Showrooms at the Merchandise Mart have their own cachet.

Usually open to consumers only when they are accompanied by a designer, the rooms represent attempts to wow professionals.

For the first time, however, the Mart has asked showroom designers and staff to create rooms that the public can browse.

“Dream Rooms: Luxury Living Spaces” offer nine rooms - including living rooms, dining rooms, a bedroom and study - each decorated entirely from a showroom or two.

The rooms on the first floor of the Merchandise Mart will be open free through June 30.

Anyone who wants to purchase something shown will need to work with a designer. The Mart has a program through its Design Center that helps consumers find designers.

Leaf patterns were among the trends spotted.

Almost every room shows leaves in one format or another. If you are adding one thing to your home this season, consider a leaf pattern - subtle or bold.

The luxurious dark four-poster bed with gold Chinese decoration in Charles Pollock’s room wears a silky duvet cover with elegant, subtle gold leaves burnished on a light blue background.

In Oscar de la Renta’s living room for Century Designer Showrooms, a traditional English club chair wears a modern dark leaf pattern on a light background.

Barbara Barry’s room with Henredon and Kravet products features a subtle leaf pattern on a silver screen.

In Nancy Corzine’s dining room, square etched-metal plates by Beth Weintraub feature leaves and flowers. Each of the four unframed works retails for $1,200 in a 20-by-20-inch size, according to the artist’s Web site.

Silver leaf is another trend, but you might want to wash it with gold or give it an antique glaze as Sally Sirkin Lewis did to frame the red rough-textured silk upholstery on the chairs in J. Robert Scott’s study.

Venetian silver, the same toned-down old-silver look, is a signature of Corzine’s. In fact, she uses squares of it as wallpaper in her dining room.

Here are details not to be missed in the dream rooms:

• A pink leather library chair is the traffic stopper in de la Renta’s room.

The intriguing chair is based on an 18th century antique owned by the designer. The reader sits backward on the chair to use the book stand that is part of the piece.

Century sells the chair for $3,000, but the pink leather is extra.

De la Renta mixes not only masculine and feminine but also traditional and modern, textured and smooth.

Chocolate suede updates a red lacquer Chippendale chair, for example.

• In Corzine’s room, hand-made mirrors - framed with a glass trellis design with gold sparkling in the mirror and the frame - retail for $17,500 each. They are about 5 feet tall.

• Lovers of French Moderne should check out William Switzer’s room. He has the exclusive right to reproduce Andre Arbus’ works from the 1930s.

If the look needs any modernizing, Switzer’s fabrics and leathers do the trick. For example, L’Austerlitz dining chairs are orange lacquer with white leather.

They are complemented by bold wallpaper with a very large lemon-yellow classic medallion on a lavender background.

• Holly Hunt’s sanctuary shows two great rope chairs with rounded backs and suede seats.

• In Pollock’s bedroom, you can see the effects of custom work and try to decide if the expense and work is worth the end result. The drapes are hand-colored to coordinate with the bedding.

ddonovan@dailyherald.com

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