Year after year, season after season, our showrooms continue to surprise, delight and inspire customers. We receive so many questions regarding inspiration, construction, materials, process, design — the list goes on! We love how those who are in our showrooms continue to be amazed and energized by our displays and overall visual merchandising. This season, we took a peek behind the curtain – documenting the process from start to finish with the help of our Visual Experience Manager, Toni Dammicci.

Prior to showroom conception and creation, our Visuals team is brought into the fold on all things product and trend with the help of our Product Development team. Once the team has absorbed and marinated on what products are being introduced the following season, it’s time for brainstorming. “Brainstorming is a highly collaborative process where we come up with all the ideas for the showrooms,” says Toni. “We pull inspiration from the world around us, online, books, past projects, sketches etc. anything can be a form of inspiration during this process. From displays to custom fixtures – we think of every detail and surface needed to create a comprehensive showroom experience.” Fun fact: It takes 6 months to create our showroom displays from start to finish!

Once the team has sketched and mocked up their ideas they’re ready to move on to assembly week. Assembly week is where the team tests out and prototypes all of the ideas from brainstorming. “We use our sketches and spec sheets as guides to inform our color choices, materials and scale. This week is designed for us to experiment and try out different versions of our ideas until we get it just right. It allows us to make changes as we go and to tweak our designs so it ultimately all works seamlessly together and looks cohesive when it’s all installed in the showroom,” adds Toni.

“Once we are happy with what we’ve accomplished and come up with at assembly week, the fabrication process begins. Fabrication is the process of manufacturing or building out each display in its entirety. We utilize a range of processes and techniques ranging from painting, woodworking, metalworking, casting, printing, dyeing, weaving and everything in between to build out our showrooms. As a team we tap into each other’s specific skill sets and try to play to our strengths. A lot of times we collaborate with each other in order to tackle some of the more nuanced displays or the displays that are such a large-scale.” 

Accent Decor has multiple showrooms which means many of the displays need to be made in mass, multiple times. With the added challenge of multiple showrooms and all the architectural differences that comes with each space, each display needs to be re-designed and re-specked to fit each individual space. “It’s quite the challenge doing each and every showroom display times three,” says Toni. “The fabrication process takes months as we build as much as we can prior to set-up.”

Let’s take a closer look at a few of our customers’ favorite displays and moments from our January showrooms…

Mushrooms are always a customer favorite! For our Harvest collection we designed these larger than life mushrooms out of metal and concrete to create a statement display piece. 

Halloween is always a fun concept! We created a series of metal branches with layers of moss hanging from the structure to create the feeling of a spooky forest. We wanted the layers of moss to be a combination of materials like shredded canvas, tulle and netting to create a realistic, yet playful interpretation of moss. The branches were hung overhead so that as you entered the Halloween area you felt encapsulated in the spooky branches.

For our Provence Holiday trend story, we created a series of little paper holiday houses that were peppered throughout the tabletops and shelving. We added in hand drawn patterns and designs on top of the cardboard and paper to add handmade details. Mixed in with our bottlebrush trees and faux snow, these little paper villages added the perfect amount of personality. 

Inspired by Nordic holidays and decor, Provence has many display elements layered in to create the holiday feel. We created hundreds of strands of paper snow that we hung in an undulating pattern throughout the entire Provence concept. Each strand of snow is composed of many paper circles strung together creating an ombre effect in both color and scale. Each circle was cut out and then individually dipped before being strung in mass. This was a very time intensive display but the results were worth it and truly created the feeling of falling snow.

Our Silverlake holiday trend story is playful, colorful and full of whimsical Christmas details. We had so much fun with pattern and color throughout this concept. We created a reindeer mural based off the characters in our new product on top of a pastel pink wall with painted starbursts. We added starbursts and hung an amazing display of disco balls and paper stars to create the feeling of a fun, holiday party.

In addition, we created a series of ‘disco cactus’ tabletop sculptures to mix in with our product assortment. These paddle cacti were cut out of plywood by hand, sanded down, painted and assembled to create the structure. We painted them in various shades of greens and pinks and added disco mirrors to finish them off. A customer favorite!

Our Collected Casita trend story was incredibly inspiring when dreaming up what this space could look like and is easily one of our favorite new concepts! This area was all about the feeling of a home environment – we wanted it to feel layered, cozy and colorful. We created a faux adobe fireplace out of cardboard and joint compound. Fun fact: it only weighs about 5 pounds but looks like a realistic adobe fireplace! We built a custom half-round hearth out of wood to raise the fireplace up and create more opportunities to merchandise in new product. 

We also painted a huge abstract, colorful plant inspired mural using lime paint. The lime paint comes in beautiful colors but also has an amazing textural look once painted.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about the intricate process behind our showroom displays and concepts. Each season we will continue to push the envelope and construct inspiring installations for years to come! Visit our showrooms in Atlanta, Vegas, and High Point.

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