Ooh, shiny? You love the look of that piece. This piece is nice, too. You love collecting odds and ends and decorating your home with things that appeal to you. The problem? Those things don’t always match, and your living room is starting to get cluttered. We found some principles and Eclectic Living Room Ideas, along with some fantastic items you might want to add to the collection!

1) DIY 3D Brass Wall Art

Most wall art is relatively flat, but it doesn’t have to be. In an eclectic room, you can get pieces that are thick, thin, flat, shiny, or almost anything else. Then, mix them all together to create a multitude of different textures, colors, and thicknesses. If you want to make something far from ordinary, try making this 3D brass wall art that stands out further from the wall than almost any other wall piece. The reflective angled brass pieces should reflect light in varying directions and add to the eclectic and nonstandard look of the room.

2) Handmade

A lot of eclectic rooms come to be when the owner sees things they love at tag sales, craft shows, and other such events. Maybe they add decorations that their kids made for them or even their own crafts and paintings. Handmade decorations fit better than mass-produced factory pieces in an eclectic room, so we found a handmade Moroccan end table that might go well in yours. Finding articles from other countries, even if you didn’t visit the area yourself, adds to the world traveler look while unique handmade items create a cozier atmosphere.

3) Yellow and Blue

The neat thing about an eclectic living room is that you don’t have to follow standard conventions for color schemes. While normally you might avoid mixing warm and cold colors, particularly ones like yellow and blue that are nearly opposite, you can do so with abundance in this living room. While you’ve probably picked many smaller decorations, you might want to add some blue and yellow comfort items like blankets or even get blue and yellow seats like those in this living room design video by Lesley Myrick.

4) Knot Ball Throw

Your living room has all sorts of unusual decorations that you’ve found over time, and you can choose unique pieces to go along with it. You no longer have to adhere to conventions for textures, shapes, colors, or much else, so one way to break these standards is to get something that’s not the expected shape, like this Throw pillow shaped like a ball of knotted or tangled rope. It even comes in a variety of colors so that you can pick whichever you prefer.

5) Tapestry

Wall art is one of the most basic living room decorations, and any living room will have it, no matter what style you choose. Instead of filling an eclectic space with standard prints and paintings, try picking a unique medium, such as a tapestry. You can get them with almost any abstract or realistic image, such as fantastical nebulas, ethereal fantasies, bold statements, and more. You don’t even have to worry about whether the colors in them match your other decor.

6) Eclectic Gallery Wall

Gallery walls are a popular decoration, but they can take many forms. Do you want the standard wall of photographs, possibly with the twist of some horizontal frames and some vertical? Or do you want something truly unique and creative, with three-dimensional pieces and unique shapes? For an eclectic room, you’ll want to make a gallery wall that’s filled with your odd treasures from travels or pictures of family, or at least make it seem like you did. You can also add different 3D decorations and such like the ones on this wall.

7) Ornate

One way to make a room feel more like a collection of trophies and treasures from your travels and family is to get some ornate decorations. Ornate items give off an old-fashioned or antique impression and can even look foreign, so if you don’t have enough treasures to build a more personal gallery, you can get pieces like this antique-looking mirror from Amazon to fill it in. The nice thing about the mirror is that it has a lot of texture and will reflect light.

8) Your Favorite Pictures

You might already have family pictures in your living room, but there are other types of pictures that are important. You can include photos of things you like, whether they’re handpainted or mass manufactured. One neat way to add a picture you want in a nonstandard way is to get a table or other furniture piece like this one from Amazon with the image embedded. While this might not work in a traditional room, it’ll fit right in with your eclectic decor.

9) Quirky Accessories

If you’re going to create an eclectic room, you might as well make the pieces interesting. You can go to local garage sales and flea markets to get quirky items like the ones in this article by Cara Baker or even find them online. The items all have their own character, making them seem like they were gathered from many different places over the years. You can pick pieces that show off the many aspects of your personality or even choose decorations from places you want to travel to someday.

