Decorating Mistakes to Avoid

By Lisa Martin

Decorating mistakes can cost you money and wear on your patience as you spend every single day in a room you dislike. Interior designers offer the following antidotes to the most common decorating mishaps, blunders, and foibles. Hit the road to recovery with the following tips from the experts!

• Slow down, take a long, deep breath and underdo: “I don’t like ‘too much,’ ” says Michael S. Smith, the Los Angeles decorator First Lady Michelle Obama hired to redo parts of the White House. “But every room deserves one dramatic element.” Choose a sparkling chandelier, a fab sofa covered in a bold, graphic fabric or a rug in an unexpected hue. Then rein in your wilder instincts with the rest of the space.
• Loosen up your layout: Don’t squeeze the life out of your room by pushing all your furniture against the four walls. Doing so actually makes the space seem smaller. Float ottomans, accent tables, and small chairs so they take center stage.
• Quit loading up on cookie-cutter accessories: Don’t feel like you need the latest, greatest, trendiest objects to create interest around your home. “Find new uses for the old and worn discards of others,” says Rachel Ashwell, architect of the Shabby Chic movement. “And there is no better place to find the faded and decayed, the crumbling and the scuffed than a salvaged yard or flea market, garage or estate sale.” Vintage items bring instant patina and interest to your interiors. Find more tips about decorating through repurposing here.
• Mind the scale! We don’t mean your weekly weigh-in. Rather scale refers to the heights and shapes of your furnishings. So next to that vast club chair, consider replacing a super skinny end table with something that has a little more heft.
• Combat color blindness: Boring beige gives even the most interesting rooms a case of the blahs. Perk up your interiors with pops of black and red with throw pillows, vases, and other decorative objects. Or go for chartreuse, Pompeii orange or sunny yellow to express your adventuresome spirit. And don’t forget to choose your rugs and artwork before selecting your paint. If you need extra incentive to take the plunge, invest in a small pot of sample paint ($2 to $4 at most paint stores or home improvement centers) and put it to the test on a piece of poster board.
• Cover up! Speaking of rugs, one frequent goof is selecting versions that are simply too small for a given space. In a living room or dining room, make sure all the chairs sit comfortably on the rug — even when they’re pushed back from a table while your guest goes and grabs seconds. In general, rugs should reveal less than a foot-and-a-half of the flooring underneath.
• Lower your sights: Quit hanging your photos and art at too high. The bottom of a frame shouldn’t be more than 8 to 10 inches above a headboard or sofa back. Another rule of thumb? Never turn a small picture into a widow. Remember, there is strength in numbers so arrange photos, prints, and other artwork in groupings. Starting your art collection? Read this before you buy.
• When in doubt: Buy one large tropical plant — real or faux — and stick it in the corner of your largest room. Four seasons a year, it’ll lure your eye and radiate healthy cheer.