The Art of Building a Room

The Art of Building a Room

You don’t have to be a professional designer to create a beautifully decorated room. A few key decisions at the start will guide you through the decorating process. You’ll end up with a room that functions well, creates the mood you want and shows off your own sense of style. Follow our tips below and turn your lackluster room into something fabulous.

Function
Always keep the function of the room in your mind when you’re decorating. Think about your family and your lifestyle needs — you want your room to work for you. As an example, we decided to build a family room, which requires plenty of storage, seating that’s as comfortable as it is durable and space for paying bills and doing homework.

Floor plan
Before you think about furniture, create a floor plan of the room with all the dimensions, including measurements of door openings and windows. Measure furniture first to ensure it’s not too large or too small for the size of the room, then add it to your floor plan.
Use our floor plan grid and scaled furniture cutouts to help lay out your room. Arrange the main pieces of furniture around the room’s focal point. In our case, it’s the fireplace. Remember to create balance with a mix of heavy and light pieces around the room and keep major traffic areas open.

Inspiration
With decorating, it can be hard to know where to begin to create the look you want. Start with something you love. You can find inspiration in an item around the house, such as an antique plate, decorative pillow or your favorite painting. Or pull photos of room scenes that appeal to you from magazines and catalogs. Your inspiration piece will help you create the right theme and color choices. Our inspiration is a trio of Boxwood topiaries in weathered pots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Theme & Color Palette
Study your source of inspiration. What does it say about your personal style? A beloved botanical needlepoint pillow might indicate you lean toward a more traditional country aesthetic. An abstract piece of art probably means you like bold pops of color and the clean, sleek lines of more contemporary furniture. The idea is to develop a theme around which to build your décor. Our European-styled topiaries nestled in rustic pots inspired us to create a more natural, relaxed look that’s still very refined. Creamy white walls, natural textures and lighter fabrics instantly came to mind.

Generally, it’s a good idea to create a supporting color palette using up to three or four colors for walls, furniture, rugs and accessories. Based on our theme, we selected colors found in nature (and in our topiaries), including off-white, green and brown in a variety of shades and textures.

Furniture Selection
Not only should your furniture be functional, but it should also support your theme with the right style and color. If you’re working with existing furniture, try to change the look with the use of slipcovers or paint.
Our family room called for the casual look and easy care of a slipcovered sofa. We added two salon chairs and covered them in Skyler Plaid for a less formal look. A wing chair for reading by the fireplace was a must. We upholstered it in an off-white cotton twill that’s easy to clean.
For a bit of contrast, we added tables in dark mahogany but kept them casual in style. Woven baskets further dress down the look and provide additional storage. The seagrass rug with khaki border defines the sitting space and grounds the room while adding natural texture.

 

Lighting
Every room should have a variety of lighting for function as well as for decorating purposes. Consider a mix of direct lighting for reading and indirect lighting for conversation and TV viewing. Any overhead lighting should be equipped with a dimmer switch to control the mood.
The lamps in our family room are not formal and can be used just about anywhere. We chose the adjustable floor lamp, in a dark bronze, for its versatility and the bisque cream lamp on the other side of the sofa for its vintage charm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accessories
Now it’s time to add the final touches. Use your theme and color palette to select accessories for your room, such as wall art, vases and pillows. Buy only the pieces you love and never feel as if you need to fill up every nook and cranny in the room.

We wanted to showcase the topiaries that initially inspired our family room, so we mounted two of them on the wall and placed the third just below on the desk. The decorative shelves create an unexpected display and add dimension. We chose crewel drapery panels with a subtle pattern in the established color palette to help soften the look of the room. The nature-inspired giclee artwork over the fireplace is gallery wrapped and unframed, lending a less formal look. Finally, we added some contrasting pillows and a few other well-chosen accessories to add to the overall personality of the room. What do you think?

 

We hope we’ve inspired you to reinvent your favorite room. With a little creativity and confidence in your decorating skills, it is possible to achieve the designer look you’ve always wanted.