10) Tie Up

There’s something about tie-up curtains that gives them a homey look. If you get the right ones, they’ll be less traditional and look better with your eclectic decor than most curtains would. White tie-up curtains like these would be excellent because they’re a blank backdrop for your other decorations and won’t take away from the neat things you’ve collected. Alternatively, you could look for chaotic patterned tie-up curtains that could become part of the chaos.

11) Offset

Sometimes, an eclectic room can have a chaotic look because of the number of unusual things it has from so many different places. If you’d like to embrace the chaos this can create, you can look for furniture that looks slightly off, like these offset shelves. These would be a neat place to store odds and ends from all around the country or the world, and you don’t lose any shelf space since you can still put decorations on the outside edges of the shelves if you need the extra room. 

12) Rustic/Modern Mix

Since your room already has or will have a mix of things from different locations, why not have a mix of different eras and styles? For example, you can mix rustic and modern decorating styles to create a cottage-type look like the one in this room has. Add in your eclectic decor, and you’ll have a living room that looks like a rugged traveler’s cabin filled with endless treasures but also with the latest technologies and the homey, rustic furniture of their own culture.

13) Oriental Rug

Eclectic decor is, of course, decorations from various locations, and if you’re trying to create an ethnic or international look, Oriental furnishings are a traditional way to do it without being over the top. A patterned Oriental rug like this would be a neat addition to your international decor and help define spaces. You could even organize the areas of your living room by what region things are from, creating an Oriental area, a Native area, and more.

14) Let Nature Decide

While your eclectic living room will probably have more foreign decorations and furniture than anything, you might not have a foreign version of every furnishing you need. In some cases, you’ll need to find something that’s not really a part of your eclectic theme but doesn’t detract from it, either. For example, a natural-looking piece like this coffee table made from a cedar cross-section would be perfect. With it, you can let nature pick the shape of the table so that you end up with something one-of-a-kind.

15) 3D Wall Panels

If you have a lot of unique ethnic decorations, they might not look good in a standard, bland living room, but you probably don’t have a way to make your walls look ethnic or eclectic, too. One way to blend them into the unusual decor in your living room is to give them an unusual and more lively look. For example, you can get 3D wall panels like these that come in various patterns so that you can choose what fits your room the best. 

16) Colorful Reclaimed Wood Look

While you’re building your collection of authentic foreign decorations, you’ll need to keep the room looking nice and maintain the look you want. A colorful reclaimed wood side table like this could be a perfect choice because it has a slightly unusual, hodgepodge look, and eclectic rooms tend to look similar since they have a mix of items from different cultures. In addition, the irregular shape of the edges will probably make it fit in even more.

17) Handmade European

Handmade items are incredible for an eclectic room because a lot of foreign decorations are handmade, and they make your living room seem more thoughtfully put together. The good news is that nowadays, you don’t have to travel to get handmade things from all over the country or the world. You can even get unique handmade finds, ethnic or otherwise, from Amazon. For example, this handmade blue lamp would fit well in an eclectic room.

18) DIY Succulent Monogram Planter

While eclectic decorating focuses on getting decorations from various places, you can complement that with
ornaments that have variety in other ways. For example, you can include pieces of nature along with modern or industrial decorations. One way to do that’s to create your own little succulent garden decorations like this one that brings nature into your room. Succulent gardens are popular in many places, and if you follow this tutorial, you can even make a monogram letter one to make it personal.

19) This Fish Mirror

To complement your eclectic decorations, you’re probably going to have to find other things to fill in the spaces that you don’t have foreign decorations for yet. Since eclectic decor tends to look unique with little pattern, you can fill in with any unusual decoration. For example, this fish mirror is shiny and golden, and it has a delicate and intricate shape that makes it look more like a decoration than a practical mirror. Since it’s reflective, it’ll make the room look lighter to show off your collection better.

20) Interwoven Furniture

In many eclectic rooms, the decorations are eclectic, but the furniture isn’t. You’ll need a way to make your furniture go with the rest of your room since it’s not ethnic, and while using plain furniture can work, there are other ways to do it. You can get furniture like this interlocking bookshelf from Amazon that looks plain on the outside and is composed of simple shapes but has a neat interlocking design that’ll make it part of your unique living room landscape. 

