You know that eager chick who can sing Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” perfectly? No one is interested in emotional vibrato at the karaoke bar on Taco Tuesdays. Just sing “Sweet Home Alabama” like it’s your last night on Earth and bring us to our knees. Similarly, being great at styling doesn’t require an expensive design degree, just a bit of practice and a dose of desire—or in my case, obsession and confidence. But while I don’t believe creating a beautiful room entails following a dogmatic set of dos and don’ts, there is some lingo that’s helpful to know when you’re first getting started.
A VIGNETTE is a smallish arrangement of objects or furniture, usually including pieces that reflect the personality of the person who lives there. You’ll hear this word over and over in this book and generally on the Internet.
On a magazine shoot, our goal as stylists is to show information about the design of the space but also tell a story about the people who live there. The photographer captures the room as a whole—in what we call a pulled-back shot or an “overall”—which is important, for sure. This kind of shot helps you understand the room layout, composition, and the overall color scheme, but you’ll also want to get in there closer to know more about the person who lives there. So the photographer will always get tighter shots that show off the more intimate details and what makes this person unique. This is where a stylist starts obsessing—and we do obsess. We make the most of these moments, creating beautiful, self-contained stories to tell you, the reader, how interesting these people are. Vignettes are your secret sauce to a well-styled room.
VIGNETTES: YOUR SHOW-AND-TELL
When you invite people into your home, you want them to see who you are. Often, what tells them that isn’t your couch; nay, it’s your weird country milking chair that sits under a vintage portrait of a man who might be either happy or drunk. This particular vignette tells people more about you than many other pieces could. For instance, do you have a secret dream of being an Olympic cow milker? Or are you just simply inspired by strangely shaped chairs that reference another time?
You want your guests and friends to know about your interests. While you could blab on and on about yourself, you’re better off letting your favorite objects and mementos tell those stories for you.
The biggest compliment guests can give you is to say that your home is totally you. You want them to see your personality as soon as they step through the door, but that’s not going to happen only through big pieces of furniture. Your sofa may be tufted or velvet, but it won’t tell the complete story about where you’ve traveled or what you’re into specifically. On the other hand, a corner styled with a vintage guitar and a few framed rock records takes your story a bit further, helping you express your love of Led Zeppelin.
Creating self-contained worlds around themes or with a collection of littles you love will result in a beautiful, highly personalized room that guests will immediately pick up on.
style secret As you go through your things and decide what to play (or decorate) with, help yourself to a tip I got from my first stylist boss: “Pretty always goes with pretty.” Generally if you love something and it’s pretty, you can make it work with other favorite pieces (especially if it matches your color palette).
Create one vignette, and I promise you’ll find it a teensy bit addictive. You’ll start obsessing over the details (in a good way), and you might even choose to refresh your vignettes rather than rearrange your space when you want an easy room update. When I get tired of the style in my bedroom, instead of redesigning it, I restyle it, then, boom! My room feels brand new, and I didn’t move a piece of furniture.
Once you lay down a few vignettes in a room, make sure they “speak” to each other and don’t compete. Ask yourself three questions:
• Does one vignette look more heavily styled than the others?
• Do any vignettes lack color or details compared to the others?
• Are there any surfaces you haven’t addressed, like a corner or a side table?
Start moving things from one vignette to another so that everything feels harmonious and the details are evenly “peppered” throughout the room. This does not mean you need to cram your room full of accessories—it just needs to be balanced.
When you think about creating multiple vignettes, you end up with a space that looks intentional, well-designed, and full of your personality because every area and surface—even the corners—is considered.
4 vignettes to drool over
To get you started, here are some of my favorite vignettes to style. Play around with these ideas, and substitute objects that you already have.
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1 Warm and Cozy Reading Nook A sleek recliner outfitted with a nicely folded wool blanket and a lumbar pillow, a side table for holding a glass and a book, and an oversized rolling lamp so you can get just the right light. |
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2 Go-for-the Gold Bar Cart Plenty of pretty liquor bottles and sparkling water, a shaker filled with flowers, and decorative glasses that match the cart—use one of them to hold a few tools. |
CONTRAST is the combination of opposite elements in a room, such as styles, shapes, colors, patterns, sizes, and textures.
The amount of contrast you have directly correlates with the amount of “energy” you have in the room. Simply put: A room with a lot of contrast will feel more energetic and busy, and a room with less contrast will feel more calm and quiet.
