How to Mix Bold Patterns With Tips From Interior Designer Bari J. Ackerman

Conventional wisdom says you can't mix patterns when decorating your home, but we have good news: you absolutely can. Interior designer and author of Bloom Wild Bari J. Ackerman has a simple-to-follow equation to help anybody make daring design choices that combine florals, animal prints and funky geometrics.

You can create a mood board with photos and colors to help as you consider what colors and patterns you like. Move items around the board and play with the pieces. You may find something unexpected actually looks great when paired together.

Bari's book, Bloom Wild: a free spirited-guide to decorating with floral patterns, is an easy-to-follow guide to using floral prints around your home. Bari's design style, which she calls "curated maximalism," can be summed up in an easy-to-remember formula to keep in mind as you decorate your own maximalist home.

According to Bari, mixing patterns comes down to this: Contrast + Throughline = Pattern Mixing Success.

Draw inspiration from paintings, portraits or from anywhere you connect with the colors. As for how many colors, well, it depends. Bari’s home uses orange, green and pink in varying shades as well as the occasional pop of black to anchor the space.

The throughline in your selection can be a color that repeats itself in each fabric selection while you contrast the patterns. In this example, purple is the color that repeats itself in each print.

If the color is your throughline, then the contrast is the difference in print sizes, such as a large floral and a small floral or a floral and a geometric print. Note the large floral motif paired with the tiny vines on the other two fabrics.

While keeping the pattern-mixing equation in mind, look at fabrics that fit your color scheme and decide which will be the focal or “hero” print. Bari tends to use a large floral for her hero print, where the design spreads across the fabric in all directions. The wallpaper is the hero print in this collection.

Ditzy prints are ones with tiny repeating flowers or bouquets of flowers across the fabric. A true ditzy print is scattered across the fabric, not arranged in rows. Make sure that your ditzy print has the same color as your focal print to ensure your throughline is intact.

With a hero print and ditzy print, add a third geometric print. This can be stripes or other shapes in a repeating pattern. Just be sure that the main color is present in your geometric print.

When you’re comfortable with picking three fabrics, don’t be afraid to add more or substitute some others. You might find that an animal print fits perfectly because the pattern mimics a floral pattern you’ve chosen or because zebra stripes can function as a geometric.

Florals and leopard print “don't go together” traditionally, but take a closer look: The scale is different, but the shapes and colors play off one another beautifully.

When putting fabrics together, you may want to add a blender print, which is generally a solid color with a tiny, all-over print. Blenders provide a small amount of texture while blending into the background to allow your floral selections to pop.

Bari's master bedroom features one of her original floral paintings above the bed combined with a similarly colored floral blanket and pillow with dark sheets and a dark damask-print pillow.

The floral rug in Bari's breakfast nook, with its pink, orange, yellow, purple and blue hues, matches the geometric prints in the chair because the shades of pink and hints of orange are present in the squares.