GIVE YOUR PORCH PERSONALITY!
Article by: Rebecca Ceron Martin
Think of your porch as a room in your home, many of the same decorating principals apply! Make sure however, that you choose items and fabrics that can tolerate the amount of exposure to weather your porch receives (the following TIPS are best suited to covered porches).
If you don’t already have them, try adding window boxes, hanging baskets or containers. Update them seasonally with interesting flowers and plants. Discover shade loving varieties for the deeper recessed areas of your porch and ones that love filtered light for sunnier spots.
Display items you love to collect to give your porch a unique style of its own! Try to make yourself "edit" when selecting what to display and where. Much depends on the size and area of your porch but remember…less can be more! There are a myriad of choices; local shells, antique bottles, nautical ropes, buoys, weathered wood, outsider art, yard art, framed art and old or new iron work. You can simply just collect unique pots and vases to display your plants in. Ideas are endless and limited only to your imagination, personal style and amount of protection items will require to be maintained on your porch.
Consider how you want to display your porch collection. Try to think of unusual (but practical) pieces, such as a painted or distressed bookcase, antique wall shelves or unique piece of furniture like an old pie safe or hoosier cabinet that can also double as a porch bar during cocktail hour, morning coffee station for reading the paper or as a snack site for refreshments after school. Everyone will love it!
 Cozy up your porch with one or more of the following items, starting with furniture...and, think out of the box! Add accent pieces such as: an old iron day bed covered in outdoor fabric for a sofa, or make a porch swing (without a back) as a hanging sofa or porch bed for naps and reading. Pillows can unify a porch with no effort at all, as can a lap quilt tossed over a rocker. Area rugs, outdoor cabana-style curtains (that tie back) or roll-up shades can give your porch personality, style and comfort. Outdoor candles, favorite magazines, stereo speakers, ceiling fans and recessed lighting add dimension and interest. For an all-season approach, consider adding a fireplace to one end or an outdoor "summer” kitchen for cooking and entertaining. Depending on the area and size of your porch as well as your budget, you can create a porch-room that you will love in every season. The good news is… it can be done in phases for the budget conscious or all at once for those looking for an exciting project. Either way, try some of these tips, so you can start enjoying your porch more...right away,with little effort or money at all!
QUICK TIP:
If your home has a covered porch, here's an easy way to give it instant charm: Place a table lamp (or two) on your porch for indirect lighting. It’s best to use outdoor safe lamp(s) with 40 watt bulbs (soft lighting is the goal) not bright overhead light.
...Now, just click your lamp(s) ON and leave your overhead porch lights OFF. Walk away from your house, take a long look back and give a contented sigh at the soft glow emanating from your oh, so...Southern Porch! (the porch illustration below is using two lamps-no overhead lights).
..below is a lighthearted article about the origins of a "southern" porch
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…A southern porch calls to mind a place where friends gather, lies get swapped, flies get swatted and seemingly insignificant moments can take on remarkably significant meaning. Everybody knows a porch is sacred to the southerner! It’s time for a little porch talk, y’all.
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...Shoo Fly, I’m Porch Sittin’! Lowcountry Companion - Fall Issue
Visit the Lowcountry, if only for a short while, and you’ll discover an enchanting place called “the porch,” onlooker to experiences that have shaped our everyday life here in the Lowcountry and across the south. The humid haze of summer has lifted and we find ourselves aroused by this deliciously fresh fall weather. Y’all, it’s prime porch season and this is the secret. This is the great truth, “a porch IS sacred to the southerner!” At its heart, the porch is a place to welcome guests, take pleasure in family, observe beauty, offer relief from weather or simply enjoy passing the day. In older homes, porches are intoxicating with interlude and painted in history; newer ones embrace the mellow feel of a casual family home. Perched on an oceanfront mansion, the porch provides a generous dowry of sociable splendor; while on a condo overlooking the golf course a porch lazes in effortless southern charm. No matter where it is, a southern porch can put you under its spell, revealing the time honored promise of relaxation and becoming one of your home’s most cordial and pleasing living areas. Who would try to characterize “the good life” in the south, without thinking of porches?
The southern porch is steeped in lore and legend, as evidenced by the enduring influence of a symbolic color still in use on porches of today. A long-standing tradition in the south has been to paint porch ceilings blue, but have you ever wondered why? Maybe folks just want their porch ceiling to suggest the pleasing color of sky or to believe it somehow extends the light of day when fall sunsets get lower on the horizon. Some swear by blue, believing it bamboozles the bugs into staying away. Still others use it to “keep faith” with tradition. But by far, the most fascinating explanation is that it chases “haints” (spirits) away! That being said, you have to understand ‘haint blue’ actually IS an accepted color in the south! Gullah legend boasts that “haints” can’t cross water, so painting “haint” blue around your house will fool the “haints” and persuade them against “crossing” into your home. I can just hear you thinking, that’s a tall order for some blue paint! Could I really be trying to tell you that haint blue will… shoo the flies, extend the day and keep you safe! Yep, and my momma would probably say, “it’s time we had a little ‘porch talk’… missy!”
The late Charles Kuralt, that beloved southern narrator, wrote “In the south, the breeze blows softer, neighbors are friendlier, nosier, and more talkative (a southerner never uses one word when ten or twenty will do) this is a different place. The southern way of thinking is different, as are its ways of seeing, laughing, singing, eating, meeting and parting.” To his insightful anecdote I would only add…AND it all takes place out on the PORCH!
A porch is not only intimately connected with romance but probably remembers more “sweet nothings” than you or I could forget in a lifetime! Why is it, a porch’s perceptive rafters can embrace us in a kindliness of heart with a sincerity of spirit that makes us feel at ease in conversations capable of “unfastening” our locked-away feelings or opening tender new-found ones. Even the soundless soul-searching sort of “porch talk” we have with ourselves has been credited with healing broken down marriages, saving a child’s backsides, nurturing a dream or providing peace of mind. It’s true, the heartbeat of a porch may be heard in the steady rhythmic thumping of rocker slats across board floors, but like its human counterpart, a porch’s soul lies in the immeasurable memories made over the years.
Life in the Lowcountry is just a little more relaxed and people like to entertain here, so a porch helps its owner extend the hands of hospitality. When you get right down to it, the main facets of Lowcountry living are its openness to nature and the outdoors, its spectacular marsh vistas, sweeping views of the ocean and especially our way of welcoming visitors to come and sit on the porch with us. These are some reasons why fashioning a porch to reveal the character of its owner can be of considerable relevance in this spot of the south AND it sure makes for a fascinating leisure pursuit!
No wonder then, in the Lowcountry, we liken “a porch on a house to a smile on a face” because porches cloak our senses with simple pleasures and lay out a lively and bighearted welcome mat for all the joys and pleasures of friends and family. A southern porch calls to our mind a place where friends gather, lies get swapped, flies get swatted and seemingly insignificant moments can take on remarkably significant meaning. So, do hurry on out to the porch y’all and let’s…sit a spell!
Rebecca Ceron Martin is a local Pawleys Island interior designer.
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