The Secrets of "Ish” Part 2 | Hour 1

way that Tina and I like to describe real eclectic decor. Okay, the fact that most people in the real world, In fact, I would say all people in the real world don't live in some magazine spread pure air quotes pure decor environment, right like you've seen one pure theme like you see on a Pinterest board, or you know, like I said, a design magazine spread. Those things they look great, but

they aren't where all of us live. All of us live in the real world, and the real world is full of all sorts of other things that come into our lives, things that mean a lot to you, things that have a lot of deep meaning and sentimentality and attachment, but don't necessarily fit one particular decor, even your primary decor. So the question is how do we pull off real beautiful interior home decor and when it's not pure, Well, that's the secrets of ish and the idea being well,

I have a modern home. Well, it's modern ish. I've got an arts and crafts kind of you know, craftsman bungalow home. Well, in the real world, it's arts and crafts ish, it's Victorian ish, it's ranch ish, it's farmhouse ish. You get what I'm saying. The ish is where we thrive. The ish is where we find out the difference between a decor that fails and one that is capable of embracing sources from different time periods, from different styles and

still looks beautiful. And that really is what we would call eclectic design. It's not chaotic, it's not cluttered, but it doesn't all have to come from one pure source in order for a room or a space or a home to be stunning. Stunningly fantastic. So that's where we're at, and there are rules. There are rules. We'll get to that in just a bit. Right now, though, I want to introduce you to our fantastic team. Elmer is on the board. Good morning, Elmer, Good morning Dean. Producer Richie

standing by. Oh my gosh, he's already taking calls. The board is open. Let me give you the number for those of you who are late to the program. Here just a few seconds in eight three three to ask Dean, Well you guys are you guys are hungry for answers this morning? Eight three three two, ask Dean eight three

to three the numeral to ask Dean. It doesn't matter that there are already calls on the board, because you know, we select calls at random, so you got as much a chance of getting on the air as anybody else, even if you call now A three three two, ask Dean. I'll be going to the phones as I do throughout the show. You can give us a call. Richie will tell you everything you need to know. Pop you into the queue. Producer Richie's standing by. II Leen Gonzalez, my

buddy at the news desk. Good morning, I Lenk good morning, sunshine. How are you doing? I always left when you call me sunshine? Are you so bright and cheery? I don't feel it. I don't feel that way at all at all. I was talking last night. I was at a thing with Stefan Steffouche, who is uh Tim Conway's aboard op, and he's like just staring at me. He's like, you know, I just don't get to see you enough, and I'm

staring at your face. The sound of your voice is coming out of your mouth, and I just think, like everywhere you go, everything you say just sounds so comforting and so well rounded. I'm like, you have clearly not spent time at my house, my friend, We'll ask your wife about that. Yeah, well Tina, you know, Tina's gonna support stuff. Fush actually in that one, But I wasn't

sure though. I wasn't sure if if he was, I think he, I mean, I know he was trying to compliment me, but I'm like, really, I mean, there's no edge to my voice at all. I am I just like am I just forever trapped in like a TV weather man's body? Is that it? It just that's all It's gonna be, just gonna be like, hello, good morning. Anyway, Eileen, I'm so glad. It's always great to work with you. Glad that you're here with us this morning. Eileen's going to take care of all of our news this morning.

Sitting across the table from me. The one who will tell you the truth. She she will tell you the truth. One of the nicest human beings on the planet. And I only say one of the nicest because you know I haven't met everybody else. Well, no, that's true. You aren't actually that nice, but wonderful and honest as the day.

So whatever Tina tells you about me, actually that's actually the truth because one of the reasons why I was so attracted to her and on day one was just I've never met a person who is more honest, sometimes too honest. Sometimes, you know, our family would say that that Tina has no inner monologue.

you're upset with me. And uh and because as you're so honest, when you're like, hey, like you I can I trust it, I trust it, you know, right, the hard edge sometimes of honest people, you know, the the upside, the massive upside, is that you can trust them when they tell you that you are a good person. There you go, they're not blown smoke. Tina does not blow smoke. I do not. No, she does not. And now what what what are you saying? Just say it? It's time

for the news. Okay, all right, Joall, We're going to dive into the secrets of ish and eclectic decor right after.

it comes to calls? No matter what I'm talking about on the show, you set the agenda. Anything that you've got on your mind regarding your home, anything that's got you scratching your head, design, construction, DIY questions, whatever the case may be. We'll put our heads together. We'll figure it out, I promise. All right, let's dive back into the secrets of eclectic home design. My favorite way is a little review from yesterday, very quick to describe eclectic design.

