Budget friendly options are my specialty. You deserve a beautiful home, let me help you achieve it!

 Let’s start with a living room/family room.  Some rooms have a focal point that is built in, or structural, such as a fire place.  If your room doesn’t have a structural focal point or center of interest, you’ll want to establish one.  It could be a tall piece of furniture or piece of art.  In many homes today the focal point is the TV.  Personally, I’m not big on the TV being a focal point in a room but often it is most practical.  If you’re going to have your TV as the focal point, please at least make it attractive.  Today’s TV’s can be wall mounted and a beautiful cabinet placed below.  The 1990’s practice of displaying your entertainment components is out.  It is far better to hide them in an appropriate ventilated cabinet and use an infrared sensor or similar device for your remotes. Once you’ve established your focal point in your room, you’ll want to arrange your furniture around it to create visual balance. Usually these living spaces are going to have a sofa or sectional in them.  The sofa or sectional is probably going to be the largest single piece of furniture in the room.  Use it as the starting place and all other pieces will be positioned relative to it. 

 As you’re placing your furniture, be aware of the style of furnishings; “eclectic” is hard to pull off unless you know what you’re doing.  Mixing several styles together, in itself, does not “eclectic” make!  Many furniture styles can be successfully matched with each other as long as you keep the overall level of formality similar.  A French Provincial dining set will look ridiculous next to your modern living room.  Having said that, I’m also strongly opposed to buying matched furniture groupings from the big chain furniture stores where you’re likely to visit the neighbor a few doors down and find they have the exact furniture you do, including the lamps, throw pillows and rug!!  Buying your furniture at one of these stores is perfectly fine, just mix and match and put together your own furniture grouping.  Hopefully you’ll have a few pieces at home that you can still use and really make the room individual and suited to you and your family.

Also remember to keep in mind the visual weight of each piece, the traffic pattern of your home and grouping by use.  Be aware of where extra light is needed and make room for a table and lamp or a floor lamp.  Try not to position furniture where you enter a room to the backs of the furniture.  When ever possible, place the furniture where it welcomes you into the room as opposed to it being positioned where it blocks your entry.

 There is still so much more to say about how to arrange furniture.  If you need help with your furniture placement, take a look at the example of a space plan on my website at www.DesignDistinctions.com and see if you get any ideas.  I will write more hints for arranging furniture in upcoming blogs so stay tuned!

I can use the decorations you already have, buy new or use a combination of both. Either way, I’ll do the work and you’ll see how to use your holiday decorations in a beautiful new way.  Indoors or out, from Christmas trees to table tops.  Enjoy the beauty of the season without the work.  Don’t forget about Halloween and Thanksgiving too!

 Size, of course, means just that, the overall measurement of the piece of furniture.  Scale, on the other hand, is a little more tricky.  The scale of a piece of furniture often has more to do with it’s perceived size rather than it’s actual size.  It’s more about the size of the furnishings in relationship to the space around them.  For instance, a small sofa would look even smaller in a large open room.  Something else affecting scale is the color or opacity of the piece of furniture.  A coffee table made of dark wood appears larger than a same sized coffee table made of clear Lucite or glass.  Take a look at the picture to the left.  Imagine the coffee table if it were made from solid wood and how much more space it would appear to occupy.  Keeping the actual size of your furniture and the scale of your furniture in mind when planning it’s arrangement is your first step.   

 You’ll also want to consider the best use of each of the pieces.  Sometimes a particular piece of furniture may look best in one location but if it never gets used, it’s probably in the wrong spot.  Grouping furniture to satisfy a need or use is a good place to start.  Consider what activities you enjoy and how best to place your furniture to accomplish that.  For instance, if you enjoy reading you’ll want a comfortable chair in a quiet area with good lighting, perhaps a place to put your feet up and maybe a side table to set a drink on.  If your family enjoys playing board games you’ll need a large gathering place with a lot of available seating.

Another area of concern is the traffic pattern in your home.  Think about how you get from one room to the next and how you use the room throughout the day.  Make sure you don’t leave any pieces of furniture or other items in places where it becomes difficult to get around, but on the other hand, moving all the furniture up against the walls isn’t the answer either.  Pay careful attention to how much room you leave between furnishings to move around and you should be OK.  If you’re constantly banging your shin into the corner of the table, you might want to consider making some changes!  The average space needed between a coffee table and a sofa is usually somewhere between 12” and 18”.

 These hints should get you started thinking but this is a big topic.  I’ll come back later with some more tips!  Meanwhile, if you have a specific question you can reach me through my “contact me” page at www.DesignDistinctions.com and I’ll do my best to help you out!

