A Tribute to Turquoise Rooms

I'm obsessed with turquoise. But I haven't always been.
 
View the gallery above for a few of my favorite turquoise concentrations.

If you'd asked me what I thought about the blue-green hue when I was in college, I would have told you it was a color best reserved for old ladies' jewelry collections and Southwestern motifs that, as far as I was concerned, could stay in the Southwest.

But a few years ago, a little turquoise vase caught my eye at a garage sale. It was only a dollar, so I took it home and put it on my bookshelf. On a trip to IKEA a few months later, I found a flower pot that was a lot bigger and just a little darker. Since it was only two dollars, I couldn't resist. And because everything looks better in threes, I picked up a smaller, lighter flower pot not long after that.

Before I knew it, I had become my grandmother. I had little turquoise accents all over my apartment (including my wardrobe). And then big ones. After I painted my kitchen cabinets turquoise, I decided I wanted it to really pop in the rest of my rooms. So on a small bookcase in a little corner of my living room, I arranged all of my turquoise and turquoise-ish books along with some of my favorite turquoise trinkets.

"Turquoise is one of those colors that's incredibly intense; it pops," says Brad Wheeler, an interior designer at Urban Dwellings Design in Kansas City, MO. "It already lends itself to being a great accent, and sprucing up a space."

If you're using lots of turquoise pieces in one area, Wheeler suggests breaking up the monotony by placing them on an interesting architectural feature, like a bookcase that's (you guessed it) not turquoise.
 
Photo Credit: Alamy