Cultivated Creativity: Tour Bari J. Ackerman’s Maximalist Home Embellished With Hand-Painted Wallpaper

Bari J. Ackerman, the founder of Bari J. Designs, mixes bold patterns and daring colors to create cheerful interior design schemes that she describes as “curated maximalism.”

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By: Beth Braden

Show: HGTV Handmade

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Photo By: Tomas Espinoza

The Bold and the Beautiful

Bari J. Ackerman is an artist and interior designer whose personal touches are seen on every surface of her Charlotte, North Carolina, home. With a style she calls “Curated Maximalism,” Bari’s home features floral motifs, geometric patterns and animal prints where bold colors are welcome and every design element is intentional.

Bari designs art for wallpaper, rugs, bedding, dishes and “anything that art can go on,” she says; you can find her Tufted Wild Bloom rug for sale at Anthropologie. Bari is a fabric designer with a full line of prints that embody her style.

Bari is also the author of the book Bloom Wild: a free-spirited guide to decorating with floral patterns. Bloom Wild is a comprehensive guide to creating your own curated maximalism home using Bari's easy-to-follow methods for pattern mixing as she explains how she chose the decor and themes in her own decorating.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Leveling Up

Bari didn’t start creating art until she was in her 30s and was looking to give herself an edge in her handbag business. “I was creating handbags that I sold and wanted to differentiate my work from other handbags on the market, and believed I needed to create my own fabric collection to do so,” she said.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Happiness You Can Feel

She began designing fabric using design software and eventually switched to painting. Painting gave her a tangible product she could enjoy immediately. “There was a real visceral kind of joy to the art, and that’s when everything really changed,” Bari said.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Floral Foundation

Bari’s love for florals goes back to childhood, and flowers were the first thing she began to paint. “I have memories of my mom cutting lilacs off the branch, and wrapping it in paper towels and tin foil, and carrying it to school to give it to my teachers,” she explained. Bari also remembers watching her mom spend years working on a floral needlepoint project.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Bloom Wild

Her love for maximalist design and bold floral prints led her to write Bloom Wild: a free-spirited guide to decorating with floral patterns. Her book walks aspiring maximalist decorators through finding their floral vibe and selecting patterns and textiles to use in their homes.

Buy the Book: Amazon, $20

Break the Rules

There are purists who say you can’t mix patterns, but that’s not how Bari lives her life. Instead, she finds common themes across several different items to group them together in a way that somehow always works. “Where I think ‘more is more,’ I feel like the 'more' part of it should be intentional rather than just stuff for stuff’s sake,” she said.

Buy the Book: Amazon, $20

Pick Your Palette

Bari selected pink, green, orange and white as her home’s color palette, all of which appear throughout the rooms in varying prominence. No matter what color palette she works with, Bari always uses black to help ground the space and give it depth of color.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

In Living Color

Bari employed a few techniques to match the selected contrasting patterns in her living room. First, there are two floral patterns in different scales. Two chairs have a loose floral pattern, while there are two pillows on the pink sofa that have a tighter floral pattern. A similar shade of pink to the couch is present in both the chairs and the cushion. The throw pillow collection continues with an animal print and a scenic print. "That's how you make them all go together," she explains. "By contrasting them, but having a color or something that goes through." True to her color palette, black also appears in this room on her chinoiserie screen.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

Bari's Favorite Furniture

Her prized piece is her chinoiserie secretary desk featuring gold details, a crisscross pattern in the glass and a vibrant, orangey-deep pink color. It stands in contrast to the light-pink sofa in the room, but Bari says that’s by design — she doesn’t try to perfectly match the shades, instead choosing intentionally different tones. “When you do that, it gives you a warm [texture],” she explained.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Mix It Up

Bari’s dining table is large, long and sleek, so she chose to accessorize the dining room with abstract art, a mural, sculptures and pottery. “Things that are simple mixed with things that are more ornate are how I roll,” Bari explained.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

The Freehand Mural

Bari painted the mural on the dining room wall by hand because it was a blank canvas begging for some art. She didn’t do any sketching before beginning, and it took three months using acrylic paints to bring a floral scene to life. The mural may still see some changes and additions as time goes on. “I can’t promise I won’t walk through here one day with the paintbrush and just ... flourish something on there,” she confessed.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

A Very Bold Bathroom

Bari’s maximalist design continues in the bathroom. There are patterns of different scales — skinny stripes on the towel and bold stripes on the walls — and shades of pink from each pop in the floral shower curtain. If you look closely, you can see more floral art in the same color scheme reflected in the bathroom mirror.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

