We Gave a Home Stager $100 at Anthropologie — Here Are the MCM Items She Bought
Whether you’re staging your home to sell it or simply styling a vignette to liven up your living room, you know the challenge of trying to pull things together on a budget. Often, the answer is to turn to vintage pieces, but that can take time, energy, and effort — things people don’t always have in abundance.
Sometimes, you just want to be able to go to a store and pick up a few items that will pull your room together magically, making it seem as if they were also perfectly curated and collected. But you also don’t want to spend a bundle doing that.
Luckily, no one knows how to quickly bring a room together with a few choice styling pieces better than a professional home stager. Sally Julien, principal at Modernous, a Seattle- and Palm Springs-based staging firm with a mid-century aesthetic, has a talent for arranging items in a way that feels sculptural, minimalist, and storied.
We tasked her with spending $100 at Anthropologie to totally revive a tired room. “I wanted to find things that made a big impact together. I thought about the color story and how they would create a focal point in the room,” says Julien.
Here’s what’s on her list.
$100 Anthro Staging
Painted Iron Spire Painted Iron Spire
“This Spire gives height and texture for the coffee table and introduces a great green color to the room,” says Julien. Standing 15.5” tall, the spire is the perfect complement to a mantel or anywhere else you want to add a vertical element that looks as if it was sourced from a dusty French antique shop.
Bumble the Bee Decorative Object Bumble the Bee Decorative Object
Gold is always a lovely foil for green, which makes this buzzy objet d’art the perfect styling piece to set near your iron spire. Julien explains, “This bumblebee object brings in a nice bit of shine, as well as some whimsy on the coffee table and its dimensions — low and wide — balance out the spire.”
Pedestal Trinket Dish Pedestal Trinket Dish
Julien’s main goal was to create a consistent color story that would tie the items together and help them serve as a focal point in a room. This modern borosilicate glass trinket dish adds an artful note while coordinating with the colors of the other pieces. “Keeping with the green, but introducing some other color that can be played with other places in the room, this small trinket dish adds a nice element to the coffee table grouping,” says Julien.
Le Petit Velvet Pillow Le Petit Velvet Pillow
We’re going $12 over, but Julien couldn’t resist this vintage-inspired round pillow to echo the colors from the styling items onto a sofa or chair. She explains, “Finally, this crushed velvet pillow ties into the green spire and also has a great texture if you are only able to add a single pillow.” It makes a statement all its own and adds a sumptuous flair.
