Three Pillows Furnish a Lake House Room
The mistake is buying five of the same thing. A room reads better with three pillows doing three different jobs: one landscape or scene to set the place, one object to carry the theme, and one pattern or texture to keep it from looking like a gift shop. A lake scene with a red canoe, a pair of crossed oars, and a plain hooked geometric will do more than six literal boats ever will. Start there and add only if the room asks for it.
Lake House Is Not Beach House
Coastal decorating leans bright and blue and literal: anchors, shells, lighthouses. Lake decorating is darker and quieter, closer to lodge than to shore. The palette runs to deep green, navy, rust and unbleached wool rather than turquoise and white. Subjects lean toward what you actually see from a dock in the northeast or upper midwest: canoes, loons, pine, deer at the treeline. If you are furnishing a place on a lake and the pillows look like they came from a beach town, that is why.
Why Hooked Wool Suits These Rooms
Hooked wool is pulled loop by loop so it sits proud of the surface and reads as handmade from across the room. That texture is the point in a room full of hard materials: stone fireplace, plank floors, leather. Needlepoint holds finer detail and is the better choice where the design has something to say up close, a canoe's lines or a bird's markings. Most rooms want both, one of each rather than all of one.
Living With Wool in a Seasonal House
A house that gets closed up for months is harder on textiles than one lived in year round. Store pillows clean and dry, rolled or laid flat rather than folded, in a breathable cotton bag instead of sealed plastic. Keep them off screened porches and out of afternoon sun. Hooked pillows are spot clean only, since dry cleaning and washing both pull the loops. Needlepoint should be dry cleaned by someone who works in wool.
