I have been decorating homes and helping other people decorate their homes for as long as I can remember. I have always had a visual eye and a knack for putting colors and fabrics and pieces together to create beautiful rooms. I had been against using leather furniture at all costs up until recently. I discovered, however, just how great using leather furniture can be in a home after I helped a client place leather furniture in their cabin.
I'm not sure why I was so against using leather furniture in homes. I think I remember my mother, also and interior designer, telling me that leather furniture was not meant to be in homes. She would allow her clients to place leather furniture in medical or law offices. So I guess I came by my distaste for leather furniture honestly. I think the fact that I have been an interior designer for nearly twenty years and that I have yet to put leather furniture into a home has also helped grow the feeling I have that homes can be done and done beautifully without leather.
My turnaround came a few months ago when a client hired me on to decorate a cabin they had just purchased for a summer home. They suggested leather furniture early on in our meetings and each time I would shake my head kindly and attempt to change the subject. They finally confronted the issue as I was bringing out photographs and samples of the kinds of furniture I saw for their cabin. They asked me why I didn't encourage people to use leather furniture and I realized for the first time that I didn't have a great answer for them.
After a few hours of looking at samples of leather furniture online I became slowly convinced that maybe it was a good option for this particular project. So I broke my twenty year pattern and helped my clients place the right kinds of leather furniture at different places throughout their cabin. The project turned out amazingly well and I even began to reconsider the plans I had made for my own lakehouse.
I have since become so fond of using leather furniture in some projects that I have led clients to that option at least five or six times. I have even purchased two pieces of great leather furniture for my own lakehouse. I'm forever glad that I finally discovered leather furniture.