21) Mix and Match Furniture

Eclectic decorating is all about the mix and match of different cultures side by side. You sit at a Korean coffee table with a greek vase and pour tea from a Japanese pot. Just as you mix and match cultures, you can choose to vary your furniture, whether it’s ethnic or not. This article by Amy Fedele has tips and tricks that’ll help you mix and match your furniture and still have a room that feels like the pieces belong there.

22) Diamond Art

One way to add some variety to fill in spaces between your eclectic decorations is to get reflective textured pieces. Mirrors are excellent, but adding a little texture makes the item more exciting and helps make it feel like it belongs in an eclectic room. Diamond art is a lovely way to accomplish this, as you can see with this diamond art mirror from Amazon. This would work well as a permanent or temporary decoration that could be replaced later as you find more eclectic wall art.

23) Broken-Up

This mirror has another neat look that would help it blend into an eclectic room while amplifying valuable light to show off your collection better. A big mirror like this could go behind your couch like a centerpiece, with the added benefit that somebody sitting across from the couch could see any decorations behind them while they chat with somebody sitting on the couch. This particular mirror has a broken-up look around the edges that makes it seem unusual and modern and should match some eclectic decor.

24) Many Different Patterns

Eclectic decorations are probably going to have patterns from the region they’re from, so you might find that your living room has many patterns. Your regular furniture, walls, flooring, and ceiling can look boring in comparison, so one way to decorate around eclectic decor is to use many different patterns like the owner of this Decor Pad living room did. The variety of designs, both geometric and organic, will set the stage for ethnic additions, whether they’re furniture or decorations.

25) Yin and Yang

The Yin Yang symbol is a popular and well-known Japanese symbol, and it’s an ideal one for an eclectic room because it shows the symbiotic relationship between good and evil. Your living room will mesh a variety of cultures just as Yin and Yang mesh in the design on this wall art. This also represents an aspect of Japanese culture, of course, so it won’t be out of place in a room with many foreign treasures. 

26) Wave

Since your living room will have a variety of decorations from different cultures, it’ll be an exciting and energetic place. Typically, cultural items that make it from one location to the next are the most vibrant and unusual-looking ones, so you’ll want some dynamic and unusual decoration to go along with them. This white Turkish accent rug from Amazon has a dynamic wave design that resembles an abstract imitation of waves moving across the living room.

27) Cluttered Look Without Clutter

Most people will tell you that clutter is bad, but in an eclectic room, a cluttered look can actually make it look more like you’re a world traveler who’s always on the move and barely stops to unload your latest batch of treasures. Showing off a large and seemingly cluttered collection isn’t bad, but you don’t want to actually have clutter. This video by Luxury Living with Enn is an excellent resource to help you create a living room that looks cluttered without actually having an actual mess.

28) Worn Retro

In most cases, a genuine collection of eclectic decorations and furniture would be collected over the course of years or decades, so if you’re trying to create that look or complement that look with your fill-in furniture, you’ll want to have some retro pieces. These have the same look as eclectic decorations from various places and help create the look you want until your collection expands. Retro is a lot cheaper than genuine vintage, so you can get it and replace it later without a problem.

29) African Wall Art

There are a few key places that almost any world traveler will go to, but if you’re trying to create a unique, eclectic room that most people haven’t thought of, you’ll want to get stuff from countries that aren’t part of the typical tour. African decorations are gorgeous with vibrant colors and exciting patterns that’ll make your living room look lovely. If you want to, you can even get several pieces like these that can serve as a centerpiece.

30) Unusual Color Combos

A lot of living rooms are designed to fit the most recent trends or to match a specific style, and for those rooms, you’re often confined to following precise guidelines for what colors to use. In an eclectic space, you can get away with a lot more because your decorations are probably in a variety of different colors. That said, you’ll still want the color combination to look good, so we found this article to help you choose a color combination that’s both unusual and attractive.

