Houzz Tour: The Bright and Colourful Home of a Danish Stylist
With a preference for kitsch, acrylic, and colors, Anne Rimmer has transformed a villa apartment in Aarhus into a colorful and relaxed home.
If the stylist Anne Rimmer had to live in a white home with cream and natural tones she might struggle. “Colors give me peace, I simply love colors, I have always loved them and I feel more in tune when I’m surrounded by interesting nuances,” says Anne Rimmer, who indulges her taste for color and pattern in a lively and humorous way in a villa apartment in Aarhus.
In Anne’s home you will find flamingos in silver and pink, palm leaves, bold stripes, dots, and furniture painted or upholstered in all sorts of bright colors. There are yellow accents throughout, but it doesn’t make you immediately think, “this is a yellow home”.
“Choosing one color and using it everywhere can easily backfire. A bit like a lady who only wears blue. The trick is, that you should not be afraid of using many colors that interact well with each other.” says Anne. “You must not try to achieve a perfect look, where all colors match each other. It should be like discovering an old dress in your closet that just looks great. It has to be careless and not look too planned.”
Thanks to a wooden plank table, Eames chair, and other elegant piece of furniture, the overall look is chic, but without the price tag. When I read about people, who have spent 30,000 kr. ($4,500) on a couch, I think that, for that money, I could do something, like sew a lot of couch cushions for example. Virtually everything here is secondhand. I am good at thrifting, and I also paint, sew covers, and upholster everything. The advantage is that the entire thing can be changed if I feel like it.”
Anne’s playful approach to interior design and hunting for a small shelf in acrylic was also the beginning of her own interior company with the quirky name “Dims”. “The company is an extension of the way we live. Many customers ask whether we live a wild life. And yes, we do…I’ll never appreciate ‘less is more’.”
“Choosing one color and using it everywhere can easily backfire. A bit like a lady who only wears blue. The trick is, that you should not be afraid of using many colors that interact well with each other.” says Anne. “You must not try to achieve a perfect look, where all colors match each other. It should be like discovering an old dress in your closet that just looks great. It has to be careless and not look too planned.”
Thanks to a wooden plank table, Eames chair, and other elegant piece of furniture, the overall look is chic, but without the price tag. When I read about people, who have spent 30,000 kr. ($4,500) on a couch, I think that, for that money, I could do something, like sew a lot of couch cushions for example. Virtually everything here is secondhand. I am good at thrifting, and I also paint, sew covers, and upholster everything. The advantage is that the entire thing can be changed if I feel like it.”
Anne’s playful approach to interior design and hunting for a small shelf in acrylic was also the beginning of her own interior company with the quirky name “Dims”. “The company is an extension of the way we live. Many customers ask whether we live a wild life. And yes, we do…I’ll never appreciate ‘less is more’.”
All the original stucco ceilings and walls have been preserved, and the rooms are filled with character.
“I knew immediately that I would like to live here. There were plenty of opportunities to make our mark on our home without destroying the beautiful, original details,” says Anne. A large arch marks the transition between the dining room and living room, and a striped wall creates depth and drama amid the white. Yellow acrylic lamps hang like funky exclamation points over a solid plank table surrounded by various chairs.
“I knew immediately that I would like to live here. There were plenty of opportunities to make our mark on our home without destroying the beautiful, original details,” says Anne. A large arch marks the transition between the dining room and living room, and a striped wall creates depth and drama amid the white. Yellow acrylic lamps hang like funky exclamation points over a solid plank table surrounded by various chairs.
The striped wall was a must for Anne. After many years in a rented apartment, she was finally allowed to go crazy with all her ideas and especially the “dream wall”. “I’m just crazy about stripes. I am completely indifferent to whether stripes are the most kitsch, or if they are ‘in’ or ‘out’, I choose things that I really like,” says Anne. As a true fan of kitsch, she obviously didn’t stop with the wallpaper, but added in a colorful mix of textiles, a delicate, yellow coffee table, black chandelier, hunting trophies spruced up with paint and a yellow acrylic shelf. She built the sofa herself with black pallets, on which she put mattresses, so that overnight guests can sleep here.
The rustic plank table with wrought-iron frames is complemented by a colorful mix of recycled chairs, which she has painted and sewn covers for.