Get the contrast right and get ready for compliments like, “Oh my, isn’t this room just so relaxing, I just want to curl up on that low-contrast chaise and have monochromatic dreams.” Or the opposite: “OMG, hi!!! Your house is so fun, your face is so big, you have so many colors, I’m not going to sleep for days!” I find that most people fall somewhere in the middle—they want their rooms to feel interesting without looking insane and quiet and without boring them to tears.
You can create contrast in a room through six elements:
• Style
• Pattern
• Color
• Shape
• Size
• Texture
Choose the amount of contrast for your room based on your personality as well as on functionality.
When you want to take more style risks, think about doing so in your more “temporary” spaces. You’re less likely to get sick of the design in these rooms:
• Powder rooms
• Guest rooms
• Kids’ rooms
• Mudrooms
• Hallways
• Dining rooms
• Entryways
Opt for a quiet, restful mood in rooms where you’ll spend more time and want less visual noise:
• Your bedroom
• Potentially your living room, if you’re the type of person who uses it as a refuge
If you love color, don’t paint your walls. It’s counterintuitive, but here’s why: if you have a tendency to buy lots of colorful accessories and you also have color on your walls, then your room could look like a crazy person lives there. With my color obsession, I know I have to stick with white walls, wood, and brass finishes, or it would just be too much color and pattern everywhere. By keeping the foundation of your room quiet, you give yourself permission to layer on the chaos, and the result is graphic, lively, and colorful without being too busy.
If you love muted tones, use color in a bigger way. Paint an accent wall or buy a large solid-colored rug. Remember that your instincts will be to shop for and to layer on objects and accessories in a “safe” color. A bright, happy hue like peacock blue or a slightly more saturated neutral heather gray will help you avoid a beige-on-beige-on-beige room. And I don’t care how color shy you are—nobody wants to live in a beige room (except for really boring people, which I know you are not because you bought this book).
As you discovered in the last chapter, you’re not just one style and your room shouldn’t be either. Keep in mind that opposites attract: Styles that are the most different actually look best together, and mixing any of them with streamlined or modern furniture usually keeps them looking fresh. For instance, if you only mix Moroccan with Spanish—two very ornate styles known for their inlaid, carved furnishings and lots of detailed tile work—the styles look too similar, and you’ll end up with a room with a lot of competing pieces, where nothing catches your eye and the style looks too Old World. I love to mix one style that is more decorative and ornate with a cleaner and more minimalist style, like Mid-Century Modern. If you have a lot of South American fabrics, then think about combining them with a simple French grain sack stripe, instead of an ornate damask; with a little less going on in one, the details of the other sing.
Mix as many different styles as you want, just limit the amount of color you bring in. Seven wildly different styles can work in a room with a very firm palette. But multiple styles in twenty-five different colors? That’s been done and is called “schizophrenic non-chic.” It’s not trending and it’s not coming back in.
style secret Quickly switching up your room’s contrast is more difficult with an insanely patterned wallpaper or hot pink sofa. So keep those larger, more permanent surfaces quiet and bring in contrast through fun accessories and smaller decor.
So you want your room to feel lived in, collected, and storied, but you also want it to be very calming? Every room should have contrasting textures. If all of your furniture were upholstered in the same fabric, it would be like wearing a denim jacket and a chambray shirt with jeans—no offense, Canadians. It’s just too much and your eye wants some relief. So when you’re choosing materials like velvet for your sofa, spring for linen or leather on the side chairs. Mix up the fabrics for your throw pillows (wool, velvet, silk, cable knit, or metallic).
With lots of different textures, keep your color palette limited to a few different colors. If you have eight colors in a room and you layer in too many bulky textures, then the room can start looking a little heavy.
TONE-ON-TONE involves styling different tones of the same color together.
Tone-on-tone is the Coco Chanel of room styles. Classic, quiet, iconic. And like Coco’s advice about pulling an outfit together—“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off”—so too with a tonal room. This less-is-more look works best in the bedroom. If you are going for a tonal look, follow these three simple tips:
• Don’t go OCD and pick only tones on the same paint swatch. You can push the color palette until you find your eye jumping to a color in the room (believe me, it’ll stand out like a sore thumb).
• Include a wide spectrum of some darker tones and some lighter tones.