31) Peacock

Eclectic rooms combine all the amazing and exotic things you people find in foreign and domestic lands, so any filler decorations you have can also have an exotic look to them. One way to do that’s to get things with images of exotic animals or in the shape of exotic animals, like peacocks. You can get something like this Indian design peacock throw pillow to blend into the rest of your eclectic decor, or even just images or exotic animals that are made in the US.

32) Irregular-Shaped Mirror

Since your decorations and furnishings originate from various lands, you’ll probably have pieces in many different shapes and sizes. If you want to keep that theme up with your furniture and other things that aren’t part of the eclectic collection, you can get irregularly shaped pieces that fit with the organized chaos of an eclectic room. Mirrors like this semi-oval, organic-shaped one are a great choice because they make a room seem brighter during the day, which will show off your collection even more!

33) Two-Tone Walls

Your room has so many different tones, not in the different colors, but in the emotion and theme behind each decoration. As such, putting those different tones in an area with two-tone walls can be fitting, and the different wall colors can add to the eclectic look of the various decorations. If the idea of two-tone walls seems neat, you can check out this article by Jessica Bennett to learn how you could use it in your living room.

34) Abstract

Many eclectic decorations have patterns and imagery that are abstract or symbolic of the culture they came from. This is one of the best ways to show off the culture you brought the item from since it’s designed to represent the culture in part. Even if all your decorations aren’t eclectic, you can get symbolic or abstract artwork like this cool piece from Amazon. The neat thing is that since it’s an area rug, you can use it to isolate one space and create several small areas in your living room if you want.

35) Nesting Furniture

Eclectic decorations look unusual, so you can look for other unique decorations and furniture to match them. It doesn’t have to all be ethnic, though; instead, you can find odd-looking decorations and neat furniture like these nesting end tables. These ones, in particular, have metallic legs that’ll add a bit of a rich look to the room, and the glass will help reflect the sunlight and make the room feel brighter. A brighter room will be a better place to show off your eclectic collection.

36) Floor Decor

Your room is going to look unusual by virtue of being eclectic, so don’t feel trapped by conventions like placing most decorations on tables, shelves, and walls. You can place some decorations on the floor like Megan Ellaby does in this living room, either based on what looks good, at random, or based on which pieces would be placed on the floor in the country they originate from. By putting things on the floor, shelves, tables, and walls, you’re adding more depth to the room and expanding your decorating space.

37) The Great Golden Pineapple

Do something random! This room is an odd duck with unusual decorations from everywhere and anywhere, and if you can’t take risks and express yourself here, where can you? While in this case, we’ve found a gold pineapple lamp that’d look amazing, you can choose something else that you like. After all, not everybody likes pineapples as much as Shawn Spencer (for those of you who watch Psych). The point is, find something you love that’s not traditional decor and mix it in with your exotic stuff.

38) Seemingly Random Patterns

Eclectic decor doesn’t follow a pattern since it all comes from so many different places, but patterns are common in those types of decorations since a lot of people collect items symbolic prints and patterns. Since eclectic decor can look a bit chaotic, you can add more designs in a seemingly random arrangement like Cara Baker did in this living room. This way, your walls, ceilings, and floors are patterned but seemingly uncoordinated, just like your decor.

39) Knit

Typically, if you’ve collected a lot of your decorations and furnishings from other countries or states, you’ll have a lot of rich textures and colors that represent various cultures. You’ll also probably have a lot of homemade items, so you can complement those decorations with pieces that are heavily textured and look homemade. Knitted furnishings like these throw pillow covers from Amazon have a lot of texture and give off homemade vibes, making them perfect.

40) Retro Modern

Can something be retro and modern at the same time? Why not? After all, your living room is Chinese, Indian, Scottish, and African all at once. Since you’re already mixing places, let’s mix eras by creating a coordinated retro modern living room like the one in this Decor Pad living room. You can see the combination of a French daybed, retro fireplace, and clean, modern black and white paint. All of these combine to create a somewhat eclectic retro modern room that looks well-designed despite its contrasts.