Think Pink

The guest bedroom is full of Bari’s fabric patterns. The bed itself features a heron-print headboard that she designed in a limited-run collaboration with Joybird. A quilt made of fabric she designed lays across the bed, and she used solid, textured pieces to break up the patterns. The trim, walls and molding in the guest room are painted in Rosé Season by Clare.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

Holding Back

The primary bedroom is the least maximalist space in the entire house. The room is relaxing, but still has a joyful flair. The large painting over the bed is one of Bari’s pieces, and it helps to open the room while the long light fixtures give the illusion of height.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

A Pantry of Plenty

This room was once a laundry room with a tiny closet pantry, but she transformed it into a large butler’s pantry that became one of her favorite spaces in the house. It provides plenty of storage for her vintage fruit and still-life portraits, and her own art hangs in there as well. “It’s just a fun room,” Bari said.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Don't Forget to Feed the Dog

There was a dead corner on the other side of the wall in the butler’s pantry, so Bari took the chance to make a built-in dog bowl nook for her Goldendoodle, Ruth. The mischievous pup is often on Bari's heels, frequently getting paint in her fur as Bari works.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Easy Being Green

It took Bari and her husband, Kevin, four weekends to do the herringbone backsplash in the kitchen. The rich green wallpaper is the same paper she used in the butler’s pantry and in a small dining nook just off the kitchen.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Trust Your Shelf

Bari wasn’t sure about the open shelving at first — she worried it would be cluttered — but she forged ahead, getting rid of the things she didn’t use. She was left with neatly arranged open shelving where the dishes and accessories have orange accents that tie into the orange flowers on the kitchen wallpaper.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Bari Berry Interesting

After finding the adorable strawberry cheese dome (it's on the bottom shelf) for the kitchen, she decided to collect a small number of strawberry pieces. Her three pieces — three is a collection, and four is clutter, according to Bari — provide warm pops of color against the green backsplash and wallpaper in her kitchen.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

A Fully Customized Dining Nook

The green wallpaper from the butler's pantry and kitchen continues into the dining nook, where a round table and four chairs sit on top of a round rug that Bari designed for Anthropologie. Bari wanted the nook to feel like it could stand separately, despite being part of an open-concept space.

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Geometry and Florals

Bari's design philosophy shines in the dining nook. The geometric print and the rug pattern are both Bari’s original art, and the two prints combine into a busy-yet-appealing arrangement.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

Visual Interest

The gallery wall artwork in the family room is centered around the ornate mirror and vanity. The artwork was collected over time. Bari builds her gallery walls by either matching all the frames or only picking art within a certain theme. If that isn’t possible, she falls back on using a common color theme throughout the photos.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

Dare to Decorate

The molding in the family room was white when Bari first moved in, but she found that painting it green to match the built-in shelving really brought the space down and made it cozy. She says everyone should get a little wild and try painting ceilings and millwork. “You will become addicted over time,” she said.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

Speaking of Millwork

Beyond her painted ceilings and trim in the family room, Bari saw a chance to go green with the banister in the stairwell to match the wallpaper — that paper was the first decision she made when decorating her home. The floral snake prints have pops of green, and the slithering snakes echo the vines winding through the wallpaper.

Watch the Video: 6 Home Design Tips for Maximalists

You're Welcome Here

At the end of the day, Bari wants her home to be open and inviting for her guests. “When people walk into my home, I want them to feel like they’ve been welcomed in,” Bari said. “That it’s gonna feel cozy, and there’s a place for them to sit, and if they want to hang out in the kitchen and have a drink and eat, they’re welcome here.”

Watch the Video: Tour Interior Designer Bari Ackerman's Curated Maximalist Home

Cultivated Creativity: Tour Bari J. Ackerman’s Maximalist Home Embellished With Hand-Painted Wallpaper

Related To:

Shop This Look

The Bold and the Beautiful

Leveling Up

Happiness You Can Feel

Floral Foundation

Bloom Wild

Break the Rules

Pick Your Palette

In Living Color

Bari's Favorite Furniture

Mix It Up

The Freehand Mural

A Very Bold Bathroom

Think Pink

Holding Back

A Pantry of Plenty

Don't Forget to Feed the Dog

Easy Being Green

Trust Your Shelf

Bari Berry Interesting

A Fully Customized Dining Nook

Geometry and Florals

Visual Interest

Dare to Decorate

Speaking of Millwork

You're Welcome Here

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