• Don’t forget texture: mix in plenty of shapes and different fabrics to keep it interesting.
A COLOR PALETTE is a selection of colors for a designed room.
The color palette is one of the most essential elements in your room, and while you know what the term means, I know that when it comes down to identifying colors you’re going to live with for a very long time, you’ve probably gotten stuck once or twice. Follow these five steps for the best color palette ever:
1 Find the color you love putting on your body the most. The biggest hint about the main color you should decorate with is hanging in your closet. The hue that keeps popping up most often is the one you probably feel most confident around. Use it as the jumping-off color for the rest of the palette. That is not to say that if electric blue is in fashion this year, you need to paint your walls that color; it just means to take a cue from what you love to wear. If you’re drawn to a lot of blues, think about incorporating that color into the space. If you find yourself never wearing purple, then maybe it’s not for you—in your fashion or in your home.
2 Add a highlight and a lowlight. Ever had your hair highlighted before? You’ll notice how the lighter and darker shades work together to create depth. Highlights are brighter and a little bolder and add punch; lowlights are more pulled back and subtle and help ground everything. Add variance to that one big color you chose and bring in one lighter, brighter hue and one subtle, softer hue that complement your main color. If your main color is French blue, then maybe your highlight is teal and your lowlight is heather gray. If your main color is pink, then your highlight could be a brighter fuchsia and your lowlight champagne.
3 Don’t stop at just three colors. A room with a small color palette may be easy to understand, but it can look like an uptight person lives there.
4 Mix in warm tones and cool tones. Every room has to have a mix. Include both warm tones (reds, oranges, yellows, browns, and beiges) and cool tones (blues, greens, grays, whites) to create balance in the room. Surprise yourself by springing for colors you aren’t typically drawn to. And remember that materials like wood, gold, and silver count, too (wood and gold equal brown, silver equals gray).
5 Choose one fun accent color. Add a color that you can take out or change whenever you want. It should sit far away from your main color on the color wheel (like a very happy yellow to a masculine navy) and can be very bold. Think: hot pink, flashy coral, or bright kelly green. Just like that chunky necklace that you are obsessed with for one season and can’t look at the next, keep your accent color flexible and replaceable. In other words, don’t paint your beautiful hardwood flooring in the Pantone color of the year.
DESIGN MYTH
Think a small room looks bigger with dark paint? Nope. It doesn’t mean that it won’t look good, but dark paint will just make it seem small. This is a proven fact; ask every woman in America. Everything looks smaller in black—even our rooms.
LAYERING involves placing items in front of or behind others to create a collected look. It can apply to vignettes or whole rooms.
When a stylist arranges the furniture, accessories, and textiles in a way that creates depth and texture, the result is a layered room that looks like it’s been lived in and loved for years—even if it’s just a staged set. You see items in the foreground and background, up high and down low. Every space feels appropriately filled out—even if it’s minimalist. But you don’t look at it and think, I’m suffocating, I can’t find one pocket of air to breathe from. Nay.
One of the keys to layering is knowing when things are too perfectly placed; it’ll feel like a robot designed your room. So give yourself permission to let loose a little.
By working things on different planes, you’ll create the illusion that history is in play, as if your stuff has been collected over time. You’ll also fool anyone into thinking you’re a natural—as if you just threw everything together already knowing how great it would look (even if you rearranged it ten times, or forty).
style secret If you’re a minimalist, leaving all surfaces in your house unadorned is not an option if you want it to feel like a home, but keeping them tightly decorated is. It’s all about adding larger-scale accessories in the foreground, background, and on surfaces. Instead of a gallery wall, think one big piece of art. Instead of a collection of miniature gold shoes (what?), think about getting a huge, simple gilded vessel.
The rule of threes is no secret—it works for writing, photography, and design, and it’s a great trick for layering vignettes. Presenting information in threes makes a grouping more memorable, but you have to include variety. Trying to look at three similarly sized objects at once is too chaotic—they compete with each other. (It would be like looking at a parade of floats that are all similar in size, style, and color—after a bit you are super bored, of course, but more important, you feel like you’re going insane because of the repetition.) Your eye wants a bit of variety in order to decipher what’s really happening. So I’ve come up with a super-easy, you-can’t-lose rule. For every surface (be it a mantel, console, coffee table, or dresser), add these three things:
• Something vertical
• Something horizontal
• Something sculptural to tie the two together
For a mantel vignette, you might choose a vertical piece of art and a horizontal stack of books. Then you’ll want something that connects those two to soften the jump your eye makes from a vertical to a horizontal plane. So always include a bridge, an object that has more organic, sculptural lines. A vase of soft peonies might be all you need.