 Since post 1 dealt with paint color, I decided to keep things in the same vein and discuss wallpapers.  As I said in blog 1, your walls are the single largest area to decorate in your home.  If you don’t make good choices with your wall colors/treatments it throws everything off!!

 The popularity of wallpaper waxes and wanes.  In the 1970’s and 80’s almost every well appointed home had at least one room with wallpaper.  The 1990’s brought us decorative wallpaper borders, some extremely intricate.  By the time the year 2000 had arrived, wallpaper was out!  Today it is making a strong come back.  Modern wallpapers are generally more understated than papers of the past, and in my opinion, that’s a good thing!  However there are times when a bold statement is needed in a room and wallpaper can be one of the best ways to achieve it!  Wallpaper is perfectly suited for accent walls.  Take a look at the photo in my Gallery of the wall that is a giant wave.  This was done for the bedroom of a teenage boy who loves surfing and water sports.  The impact it makes in the room is so much more powerful than art or accessories could make.  I also recently worked on an Office/Craft Room for a client and used a large scale graphic pattern on two walls.  Without the added visual interest on the walls the room would appear lifeless.  There is definitely a place for wallpaper in today’s decorating but it needs to be carefully chosen.

There are a couple of challenges you may face when selecting or hanging wallpaper.  Many homes have textured walls and the finer, lighter weight papers can not be hung on anything but the smoothest walls.  There are “liners” available that can be applied first with a strong paste to help smooth the wall and then the final wallpaper can be successfully hung.  This adds considerable expense but it can be a great problem solver.  Also, just as in choosing a paint sheen, be careful not to put a paper with a glossy finish in a room with a lot of light.  You will lose the color/pattern and see nothing but glare.  Wall preparation is an important part of the job as well.  If the walls have a good quality coat of paint on them, sizing is often not necessary.  However, if your walls still have original contractor grade paint on them, you will definitely want to size the walls first.  I have had the unfortunate experience of trying to remove wallpaper on a poorly prepped wall more than once.  Not only will the job be slow moving and messy, but you will more than likely damage the wall board itself.

 Last but not least, you will need to decide what your wallpaper will be made of.  You can find everything from foiled & flocked, hand-screened or real linen to your basic paper or vinyl.  Of course the room you hang the paper in is going to dictate part of your decision.  A linen or grass cloth paper would probably be a poor choice for a kitchen or bath.  A splash of spaghetti sauce would be all it took to forever ruin your beautiful new wall covering!  A vinyl paper or vinyl coated would be best suited for rooms that need occasional scrubbing.

Time to start wallpaper shopping!  If you’re considering a project at home and would like some advice on wallpapers, send me a note through my “Contact Us” page at www.DesignDistinctions.com and I’ll be happy to answer your questions there!  -Susan

Here it goes… my first ever attempt at blogging!  It is my goal to help DIYers minimize frustration while  maximizing their room’s potential and the best place to start is choosing paint colors!

 Paint is the one thing in a room which has the greatest impact with the least investment, other than your time of course.  Carefully chosen colors on walls, ceilings and trim can make a room appear larger or cozier, ceilings taller or lower, even make a room appear to have more natural light. The walls in your home are the largest area for you to “decorate” and they need to be given a great amount of thought.  They serve as the background for every object in the room and should serve to enhance all the elements of your décor.

 Light in a room greatly affects the appearance of paint color and should be your first consideration.  White paint reflects up to 80% of light, while darker colors absorb more than 90% of light. The finish you choose will also have an impact.  Flat paints soften color while glossy paints reflect light and can make the color appear brighter. I prefer either a flat or eggshell finish for most walls.  I’ve seen walls with an orange peel texture painted in a semi-gloss that made me dizzy with all the light reflecting back off the highs and lows of the texture!!  Disturbing!!  Most rooms have areas that are brighter and more well lit than others.  Make sure when testing a paint color sample you view it in many areas of the room to see how the light plays off the color.  I sometimes use lighter or darker versions of a color on adjoining walls when the lighting is significantly different.

 Next you need to consider the actual color you’ll use.  Don’t be afraid to move up in the intensity of the color you choose.  When you’re looking at a paint color sample card, there are usually several different intensities of the same color represented.  The lighter colors at the top of the card may appear more intense on the card than they will on your walls because they are on, or next to, a white background. Once the paint is on the wall and the white background has been removed, those colors appear really washed out. I think a common mistake DIYers make is to be too conservative in their paint choice.  If you’re going to go through all the work of re-painting, make a difference and be bold!!

 This should get you off to a good start!!  If you’re beginning a project at home and would like some further advice on choosing a paint color, send me a note through my “contact us” page at www.DesignDistinctions.com and I’ll be happy to answer your questions there!!   Happy Painting!!    -Susan