I actually like the print in the chair photo! I think brown will be too monochromatic and dull. It looks like the rug (really pretty) has a bit of burgundy, so I'd do that. I'm wondering though if the sofa isn't a bit too modern for that style chair? I'll let the pros weigh in about that, but the styles are just too different for my eye, although I like them both.

I'd go with the brown chairs since you're not crazy about red. Like you said, you can accent with red, but maybe you should just ignore the red altogether and accent with the blues/greens. Does the rug have blue in it? The
up-close picture looks like it does, but the far away one doesn't. Someone on here used to have red accents in their FR and just changed it to blue accents, but I can't remember who it was. Anyone else remember who it was? I think there were blue plates on the mantel of the fireplace.

Laurie

This is where computer monitors drive me crazy. In your first pic, I don't see a blue background in your rug, but in later pics it looks like the background is blue. Also, do I see some blue threading in the material you have picked for your couch?

If there is any blue there, can you go with a blue on the chairs? You could then add red (coral maybe) in some pillows for accents and to further tie in the rug.

Hi Roulie.

Welcome to our board.

I like your new sofa, and while the fabric isn't very interesting. it doesn't need to be. That's why they make throw pillows. Besides, it works fine with your rug. But I'm with Olychick on the chairs: they're not doing it for me. At all. That sofa is to those chairs as a cool designer pantsuit is to a pair of mom jeans. They're a whole generation apart. Maybe two.

Now let's talk about the upholstery: while that that brown velour has the right visual weight--and the practicality you need with two boys in the house--the color, when combined with the neutral sofa & the neutral walls, and those neutral curtains, will be deadly. Sorry. So I'd look for some more with-it, less fuddy-duddy chairs and when you find them, I'd listen to your husband when it comes to the color. Red is it.

Which red? Well, the darker looks like it might relate better to the red in your rug, but then again, that's also what could make the whole group a little too predictable, like a set you bought as a package deal out of a catalog. I happen to like just a bit of a clash, to liven things up, and that lighter red is just different enough to provide an extra bit of life. But it would also provide another important function: by introducing another color than what's already in your other furnishings, it can also serve as a wedge that can open the door to other colors in the future, if you decide you want to experiment with some patterened pillows or new curtains or accessories on those shelves, while a too-close match to the red of the rug will in effect, create an implied Do-Not-Cross barrier against other colors, making it harder to introduce a new color later. Your rug shouldn't be the boss of your room.

As far as your fireplace goes, I'd stick with the slate. Two materials on a permanent architectural feature is plenty.

ok -- magnaverde: I'm still chuckling about the pantsuit:mom jeans analogy!! I am definitely not a mom jeans kind of girl, but am clearly decorating challenged, because what seems to be apparent to everyone who responded (i.e., that the sofa and chair do NOT go together and that the brown on beige on beige look is a bit dull!!) didn't occur to me and certainly wasn't pointed out by my furniture salesperson (although she is pushing for red).

So:

1) thank you for your honesty!
2) what should I look for in a chair? Is the problem with this one the rolled arm? I don't know what makes a chair look fuddy-duddy or not!
3) where should I look for better chairs? Until now, I have limited myself to what I can find at Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Room and Board or the local furniture store, mostly because I don't like to shop for furniture and I just want to get this room furnished, but I want to do it right the first time.
4) there is a chair that matches the sofa, but I'm guessing it's sort of gauche to match them??

Any style/retailer suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

About colors: the rug definitely has an icy/silvery blue in the background (looks greyish sometimes) so the close-up picture is more accurate. And in looking at the two reds, I get your point, magnaverde, and agree completely.

Thanks, again, everyone for your responses.

Roulie (who is actually my dog, and another reason I need bullet-proof -- or at least stain-proof -- furniture)

Is either of these chairs better?

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=947&f=33621 (Clara chair)

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=947&f=25907 (Hennessy chair)

Roulie, you're heading in the right direction on the chairs. Those two new models are much more modern in feeling than the first chair you showed us. And yes, the rolled arms on that one ar part of the problem, but also that serpntine front profile of the arms. And, as I said, that midriff bulge below the belt. Now, in another room, with other furniture, that chair would probably be fine. In fact, I have a chair not unlike it, and it's really comfortable. At my house, it works, because everything I own is out of style--or, rather, outside of style--but at your place, it just doesn't work visually with the sofa. It's apples & oranges. Unfortunately, the new chair options add bananas & kumquats into the mix. I don't care for the odd back on the first one, but I like the tapered arms of the second. Still, they don't relate very well to the sofa, either.

So here's what I'd do: I'd either find the matching chair that goes with your sofa, or I'd switch the sofa out for the Hennessy sofa & use it with a pair of Hennessy chairs. Yes, upholstered all in the same fabric, the pieces would look unimaginative, but using different fabric on the chairs will solve that little problem. Too, even in different fabrics, the matching lines of the pieces will allow the grouping, as a unified whole, to act as the strong base for the other things you'll put in the room over time. Maybe it's a bigger, bolder art piece over the mantel, maybe it's a big ship model, maybe it's some funky modern lamps--it could be a lot of things. What's important is that those accents function as accents, and the way they do that is by being more assertive than your main pieces--even though those pieces are bigger. And with the sofa quarreling with the chairs over who has a coolor design, no one will notice those accent pieces. So, if this were my place, I'd go for unity in line & shape, but variation in color.

As far as recommendations for stores, I don't like to make those, because even within a single chain, different stores carry different stuff, and what I see in a store here in Chicago may never show up where somebody else lives,

Too, some stores go through the retail equivalent of a mid-life crisis, tossing their old look overboard & going whole hog for a totally different style. I can think of one chain that's always had decent, semi-stylish pieces & non-crazy prices. Their furniture was nothing to write home about, but it was all low-key in design & generic enough that you could pretty well furnish you place with their stuff, accent it with your own wall colors, rugs & artwork, and stiill create a look that if not necesarily you, was, at least, not anybody else.

Now they've taken off in a whole new direction, and although the stuff in their catalogs--I haven't yet been to the stores to see it in person--is interesting, it's so aggressively different in form, detail, finish, scale & color from what wev'e seen from them before, that even a single large piece--handsome thought it might be--will instantly dominate the room, and because of the distinctive-but-limited finish options, a whole room full of the stuff will look like a catalog spread. There was a double-page ad of their new stuff in a magazine the other day & although the lighting was attractive & the room's "symmetry" nice--although merely a digital trick, since the big china-filled bookcases at either side of the same ad were clearly the same piece, cut-&-pasted to make the illusion of a pair--the overall effect was bombastic, overdone & totally devoid of any shred of individual personality. And that's not all. With its dull finishes & absence of color, the stuff is more than a bit creepy. If all reminded me of the stuff in Miss Havisham's attic. Now there's a role model for ya.

Anyway, because of all that, the only store recommendations I've ever made online were for Benjamin Moore, because they can match any paint sample I mix up, and the Salvation Army store around the corner, where great stuff goes for a song because nobody but me likes it.

magnaverde, you have convinced me. The original chair is history. I'm going to stick with the original sofa and get the matching chairs, but in a different fabric (red). The line that makes the sofa and chairs has many fabric options, so I'm sure I'll be able to find a good red in a fabric that will stand up to my boys.

That was easy!

Thanks again for the help!!

ps -- My husband wonders: can the "bigger bolder art piece over the mantle" be the new tv?? :)