will result in a pet that knows which piece of furniture it is allowed to be on.

Pet Training

Pet training can be helpful in keeping pets off of the furniture. You just train the animal to not get on the furniture. This is much easier said than done, and if your pet is having trouble learning this critical behavior, it may be time to call in the professionals. A professional pet trainer can teach your pets to stay off of the furniture without compromise. However, pet training can be expensive. Obviously, it is undoubtedly worth it to protect a gorgeous piece of furniture like this Rocking Recliner by Best Homes.

If, however, you’ve decided that this is the direction you would like to go, it may be the best solution. Simply teaching your pets not to use the ordinary furniture is an excellent option, and with a professional’s help, you can certainly accomplish this goal.

Repellant Sprays

The final way to keep pets off of your furniture is with highly-rated “repellant sprays,” which are designed to make an area unpleasant for animals to be on. Follow the product's instructions before treating your furniture with the repellant spray, and your pets will no longer climb on your furniture.

This is a simple option, but we have listed it last because it is the most invasive to your pet and could cause potential damage to your furniture. Make sure you test the repellent on your furniture in a hidden area before committing.

Stop in at Baer’s Furniture

Regardless of how you keep your pets off of the furniture, at Baer's Furniture, we have a multitude of styles and designs of the finest furniture available. Come by and peruse our furniture stores to see thousands of square feet of floor models to find the perfect home furnishings for your next decorating project.

New and Reinvented Interior Design Trends for 2022

The year 2022 is all about out with the old and in with the new, and interior design is along for the ride. We've all learned a lot about home life, the needs we have for our houses, and so much more over the past few years, and now it's time to put that knowledge to action.

At Baer's Furniture, we're more than ready to help people bring new interior design ideas into their homes as well as reinvent old themes for a look that's refreshed and revamped. Furniture pieces that are always luxurious and always functional are what we provide, and 2022 will be no exception.

Here are 3 new and re-invented interior design trends for 2022 according to our stylists.

1) Rustic Style Re-Invented

For a long time, farmhouse chic was very in. The style included elements such as barn doors, natural textures, home accents that looked like old-school jugs of milk, and more. The go-to color for the scheme was gray and whitewashed everything.

We're not throwing out rustic style altogether, but in 2022 it's getting a major makeover. Instead of farmhouse chic, reinvented rustic is the next trend to look out for. It incorporates many of the original style's favorite elements, such as reclaimed wood with natural texture and grains. However, it also blends in modern elements such as bold colors and contemporary materials such as shiny metallics and ceramics.

The Oyster Bay Hidden Lake Bistro Table by Lexington is a shining example of this update to rustic. The traditional woven rush seats and whitewashed wood paired with burnished stainless steel and nailhead trim makes farmhouse feel edgy.

2) Gray – But Make It Pop

Gray has been a homeowner's favorite for the past decade. For a while, we were seeing gray everything. Kitchens, living rooms, and furniture were all gray. It's easy to see why – it's neutral but never boring, classy and sophisticated, and was a welcome change to the over-the-top Tuscan theme that dominated the early 2000s.

But is gray on its way out in 2022? Not really, according to our design experts, but you can expect to see some changes. In 2022 you're likely to see darker grays on walls, opposed to the light barely-there grays of years past. It's not just the shade that's changing, but the accents and furniture that go with it.

As far as interior design trends in 2022, look for gray schemes that feature bold accent chairs, sofas, and eclectic end tables with bright pops of color. More specifically, you're likely to see bright sunny yellows and statement-making cyan blues. It's a little more Art Deco with a contemporary twist.

2022's grays are on full display in this room featuring the Highland Park gray dining room group by Bernhardt Loft. With light and shadow, you can create a striking palette in shades of gray.

3) Cottage Core Is Here to Stay

You've seen the magazine-worthy social media posts and videos that feature the new trend of cottage core. Full of wicker furniture, greenery and house plants, pastel floral prints, and a deeply nostalgic feel, cottage core has carried over to 2022.

Cottage core focuses on simplistic comfort. There are no opulent designs to be found, but instead, you'll see lots of elegant pieces that feature straight lines and cozy home accents like throw blankets and pillows. And don't forget the vases full of fresh flowers as centerpieces on kitchen and dining tables.

However, the cottage core of 2020 and 2021 is reinventing itself just a bit. Throughout this year you'll be more likely to see elements of glam and luxury, such as decorative mirrors and wall art, or fine glassware and china, adorning the home. Add elements of lace, linen, and some warmer and cozier elements like shag rugs, and you've got cottage core for 2022.

