The Three Essentials
You can’t ignore your sofa any longer, the poor thing. It’s been patiently waiting at the bottom of your to-do list for sooo long. So today is the day. A new sofa! It will look so much better than the old one, and it’ll make the living room so much more comfortable. And you can have friends over again! No more feeling embarrassed by the furniture.
Now, what color should you get? Definitely not brown again. Gray? Blue? Pink velvet? What color would go with the chairs? And the rug, and the curtains? Wait a minute, what color would go with all of those things? Also, what style should you get? Maybe something more modern, or….not?
I know, it suddenly seems way too complicated.
You might be struggling with your room because:
You may not know what design style you like. You’ve always used your grandma’s dining table with the chairs from the flea market and the hutch from Pottery Barn, but they’ve never really looked fabulous together.
You’re not sure if you even have a color scheme. Your walls are neutral and your carpet is beige. You’ve got some pieces of furniture. Three of these are blue, and four are brown, so the color scheme would be beige, blue and brown….right?
You can’t figure out a furniture plan that works well. If the bed is on this wall, and the dresser is over here, then the chair can only go in that corner, which means there’s no room for a nightstand on this side of the bed. But if the bed is on that wall...
In my experience, when you can’t describe these three factors, it’s much more difficult to make confident decisions about your decor. You feel overwhelmed by the huge number of choices to make. You’re making stabs in the dark, and chances are, you’ll eventually waste a bit of cash and use up precious time on things that don’t work well together.
Instead, let’s spend that precious time on planning to design a room that sets the right mood and functions properly. That’s what we’re really after.
So how will we do that? By starting with what I call ‘the Three Essentials’:
Essential #1: Your Particular Design Style
Style is a visual thing. It is fundamental in two ways: it defines the overall feeling of a space, like a set in the theater, and it’s also about the physical characteristics that we can point to, like the shape of a table leg, and say it’s curved, tall, short, wood, chrome, and so forth. Style is important because it helps you make design decisions according to these visual characteristics, which means that your furnishings will look awesome together.
Let’s imagine a Traditional-style room. Those curved wood table legs relate to the rolled arms of the chair, which relate to the gourd-shaped lamps, for example. In a Modern space, we can imagine straight chrome table legs, which relate to the right angles of the sofa and the square shape of the coffee table.
But living in a strictly Traditional or Modern interior would be like living in a museum, and who really wants that? Most of us have furnishings that are a mix of styles, with a tendency towards one or another. It’s this real-world mix that can play well together by focusing on style.
Take a fresh look at a piece of furniture that you love. Notice its shape and what it’s made of, and look for those same characteristics in other items for your room.
When you know your design style, it’s easy to combine pieces that relate to each other.
Essential #2: Your Ideal Color Scheme
Color scheme is the combination of two or three colors that visually co-exist in a room. It’s important because most people want to spend time in a place that feels good to them, and color is a fundamental team player when it comes to setting a mood. Bright colors tend to energize us, so they might work well for a kitchen or an office. Soft colors give a sense of calm, so we often prefer them in a bedroom or a living room.
Just like style, color can form a relationship between objects. Having a defined color scheme focuses the choices for furniture, paint and everything else in the room so that your space looks coordinated and intentional.
But how do you find a color scheme? One easy way is to choose two colors from a piece of artwork or fabric that’s already in place. Another way is to choose two colors from the color wheel, whether they’re opposites like green and red, or neighbors like blue and violet. Pair those with one neutral color, and you’ve got a reliable foundation for choosing items that will look great together.
When you know your color scheme, it’s easy to buy things that coordinate well.
Essential #3: Your New Furniture Plan
The Furniture Plan refers to what pieces you want to keep, what you need to buy, and where all of the furniture is placed in your room. This matters for two reasons: 1) furniture needs to be positioned logically for the way in which you use the room; and 2) it needs to fit easily in your physical space.
Ideally, everything in your home is useful and beautiful to you. If not, then those unused items need to move on to another place or person. That’s when you can see if you need to fill in with anything, like extra seating, side tables or storage.
When you know your furniture plan, it’s easy to find pieces that fit and function in your room.
So the three essentials are your design style, color scheme and furniture plan. Spend some time with these and see what comes up for you.
Then you can shop with these goals in mind, without feeling overwhelmed, and ready to make targeted design decisions.