My favorite way is a symphony of diversity, because it really is. You think about a symphony orchestra, all these different instruments, very very very different instruments emitting very very different sounds, and yet we can draw them together. Those who know what they're doing draw them together into one beautiful melody. And that's what we want out of eclectic design, and so the way to master that is really to master those secrets of ish, the ishness of your theme,

farmhouse ish, craftsman ish, whatever the ish may be. Nobody lives in a ruthlessly consistent magazine spread. It just doesn't happen, and they're so easily thwarted. I shared this yesterday. I'll share it with you again just to jumpstart our conversation. Imagine a stunningly sophisticated kitchen right in some magazine spread. You can bring that kitchen to its knees by just taking a refrigerator magnet and putting your kindergartener's coloring project

up on the fridge boom. Real world has struck, and now it's no longer magazine quality spread. Right. You're like, okay, I get it. That's the idea, right, How can we have a beautiful home and live in the real world at the same time. And I'm letting you off the hook that somehow, because you live in the real world, you'll never have a beautiful home like that. Not true, not true. But we have to move away from that magazine concept into real, actual design and decor principles for

your home. And if you follow the rules and you put the effort in, then you know what you're gonna be rewarded. It's gonna be gorgeous. Okay, No, it's not necessarily easy, and you want to make sure. Let me also say this, when you're looking for rules and you go online looking for rules, which you know, I just did a little search this week, I'm like, you know what,

how readily available is this kind of advice? Anyway, I'm gonna make you feel better that you're listening right now, because it's not very readily available you can find if you search like rules for eclectic to core, you will find a gabillion websites advising you quote unquote, but just beware, make sure when you're looking for rules that you don't end up just getting suggestions. And that's where they almost

all go. Right. They start out with, well, we're gonna explain eclectic design to you, and here's how you can master it. And the next thing you know, it's like, add some plants, add greenery, what like okay, wait, what if greenery is not in my plant? Now you're just giving me suggestions again. Now you're just showing me a

photograph again. Okay, instead of helping me understand it. It reminds me of the if you're old enough to remember, you remember the Tutsi roll owl, right, Remember that commercial is so iconic, right, And it's like how many lips does it take to get to the center of a Tutsi pop? And then they finally bring it to the wise owl and he licks it three times and any and crunches it and he's like three, the answer is three.

And also I wrapped up yesterday's program with embracing negative space. Okay, if you're going to have diverse design elements in a single space, you got to give them some room. Eclectic design is not clutter. Not clutter, okay, it's not chaos. Negative space powerful, powerful tool for drawing attention to things and giving them some space from each other and letting them breathe as well, so embracing negative space and what really that just comes down to, you know, not too

much not too much stuff. Okay. It's an ongoing problem that we all struggle with because we go out in the world and things, stuff just attaches itself to us and it ends up coming home with us. Don't have too much stuff if you really want a stunning space. And I'll tell you why. It's not just a matter of opinion or preference on my part. Everything that I tell you design wise here on the program is based.

I like to think that it's based in human nature, human physiology, and human ergonomics, because that's what design and architecture is. It's for human beings. If we were mole people, I would be giving you different kinds of advice, okay, but we're not. We're human beings. We are that species.

And when it comes to clutter, when it comes to a lot of things, you had to understand that the human mind and the human eye vision, we're kind of lazy when it comes to that, so meaning that it's a lot of processing power gets taken up and I don't want to say lazy. I say the brain is efficient. Let's just call it that. It can't do more than,

you know, one hundred things all at once consciously. So when you walk into a really cluttered space, some people think, oh, I've just put so many things in this room that it's just a wonderland for people to feast their eyes upon, and they'll spend all this time looking at it. No, no, they won't. When you walk into a room with a lot of stuff to look at, the most common human physiological and psychological reaction is don't look at any of it. You just don't look at any of It's just too much.

It's too much. Okay. So if you really really want people to see the decor of your space, you got to get rid of stuff so that we can focus focus, I mean, really see the things that you want to see, the things that are most important. Okay. All right, Now, our next step in the rules and the guides is to start. And this is following that eighty twenty rule, which I'll review when we come back, but it's to

start with a foundation, a foundational theme. Whatever that may be the ishness, right, the modern ish, or you're going to go arts and craftsh or Victorian whatever that is. That's an overarching theme, but in a particular space, in a particular room, we're going to start with a foundation, a foundational color, a foundational pattern, a foundational texture, or

maybe all three kind of working together. And that's going to be our eighty percent in that room that everything else will work to integrate with as we go along. So we're going to start with the foundation. I'll explain that right after.

But anyway, it's a lovely weekend, and I hope wherever you are you are safe and warm. And comfy and filled with the beauty of the holidays, and I'm glad that you're here with us. We are talking about decor today.

