On The Town: West Elm Opens in Birmingham

Launched in 2002 out of Brooklyn, NY, West Elm’s mission is to help customers express their personal style at home, and boy, did that come across when walking through the doors this morning. The store is beautiful and is set up with public living spaces in the front (living and dining rooms) and bed and bath towards the back. The furniture and home décor is like something out of your dreams and it seems like every item in the store can be styled with other items in the store even it they aren’t from the same section.

The color palette is mostly cool tones from greys to muted blues with pops of white, metallic and fur to warm up everything. One thing they do very well with their staging is mixing metals and metallics, which is a great home décor (and even fashion) trend, and will work especially well for holiday decorating. Overall, the brand is rather affordable, and the little home décor items scattered around the store would make for great gifts, holiday or otherwise.

One great thing about West Elm is that they have a service called “Home Stylist” that is free of charge. The stylist will help you with design ideas, recommend other great stores for certain furniture or décor items they don’t carry, and even come to your house (free of charge, again) to look at your space and set up a floor plan for you to use when decorating.

For those of you who love to shop local, you’re in luck! West Elm has a shop local section with products made by Michigan designers. Each product has a card next to the display, noting the designer and a little about them so you can be really familiar with whose item you are purchasing. If you are a home décor designer or gift maker, who would like to be considered to have your products sold at West Elm, you can speak directly to management at the store or email westelmlocal@wsgc.com. Some lucky local designers’ products may even make it to their website, for more selling opportunities!

The store is located at 211 W. Maple, in Birmingham, and the website is www.westelm.com. Happy decorating!