Clocks today are a little like the drab librarian who suddenly lets down her hair, rolls up her hemline, strokes on a kiss of red lipstick and starts to turn a few heads. Sure, clocks are utilitarian and hard-working like that librarian, but like her, they also can be glam, brassy, witty and artistic.


Why not take a few minutes -- with a newly minted new year, there are plenty of them -- to ponder the clock's decorative aspects. Long relegated to the more private and working areas of our homes, clocks have a much wider application. Interior designer Francie Prince, owner of Prince Associates in Winter Park, says: "Clocks should be treated like a piece of art. Put it where it can be enjoyed."

Designers, who have been casting their art over everything from bedding to pet supplies in recent years, would seem to agree. They have found the humble clock a fertile field to mine, and clocks are taking on more faces than Lon Chaney. They are finding their way into dining rooms, living rooms, studies and even outdoors.


Granted, we can all check the time with a quick look at our cell phones, but having it defined in a way that also graces our homes in a decorative, even whimsical, fashion is something only a clock can do -- hands down.

Confused about where and how to use a clock?

"I do clocks in every room," says Winter Park designer Suzanna Lawler-Isco, principal of Lawler-Isco Interior Design. "I'm doing a lanai right now, and I'm putting a clock out there -- a large clock, probably something rustic and in metal."


Anywhere you might hang a picture, a tapestry or a mirror, you can hang a wall clock, designers say. As always, proportion is key, and in the world of clocks, sizes range from bedside alarms to wall clocks measuring 50 inches in diameter or more.

Prince suggests using groupings of clocks, for instance, on a stair wall, in place of the more typical grouping of photos.

A few years ago, Prince created several groupings of clocks in the dining room of a client who worked with clocks and collected them. For a recent client, she also has hung a cuckoo clock -- a hoary design that has inexplicably surged in popularity of late and been reconfigured in chrome, laminate and plastic -- and designed a space around a grandfather clock.


"I think a grandfather clock needs to be in a place where it can be viewed from three angles," she says. "Give it a place of prominence."

Orlando interior designer Diane Fouts suggests mixing a clock into a collection of pictures or framing an assortment of clocks in a shadowbox. Fouts also likes the notion of using a contemporary clock in a traditional room or an antique clock in an otherwise modern space.


"I think a mix is more interesting, and [a contemporary clock] gives a traditional room a bit of surprise, and [an antique timepiece] adds warmth and a sense of history to a modern space," she says.



Kate Tyndall is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.