The table was a thrift store find, “I was completely obsessed with getting a long plank table.” says Anne. “I searched for a very long time until I finally found one, that I bought from a lady who had found it in France but no longer had enough space for it. Shortly after this, one could of course buy plank tables everywhere.”
The table was a thrift store find, “I was completely obsessed with getting a long plank table.” says Anne. “I searched for a very long time until I finally found one, that I bought from a lady who had found it in France but no longer had enough space for it. Shortly after this, one could of course buy plank tables everywhere.”
Wallpapers are a brilliant way to shape a room. The black-and-white wall in the living room provides a distinctive and stylish backdrop for a lot of colorful items, such as the small, blue Eames chair, a secondhand discovery.
Anne’s company actually began when she was in search of a shelf in her favorite material, acrylic. She had one made, and now she sells them at Dims. Here it is used for decoration in an uncensored kitsch-style with cacti, flamingo cards, a plastic gun, and a dangling monkey. “I love everything kitsch and I am not afraid to throw everything I’m crazy about into the home and see where it all ends up” she says.
Anne’s dog Bertha is relaxing in a turquoise Ilva armchair, which is virtually the only piece of furniture the couple bought as new.
The yellow acrylic lamps over the rough plank table are one of many examples of Anne’s eclectic mix of textures, colors, and contrasts.
Thanks to newly renovated with white walls and wooden floors, the apartment was pretty much ready to move into. “It was also an important criteria for us, because neither of us are great craftsmen,” says Anne, who then had a perfect canvas to play on with colors and patterns. On the walls of the dining room she chose a very simple wallpaper with gold dots and a bolder one with flamingos.
A home that celebrates kitsch, needs to have flamingos of course. “The more common varieties with pink birds were a bit too girlie. So I went on Google and found this wallpaper in black, silver, and cream,” she says.
The wallpaper with gold dots accents the wood paneling. But the soft, romantic look is broken up with antlers painted in bright red.
Anne has a knack for creating collage walls with an unexpected mix of items. “I take a lot of things without thinking about how they fit together, and then I put them on the floor. I move things around and look at them again, before I finally hang them up.”
The kitchen was the only room Anne did not like, but here again she has – without plundering her bank account – given it a personal touch. “It was very white and steel-like in the boring standard kind of way, which didn’t suit the old house very well. By replacing the knobs with leather straps and putting wallpaper up between the cabinets and a table, I tried to give it a more organic look.”
Even in the bathroom, which is simple and white, she added a few bold colors like mint green and snuck one pink flamingo onto the windowsill.
The bedroom is in the basement, and the couple of devised some creative solutions for the space. “The closet was already here, and it was quite expensive and not really my style, so I papered the doors with palm leaves. The radiators are hidden behind particleboards with magnets, so they can easily be removed if you want to adjust the temperature – a simple and elegant way to make radiator panels.”
The wallpaper is the same as in the kitchen, but here the pattern has been flipped on its side. The red acrylic shelf is from Dims.
Anne found the great two-seater sofa many years ago. It had been waiting in a garage, until she had enough space for it. “It is important to act swiftly when you see something you like. I have more things that are just waiting to fit in,” says Anne, who painted the frame and got the cushions upholstered with gray wool for a more raw and contemporary look. “I’ll never discard that one again,” she says.
On the wall by the stairs up to the first floor, Anne has created another one of her characteristic collages. The graphic circles are special wall dots, which she creates and sells in her own company. “I was fascinated by doing something with a round design, but I also wanted them to have some sort of function. Therefore, they come with three different styles of brackets, so you can put a candle behind them, put a hanger on them, or just use them as a decoration, like this.”
The white background highlights a bunch of paper-pompoms and turquoise vases.
Everywhere there are small vignettes and displays, like here on the desk. The round stag is one of Anne Rimmer’s own wall dots, here used with a bracket for hangers.
The original details and wall panelling get a playful twist with colored dots.
Employment: Stylist, makeup artist, and owner of the small interior company Dims Design.
Location: A villa apartment from 1909 located in the Øgade district of central Aarhus. Close to all the cafés, shops, and the Botanical Garden.
Size: 1399.3 square feet (130 square meters) on two floors with a large balcony and a private garden.