Instead of placing three objects next to each other with the same amount of space in between them—which will looked too propped, like a store display—arrange one in front of another to create depth and then move the third one off to the side, giving the trio a bit of room to breathe.
BALANCE is visual equality of objects and furniture in a room.
Balance is key to creating a room that’s calming and not visually chaotic, but don’t get bogged down by this term. Your eye tells you when things are right. What you really want is for things to look balanced even if they aren’t physically the same.
If you place a large floor lamp on one side of the sofa, then you need something on the other side so the sofa doesn’t look like it will tip over. But don’t go out and buy another lamp. Mix it up: Try a small standing vase with flowers on a side table with a larger piece of art hung behind it. The vertical line of the vase and the art will balance the scale of the lamp. Again, you’re striving for visual balance, so don’t assume that each piece needs to have exactly the same weight.
SCALE is the proportion between your furnishings as well as how they fit in with the rest of your room.
Here’s a simple guide: If you have a big house, buy big furniture; if you have a medium house, buy medium-scale furniture, and if you have a small house, buy smaller-scale furniture. It’s really that simple. If your sofa is huge, don’t buy a tiny side table for it; buy a large-scale side table.
How do you know if everything is the same scale, especially when you’re out shopping? Keep in mind these tips:
1 Your coffee table should be at least two-thirds the size of your sofa. If your sofa is at least seven feet long, your coffee table should be around four to five feet. Love that pouf trend? Use one as an accent table or in a corner, or two as your coffee table.
2 The height of your furniture should be similar. As a general rule the arms of your side chairs should be a similar height to your sofa arms. Your side table should also be a similar height so you’re not reaching over the side of your sofa too far to set down your drink.
3 If you have a big room, then buy a big rug. Going too small is one of the biggest mistakes I often see, and it can really ruin a room. If you have a large living room, then you’ll need at least an eight by ten if not a nine by twelve. I know that five by eight sounds big online, but once it’s in your space it will look teeny tiny.
4 If you have a small room, go for smaller furnishings. Otherwise, the room will feel cramped and lose most of its function. Settees and accent chairs are easy to rearrange, so you can get more uses out of the room than you would with one massive piece. If you want a sectional, choose one with slim lines that doesn’t add to the square footage.
A FOCAL POINT is the area of the room where your eye first lands when you enter.
Walk into a well-styled room and you’ll find yourself immediately attracted to one area: the focal point. Styling your focal point gets you the most bang for your buck, as it’s the first impression guests will have of your room. Can’t figure out your room’s focal point? Hint: It’s normally something obvious, like some architecture in the room—a fireplace or a set of huge, beautiful windows. Otherwise, it’s the most dominant wall—probably the one you face when you walk in. Bingo. That’s where you should hang that upholstered headboard or oversize mirror.
Keep in mind that your focal points don’t need to be wild statements. While they are important and give you a style foundation, I’m not suggesting you go build an altar in the middle of your living room. You’re just trying to draw the eye and give it an entry point to discovering the rest of the room.
MOOD is the atmosphere or feeling of a room.
The first question I always ask my clients is, how do you want your space to feel? They get to choose three words. When you walk into the room, what feeling do you want to wash over you? Happy, giddy, amused? Blissful, cheerful, refreshed? In the beginning of your process, finding three words to give voice to your room’s atmosphere is more important than deciding what it should look like. They provide the framework for all of your shopping, organizing, and styling decisions. And when you’re trying to choose between two sofas, that little voice will tell you to go with the comfy one because that’s your goal. My three words are “happy, airy, and exciting.” I constantly have to remind myself of that when picking out pieces, and it seriously works.
Next, think about spaces you’ve been to that fit your vision. If one of your descriptors is “flirty” and your former best friend in NYC has a really glamorous space, think about the highlights. Is it her diamond tiara collection? Her metallic leather headboard? Her velvet chaise longue? Then you can replicate her secrets (reflective surfaces, luxe textiles, high-end-looking furniture) in your own house.