41) Emerald

If you don’t have a lot of foreign furniture, you can get traditional and ornate furniture to replace it until you’ve added more pieces to your collection. As long as you have eclectic decorations, you don’t have to make sure every furnishing is from another country. You can get rich-looking furniture in a retro style like this emerald couch that draws the eye and will look good in a primarily European room. This is best if you want a room with a lot of classy decorations instead of just foreign odds and ends.

42) Carved Wood Shelves

Carved decorations that look handmade are ideal for an eclectic room if you don’t have enough eclectic decor. The handcrafted look makes them fit with a lot of foreign pieces, depending on what types of things you tend to collect, and if you get something in a unique space with a spiritual design or writing like this crescent moon shelf, it’ll fit right in with the eclectic theme. Many decorations from different nations have a religious aspect, so something like this that says “god bless you” works well.

43) Media Wall

You probably think you know how to make a gallery wall; just find a bunch of wall hangings you like and put them together. That said, you might not have seen something quite like this media wall. While it’s focused on the resident family, you can create a similar one with a more exotic theme. This media wall has light-up signs, monograms, and more, and it looks good because they planned it before making it. Try planning a wall and then create or buy decorations that fit your plan instead of picking decorations and making them fit.

44) Macrame Magazine Rack

Eclectic rooms have a lot of foreign decorations and furniture, and they show us that things we’re accustomed to, like coffee tables and couches, don’t work the same in other places. People may use floor couches, or their end tables may be made from a different material than is typical. Once you’ve collected your main decorations, you’ll probably need to buy some things to fill in. Try getting items that are slightly different from expected, like this macrame magazine rack. Most people will expect to see one made from a more solid material, and it’ll seem exotic to guests.

45) Missing Supports

A lot of foreign decorations used in eclectic rooms turn our assumptions on their heads. They have fundamental differences sometimes, even if it’s something as simple as a couch on the floor or a table that’s lower than usual. One way to enhance the feeling of an exotic space is to get gravity-defying decorations that don’t have supports where you expect, such as this lamp with no central pillar. These sorts of things create a slight off-balance feeling that makes everything seem more exotic.

46) Travel

Naturally, one of the best ways to find decorations and furnishings for an eclectic room is to actually travel to various places and come back with decorations and furniture you’ve bought there. If you’ve traveled to collect things, and you love to travel, show it off! You can even add things like suitcases as decorations like Ricca Ayon did in the living room in her video. The suitcases blend into the decor and add to the impression that the resident is a world traveler.

47) Decorative Non-Patterned Area Rug

Since so many different places are represented in this room, you’ll need a few furnishings that are neutral ground. Patterned decorations almost always reveal where the pattern came from, and a lot of eclectic decorations have patterns on them already. For something that looks neutral and isn’t specific to a location, you can get things like this decorative area rug that doesn’t have a pattern but does have some abstract shapes that look like a flower patch.

48) Not The Expected Shape

A lot of foreign decorations that you’ll have in an eclectic room will be slightly different in shape and design than what you’re accustomed to, in addition to the ethnic patterns some pieces will have. If you’re trying to get furniture that goes along with your ethnic decor, you can look for something that’s a different shape from what you’d traditionally see in America. For example, most shelves are square, so you can get a set like this that isn’t. As a bonus, you can store your eclectic shelf decor on them.

49) Orange and Blue

Since a lot of your decorations will probably look very different or even opposite each other, depending on what locations your items are from, it might be neat to use colors that are far apart, too. You can choose a color scheme that uses two opposite colors, like this bold blue and orange room. Get your main pieces in the colors you pick and maybe paint the walls and trim, then add your eclectic decor.

50) Poufs

If you’re trying to show off the different places you’ve visited or cultures you love, choosing standard furniture that looks like what everybody has in their house could be a mistake. That doesn’t mean everything has to be foreign, though; it just needs to be unusual. For example, you can get poufs like this one so that you’ll have a place to sit other than the standard sofa, recliner, and padded chairs that almost every American living room has.

