In response to my Junking in Singapore post, a Tokyo reader emailed me this photo of her kilim footstool, bought at Persian Abrisham, in nearby Higashi Azabu. I stopped in to check it out and they had quite a few. While this is great news to Tokyoites, it doesn’t help me get a few back to America!

They had square…

…round…

…and extra covers.

As previously mentioned, I had been planning to buy the ubiquitous Moroccan poufs, sold and seen everywhere, like these in Candace Bushnell’s apartment, for the TV room/guest room in our beach house in New Jersey. The room gets piled with kids so we need extra seating, but it needs to be lightweight and moveable when the room becomes a bedroom. They seem like a sensible and stylish solution.

The kilim footstools push the TV room in a more sophisticated “library” style of decorating and I am still not 100% sure that is the way I mean to go. Originally, the room was used as a laundry room, a real waste of space in a house as small as mine where one of the main goals is to sleep as many people as possible, particularly as the room is decently sized. It was painted a bright yellow with a childish border around the top. Here is a taste of the ugly…

We cleared it out right away, but there wasn’t any time to consider how I wanted it to look. The key piece of furniture is from my parents, an amazing bamboo daybed with the old-fashioned 33 inch wide mattress, instead of the modern 39 inch, a more graceful and space-saving choice, to use as the couch and to sleep guests.  It really is a shame they don’t make that size any more. It has a simple creamy matelesse coverlet, basically Benjamin Moore’s Linen White, so I had the painter just go ahead and paint the room that color. Now, I am not normally a Linen White kinda girl, preferring instead pure cool whites to the yellowy beige of Linen White. But in such a cramped space, I do like how the daybed basically disappears into the wall. And all the accessories at my fingertips seem to work with it. My best friend bought me the amazing John Robshaw bolster pillow in the photo below, which started to clinch the deal. I pulled out my framed butterfly book-plates, planned for curtains in a Brigitte Singh block print (shown to the left) and headed down a path that would look great with either footstools or poufs.

As usual, the best way to get ideas across is to use photos of existing rooms. This cozy niche by Stephen Miller Siegel has the look that my room is starting to have. Muted colors, Indian prints, almost a masculine style.

The cane daybed piled with pillows in this living room by Chris Barrett has that same feel. I wish there was a way to rotate the photo and look at the sofa head on.

But there is another version of this room floating around my head. one with a soft white feel, with throw pillows in cool brights. The perfect example is Alayne Patrick’s apartment – she even has a dhurrie, albeit pink and white instead of blue, and some colorful poufs.

This is an outdoor version of the daybed, but has a similar feel.

Sometimes I think I want it even purer than that – all lacy and white. Theoretically hard to keep clean, but bleach does wonders. I have loved this photo for years.

Again, lacy whiteness, in this case set off by all the green. I could paint the walls or wallpaper them to make the space cozy which is sometimes the best strategy in a small room.

I’d really love opinions. Poufs or kilim footstools? Or something else entirely? And what about color schemes? The summer is fast upon me and I need something to distract me anyway right now – there were quite a few big aftershocks today. So what would you do?

Image credits: 1. L. Twaronite, 2-4, 6-8. me, 5. Elle Decor September 2005 photo credit: William Waldron, 9. Elle Decor, date and photo credit unknown, 10. House Beautiful January 2009 photo credit: Victoria Pearson, 11. Domino May 2007, photo credit: Melanie Acevedo, 12. House Beautiful June 2006, photo credit: Ray Kachatorian, 13. credit unknown, probably House & Garden or Architectural Digest, 14. credit unknown, probably House & Garden.