To update your cottage core style with 2022 flair, feature your finer things in a curio cabinet like this one from A.R.T. Furniture's Arch Salvage collection.

Shop Baer's Furniture Today

If you're looking for a true design partner, not just a furniture retailer, come on into a local Baer's Furniture store near you today. We're family-owned, operating exclusively in Florida. With thousands of luxury pieces in stock and ready to ship, we can help you redesign the home of your dreams.

Whether you're looking to refresh a single room, to redesign an entire house, or are simply looking for that one special item to complete a look, we're here to help you find precisely the right piece.

Additionally, we offer a complimentary design service to all of our customers that saves you both time and money throughout the design and shopping process. We'll provide you with a professional assessment of your specific project, advise on the best route to take based on budget, help accessorize any space, and provide the utmost care with our white glove delivery and installation services.

Browse our website or visit us in person for an individualized shopping experience. If you prefer to have a more dedicated one-on-one consultation, you can also book an appointment.

Is Minimalism Still in Style? The Jury is Still Out!

 

For several years now, the minimalist style has been a tour de force in the world of interior design. Critics of the trend, however, have claimed that this style tends to be cold and barren. While that is certainly one interpretation of Minimalism, there is no reason why the minimalist concept cannot be warm, as many interior designers have successfully demonstrated. While no decorating trend can last indefinitely, Minimalism offers several benefits to home decorators that may help to keep it alive for a few more years. 

What Is Minimalism, and Why Is It So Popular?

The minimalist interior design seeks to remove clutter by focusing on essential furnishings. Minimalist homes typically focus on one particular color palette with possibly one or two accompanying accent colors, and the style lends itself to open spaces and floorplans. Minimalist design does not mean doing without items that you need to live comfortably, but instead removing unnecessary things from your living space to enhance comfort and tranquility. The term “decluttering” has become synonymous with minimalism, but you cannot achieve minimalist decor simply by decluttering. Rather, decluttering is an essential step in developing a minimalist environment. 

Benefits of Minimalism

In addition to being an attractive approach to home decorating, Minimalism can enhance your quality of life in several ways.

Creating a Tranquil Living Space

Fans of the minimalist style will often point to its simplicity. In a minimalist design, everything has its place, but there is also a distinct lack of extraneous items. Living room furniture, for instance, is arranged in a grid pattern with few, if any, items to distract from the clean and efficient arrangement. The neutral, muted tones create a calming atmosphere where bright conflicting colors don’t compete for your attention. To enhance the calming effect of minimalist spaces, many decorators are embracing the Scandanavian concept of Friluftsliv, which emphasizes year-round indoor greenery.  

Easier to Maintain and Clean

With the focus on fewer items, light colors, and geometric lines, minimalist spaces are easier to maintain and keep clean. Fewer surfaces mean that dust doesn’t have as many places to settle. The simple design presents a hygienic appearance, as well. 

Fewer Pieces Allows You to Curate Your Furniture Collection

Building a quality furniture collection can represent a significant financial investment, but with a minimalist design, you can build slowly and focus only on essential pieces. For instance, you can build a bedroom by starting with a single piece of furniture, like the bed. As time progresses, you can add other essential bedroom pieces to your room. With a minimalist design, you can use a similar approach to any room in the house. 

Tips to Keep Your Minimalist Decor Fresh

If you’re concerned because you committed to Minimalism and you’re worried about your living space looking dated, we have some good news. Many decorating trends are continuations of the minimalist design style. Here are a few tips that will help you keep your minimalist style fresh and up to date. 

Add Greenery

We alluded to it before, but Friluftsliv aims to bring natural beauty indoors. Adding a plant or small indoor tree to your roomscape can enhance the warmth of the room and break up the clean lines of your furnishings. If you want to maintain the straight lines of your aesthetic, consider a topiary with the contours you’re seeking. 

Add an Accent Wall 

Minimalist design isn’t necessarily limited to gray or white. You can change the entire look of a room by changing the color of a single wall. To maintain the minimalist theme of your room, don’t venture too far away from muted, neutral colors like beige, gray, etc. 

Add Accessories

You can accessorize your furniture and rooms without giving up a minimalist style. Add a throw or pillows to a living room chair or sofa. Place a quilt and throw pillows on top of a bed. To maintain your minimalist style, choose solids or simple or linear patterns that will accentuate the existing tones in your furniture. Consider adding an area rug or changing the one you have to freshen up the look of the room. 

Minimalism Is Still Safe

Our opinion is that the minimalist style still has a few years of life left in it. But if you are concerned that your room is beginning to look out of style, you can always begin building a new look around your existing pieces or start from scratch with a different style.