1. SURFACES: This means walls, ceiling, and floor. Basically, if you could remove everything soft and impermanent from a room, this is what you'd be left with. And these are the first things you must consider when successfully decorating a room. Painted walls are preferable to wallpapered walls, mostly due to the obvious cleaning factor, and the fact that patterns, whether large or small, visually clutter a room. If you don't believe me, think about hanging artwork on a wallpapered wall. Now think about how disgusting that would look. When dealing with walls, its best to have them in good condition: no holes, and a clean, smooth surface are best to work with. This is the layer of decorating where color choices for wallpaint are made, and its best to take stock of other factors, such as the floor material, size of the space, lighting that the space gets, and fixtures to determine a color.
Choosing colors for interiors is work within itself. Color consultation has become a hugely growing field in the last decade, and as fashion makes it ways out of the starkly minimal whites, grays, and beiges of previous years, people are beginning to realize the importance of color in their homes. With color, there are very few, in any, hard-and-fast rules. The sage advice of light colors in small rooms to enlarge and darker colors in big rooms to make intimate are now heavily outdated. Truthfully, darker colors work best in already small spaces; it works with the already intimate scale of the room. Light, airy colors work well with already large, airy spaces- the rule seems to be, work with what you have, and this is probably the best advice I could hand over.
When choosing colors, ignore what is fashionable. Let the space tell you what it feels it needs, and always pick a color that you like. Ultimately, there are fewer disasters with choosing colors if you pick something that you are naturally drawn to. If you happen to be attracted to bold, hot colors like magenta or orange, one idea is to paint only one wall this bright color, and leave it surrounded by white walls, so as to not overpower the room. This creates a very modern focal point within a room, and is most successfully done when this one colored wall is left without adornment that might distract from it.
With flooring, ceiling, and fixtures, take stock of what you have. The best kinds of flooring to have are hardwood floors, pine plank floors, stone or cement, or tile. These are the easiest to keep clean, and look best with modern furnishings. Trying to work around a wall-to-wall cut pile is hard; its perhaps the easiest way to disable the decorating potential of a room. If you are unfortunately forced to have wall-to-wall carpetting in your space but are luckily able to control what you have, I recommend natural fiber carpetting such as jute, seagrass, or sisal, or a sisal-wool blend. Natural fiber complements modern furniture as well as antiques, lays close to the floor (no raised "puffiness" as with other carpetting) and hides dirt and the evidence of pets better than a regular carpet. The average cost of it, depending on material, is $2-10 a square foot. A vendor I like to use is Merida Meridian.
2. FURNITURE & TREATMENTS: The second layer is for window coverings, and furniture. This is when, after you've removed all of the items in your space from the previous step, you can start to bring them back in.
When you choose furniture for your space, pay attention to the lines of each piece, and how they'll relate to one another. I prefer "see-through" furniture- pieces that are up on legs and give you a clear view of the floor beneath it, because it tends to make a room appear more spacious. Another important factor in furniture is scale; if your space is large, you don't want a collection of little, small scale pieces floating around because they will appear lost. If space is at a minimum (almost always an issue for apartment dwellers), you want neither lots of small scale furniture (will appear cluttered), or lots of large scale furniture (space will often look dwarfed and tight). Your best bet is to carefully select a few medium scale pieces. This topic will be discussed further in an upcoming post on One-Room Living.
Window treatments: fussy ones are ugly. Forget ones that must be expensively tailored and pinched and pleated, and please do not choose dark colored, stiff drapery, as these are reminscent of funeral parlors. Truths be told, window coverings determine what kind of lighting you'll receive in your space, so by choosing dark, heavy treatments, you are undoubtably cutting 50-70% of your natural light. To me, light and air equals youth, and dark interiors signify elderly. Simple, light treaments (cotton, linen, or silk) look best. If you have great moldings around your windows, its best to make the most of them and use roman shades or pull shades. Jute, linen, bamboo, and canvas shades are an easy, inexpensive and attractive window treatment option.
3. LIGHTING & ACCESSORIES: When it comes to lighting, its best to have several scattered sources of light, such as overhead lighting, pendant lamps, sconces, desk lamps, table top lamps, and even candles. Having all of these creates a layering of light that can be controlled depending on what you need. Fort instance, task lighting or overall lighting requires stronger, even light, whereas accent lighting is small, dimly diffused light.
Accessories are a great way to introduce color to a space without the fear of having the color overpower, as with wall color. The list for accessories includes everything from pillows, bedding, dishware, knick-knacks, artwork, pictures, tapestries, area rugs, etc. While their are no rules to accessories, its always best to choose a few of what you love and use them wisely, rather than the often-done act of buying alot of what you're impartial to in order to fill space.