We're talking about not Christmas decor, not holiday decor, but just year round decor for your home and tackling one of the most difficult concepts to master in decor, and that is how do you handle establishing a really strong theme of the decor that you want and live in the real world at the same time, because other things come in. And that's what we call eclectic design. Right now, there are some levels of eclectic design that are just hey, I just want to throw one hundred things together from

different sources. Okay, that's not really in my thinking. Again, the real world where we all live. What eclectic design is really all about. What eclecticism is about is the idea that you know, we're diverse people and so a lot of things come into our lives that aren't necessarily themed with our decor, but they still mean things to us. And so how do you do that, how do you bring it all together? That's the true art of eclectic

decore mastery. So I want to get back to the list, where did I leave off By the way, oh, starting with a foundation, a foundational color or pattern or texture, or maybe all of the above. And what I mean by that is I got to get to Tina, our decore master on here. But Tina will have a vision for a room. She'll be like, you know what, I would like to do something in a smoky you know,

gray blue for a color theme. I think that would just so work with this end of the house, this particular room, taken into account what we see out the windows and so on, and she just wants to cool this place down. And she's like, I want to add a little bit of this kind of a hard area here with a lot of walls. I want to add some texture, something that is soft and kind of flowy and texture. And then maybe this secondary tone will be something off white along with the gray blue. And there

we are. That's what she'd like to see, you know, in this space. That's what we call a know, kind of a foundational color, pattern and texture. And then from that the question is how can we get And this is to review what I did in the previous program, the eighty twenty rule and the eighty twenty rules essentially this, if you can get eighty percent of the stuff in a space working along that foundational pattern texture color. Tina's

nodding her head here. If you can get eighty percent of it working along that flow, then you can drop in expertly. Drop in the other twenty percent can be completely diverse and coming from different places without destroying the flow. Now you still have to do it skillfully. But the point is, that's what we mean by a foundational texture. The eighty of the eighty twenty the eighty percent of the room. So a lot of you struggle though with this idea of like, all right, now here we go

talking about colors. I have no taste when it comes to colors, Dean. I don't know what to do with colors. I've seen designers do things with colors that I would never dream of in a thousand years. And I get you, I feel you, I get it, and believe me, I'm not trying to turn you into a designer or a decorator in the sense that you know, I'm not trying to work myself out of a job. Here for big jobs and for really amazing results. It's always a good

idea to bring a creative into the situation. But there's a lot you can do a lot of research, you can do a lot of thinking, you can do up front. This is the time if you struggle with color and you just feel yourself falling short of what you would call color matching and complementary color mastery, this is the

time like no other that you need a color wheel. Okay, you need a color I'm just gonna say to every responsible homeowner who wants to have a beautiful home and you want to do your initial dreaming about what's possible, you need a color wheel. A color wheel is a tool. It's just it's like saying, listen, if you're going to take care of your home, you know, you should probably have a hammer and a screwdriver in the drawer. Okay. If you're gonna physically, utility wise take care of a home,

you should have some tools in the drawer. Well, if you're going to take care of your home esthetically, okay, in terms of design and decore, you should have a couple of tools in the drawer. I'm going to talk to you about two tools, specifically, one the color wheel. Now, there are physical color wheels. You can go down to your local art supply store or your craft store, a place like Michael's or Hobby Lobby or Joeanne Fabric. You know, you can go down to places like that and they've

got color wheels. And a color wheel is a wheel that has the entire spectrum of visible light color on it, and it has usually a second usually in disc form like a circle, and then it has secondary viewer windows that when you spin it around, you can see, ah, based on this color that I really love, what are the complementary colors? What are the colors that sit right next to it? What are the colors that are opposing on the opposite side of the spectrum. And there are

various ways. They are quadratic, there are triune, there are dualistic ways of looking at color combinations, and suddenly you'll see it. You're like, oh my gosh, that green actually goes really well with that shade of blue. Yeah, that's what the color wheel will do for you. We'll open your eyes to these color combination possible. So, yes, you can still go get a physical disc if that's your thing, but I will tell you this right now. You can attain your color wheel by the time we get done

with the next break. Because the color wheel that TENA and I carry with us at all times. Is just an app. It's an app on your phone. If you go to your app store wherever you get the apps for your phone and just put in color wheel, you know what will be confusing, Like thirty of them will come up, Okay, the vast majority of them totally free,

and you will see you will see. Now, granted, we're not using the color wheel to pick a very, very specific color because the way it emits on your phone it is it's a kind of light that we call emissive light, meaning that the phone screen creates a projection of light out. That is not the same as picking a color for your sofa, which is reflective light. Your sofa doesn't glow at least I hope it doesn't glow.

If it does, then you should return it immediately because it has been exposed to some form of dangerous radiation. But your sofa doesn't glow. It reflects light natural light that's in the room. But your screen does glow. So we're not talking about using a color wheel app to specifically nail down the ultimate detail of that color that you want in the room. But we are talking about the value of a color wheel for the sake of finding the themed colors that you're going to be looking for.