51) Polka Dots and Stripes

Since mixing styles is the main theme of your room, you can mix styles in a few different ways. One way to do it’s to get pieces like these throw pillow covers with both stripes and polka dots. While this would usually be a decorating no-no, you can get away with it in a room where you’ve already mixed French and Asian decor. Since an eclectic room has a bold look already, choosing bright colors like yellow will make the throws stand out even more.

52) Multiple Focal Points

Nowadays, most living rooms have one focal point: the TV. But, a lot of your decor probably comes from places that don’t have TV or aren’t nearly as invested in television as many Americans are. In fact, each country or culture probably has a different part of the room that they typically focus on. To account for this, you can do something like what Kristie Barnett did in this living room by creating two focal points instead of one. For her, this was a fireplace and a window, but for you, it might be something else.

53) Distressed Tribal Patterns

While many people think of places like Paris and London and Rome when they talk about travel, there are a lot of places that don’t fit that Eurocentric travel map but are worth adding to your living room. For example, you can get tribal decorations like this distressed area rug. Instead of showing that you’ve traveled to the glamorous places or that you have a love for them, you can show that you see the smaller places and the unique gifts they have to offer. The distressed look will make it look more like an antique store find, too.

54) Pom Poms

When decorating the background, before you add your eclectic decorations, you’ll probably need to add curtains. We thought these dusty curtains with pom-poms looked rustic but also like something you’d see in an ancient European home. The pom-poms add some texture and make them look fancier, while the color makes them seem aged. The color could match well with a lot of old furniture, suitcases, and other decorations that might go in an eclectic room.

55) Antiques and Vintage Finds

If you collected all your eclectic decorations by actually visiting the places you’re displaying and buying the items there, you probably have a collection that spans several years or decades. If not, you can always make it look like you do by searching out antiques and vintage items. For example, you can display things like the typewriter on the nightstand in this video. Think about things that’d usually belong in a living room and see if you can find foreign, antique, or vintage versions.

56) Corrugated Vase

If you don’t have quite enough eclectic decorations to fill your living room, that’s okay! You have time to collect them and slowly fill the room with personal treasures, but in the meantime, you might want to find some pieces to fill in. You can find pieces that are unusual-looking, even if they’re not foreign, such as this corrugated vase. It doesn’t cost much, so you don’t have to feel bad about replacing it later, but for now, it should look unusual enough to suit.

57) Moon Shelf

While eclectic decorations are typically foreign, a lot of people think of them as simply a collection of odd things. In that case, you can find so many new things that aren’t foreign but definitely fit a hodgepodge theme. For example, a crescent moon shelf like this one from Amazon would create a mystical look, and you can use it to store various odd decorations. A piece like this would fit right in as an unusual decoration, too.

58) Off-White Walls

You worked hard to collect all the celtic pieces in your living room, and nothing should take away from that, including your walls and floors. That’s why off-white walls like the ones in this living room are a good way to keep the focus on your collection instead of on the room around it. If you want to go this route, avoid pure white, not only because stains will be more visible but also because pure white will be bright and distract attention from where you really want it to go. 

59) Hanging Wall Decor

If you’re looking for something unusual to match up with your odd and incredible foreign decorations, hanging wall decor is a good way to go. When we say hanging, we’re not just talking about pictures that hang up from a wire either. Try getting things like this string with decorations hanging from it to add an extra level of texture to your room. This will stand out from traditional hanging wall art and hold its own with your eclectic decor.

60) Creative and Funny

Eclectic decor is best used by people with creative minds who will appreciate the unique qualities of each piece. That said, there are many types of eclectic decor. For example, you could go with classic European decor from various countries or get tacky but lovable decorations and furniture from all over the world. You can even try mixing in some purely fun and creative furniture with your eclectic pieces to help fill out the room.

Did we answer some questions about eclectic decor, or are you still looking for more information and products to help you fill out your eclectic living room? Please let us know in the comments below!