That's all I mean. It takes five minutes of spinning it around, checking it out until something clicks with you and you're like, ooh, you should try that, should try this with that and that with that. You know, get what I'm saying? All right? Color it's an important thing. We're going to be talking about patterns as well in just a bit, but the color wheel is really important. Now, how do we get more specific with color? H There's a device that if you're serious about this, I am

going to encourage you to acquire. It's called the Nicks Nix Mini. We're going to talk about it right after.

well without it messing you up along the way. You can't get much great advice on this online. I will tell you that right now. And don't look to TV for it either, because they're just showing you stuff when they're not trying to entertain you. And no, I don't have a big issua. Yeah, well yeah, I have a big issue with HGT I do. I just think it's a wasted opportunity to do really good things in an

entertaining way. Anyway, stay with me. That's my point, because what I'm trying to do here is actually really for real, give you some solid advice on how to get this done for your home. I'm not just showing you pretty pictures of other people's places and saying, well, you could do this, like what about my life? Okay, so there you go. Now, where I left you before we went to the news was with a product that I well,

a couple of tools. Number one, the color Wheel app that you can find a gabillion of online for your phone. When it comes to design and decor, you should have some tools in the tool drawer, just like you've got when it comes to the physical aspect of maintaining your house, Like you got a hammer and a screwdriver and some nails and some screws and stuff, right, you should have a couple of tools. A color wheel is the way that you take a color challenged person and show them

all the different possible combinations. So you dial up your favorite color and you'll see how other colors work with it, against it, complement it in a hundred different ways. The color Wheel app is perfect for that. You don't have to have it a disc, physical disc. You can have one on your phone. But I was saying, when it comes to color matching, exact color matching, there's another tool

out there now. The color wheel app is free. So that's a free gift with purchase, okay, or no purchase necessary. This one you're gonna have to buy. But I tell you this, every single client that we do a significant design job for, I encourage them to acquire this for theirselves. Why well, Dean has one, of course, Dean and Tina have one. But we are collaborating with you and we want you to have this kind of empowerment in your

own life. All Right, It's gonna cost you ninety bucks right now, okay, and you're gonna have to find it worth it. And by the way, this is for the for the decor person in your family and your life. This is a great holiday gift and a stocking stuffer as well. But here it is the Knicks Nix Nick Mini three. Okay. Nix is a company. You can find them at nissensor dot com. All right. They make a lot of different sensors for different purposes, and some of

them are very expensive. But I'll tell you what. The one that you need, the one that Tina and I carry around that fits the bill. And this is I mean wizardry. This is wizardry in your hand. The Knicks Mini three. What is it? It is a pocket sized, portable color analyzer, all right. And when I say pocket sized and portable, I mean it's the size of a golf ball, maybe the size of a pingpong ball. It has its own battery charged up USBC. And what do you do. It comes with an app that goes on

your phone. You connect via Bluetooth wirelessly with your phone and you pull out this Nix and you simply press it against anything. Okay, if you want to paint the wall of your kid's room one feature wall to match the color of their hamster. All right, then all you have to do is pull out the knicks and press it against the fur of the hamster. I'm not kidding you. Tina is like shaking her head. She's like, that's a ridiculous example. But tell me, tell me, Tina that it

isn't true. Tell me it's not true. It is true. You press this against the fur of the hamster, and instantly, literally instantly, you will have an entire color profile of exactly what color that fur is. Now you can use it. Can you tell I'm a little excited about this because it's a really great tool for people. You can I'm trying to enable people. Okay, stop laughing. It is. It's a great tool. It can you can set it up to give you, you know, web based colors, Hex colors,

Pan tone colors, CMYK RGB. But even better for most homeowners, there's a screen that you will go to in the app where you select your favorite brand of paint. And I'm talking you know, are you a Sherwin Williams person, a Done Edwards person. No, of course not. You're a Benjamin Moore person, right, like me. So you select Benjamin Moore.

You set that in the app, and then when you scan something with the knicks, it literally brings up the top three Benjamin Moore colors code name everything that matches the color that you just scan. Now, if you don't believe what I'm saying, here's the thing. During the last break, we just did a little video right here in the studio with I've got my knicks in my hands right now. So where'd we post it? Tina, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. There you go, all three home with Dean. You can

go there right now and check it out. We're going to go to a break. Eileen's going to give us some news, and then you can go and find the little video that we just posted in which I take this nix and I think I color analyze the little jacket that I'm wearing right now, and you'll see it happen live in front of your eyes. You got to go check it out, and then once you see it, you should share it with all of your friends. So that's there sitting on our social media Instagram, Facebook, and

TikTok right now. And when we come back, you know what it's time to go to the phones your home. Dean Sharp the House Whisper on KFI.