This chapter is brief, because let’s be honest—the best way to style a room is by stealing ideas from photos and re-creating them in your own home, which is what the next section is all about. But there are important steps to follow to get your room ready for its close-up.
Time to play my favorite game: keep it or chuck it. You learned what really jibes with your style, so now you can comb through your home and decide what doesn’t belong and what absolutely has to stay. Maybe you’re a minimalist and your home is already edited to its bare essentials and you’re ready for Step 2. Or maybe you have hoarder potential and need to focus hard on this step before moving forward.
Take the temperature of your nostalgia about each piece: if you were to lose X, Y, or Z, would you miss it after a week? Or would you melt into a puddle and bawl at its loss? With most things, the decision is not that black or white, but for five seconds pretend it is and notice what reaction you have. You might be surprised.
If you’re ready to go whole hog and completely redo your room, try keeping enough travel mementos and beloved items so that your room won’t feel like you decorated it in ten minutes. As we’ve agreed, you want to create a sense of history in your space, like you’ve been collecting and adding to it for years (and with some styles, even generations). Aim to keep a few large and medium pieces along with some small accessories to pepper your personality around the room. Most of all, clear off all cluttered shelves and other surfaces so that you can start with a clean slate and create cute little vignettes.
editing tip When I move I assess everything in these three categories: beautiful, functional, or sentimental. Everything should be at least one of these things, and if you live in a smaller space, then it should be at least two of these things.
Collecting your inspiration can help you style your room in a cohesive way. But the hard part is always translating the beautiful photos and swatches to a room that already exists. Here are my easy tips:
• Clip with abandon—don’t edit yourself just yet. Pin paint chips, magazine tear sheets, and fabric swatches on poster board or add it all to Pinterest. Name your board something like “What I like a little, love a lot, and want to put in my mouth because I’m so obsessed with it.”
• Now balance your clippings. Are things looking too feminine or too random—maybe not even you? Rearrange, edit, add, and re-pin at will.
• Revisit the style wheel to add photos that reflect your complementary style. Then consider if the photos reflect the function of the space: For a more energetic room, bring in lots of color contrast (think black and silver or navy and white) and tons of colorful accessories. For a low-key look, add more texture and tones.
• Edit your pins to be more realistic in terms of your budget and your time. Save some pins for a rainy day.
• Take photos of your mood boards with your phone or transfer your swatches into a small notebook so that when you shop you can be sure that colors and materials match.
color tip When I’m looking for a good paint color, sometimes I’ll just Google it. A search for “ice blue paint color” will turn up dozens of suggestions from decorating magazines and websites.
Step back to focus at once on all of your furniture and on textiles like rugs, pillows, and curtains. Is everything in tune with your style, or do you need to switch out a few pieces? A few style tweaks might make all the difference. For instance, in your living room you might:
• Consider whether a new coat of paint could do wonders (I promise, it will!).
• Check that your furniture is arranged for the best possible “flow.” Make sure that your sofa and accent chairs are conducive to conversation.
• Change your curtains for a new style or just take them down if you have a great view.
• Get a new (or vintage) rug. Because they take up so much visual space, you’ll gain instant style.
• Add personality with a small accent chair upholstered in a fabric you love.
• Switch out your shabby throw and pillows for fresh styles. You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.
Once you’re happy with the foundations of your room, find a few inspiring surfaces to style. These will be the stages for your styled vignettes; depending on how big your room is, you may want one in each corner so you can balance your styling throughout the room.
Clean off these surfaces, polish the heck out of them, or give them a quick refinish. Your bookshelves should be stripped bare at this time so you can consider what should really go on them (instead of what has incidentally collected over the years).
Divide the accessories you cleared off your shelves into two piles: one for Step 4 (to be future styling props) and one for Step 1 (to be chucked).
Here are a few of my favorite tips for bringing out the best in an oldie but goodie:
• To avoid (or just delay) having to reupholster a sofa that needs it, wrap a brightly colored quilt or luxe blanket around the seat for some color or texture.
• Update a traditional lamp by putting a new drum shade on it. It’s insane how much this simple thing can modernize an antique.
• Give a vintage rug or an old, beautiful quilt a second life by hanging it on the wall (or headboard).
• Repurpose an antique dresser as a console or media storage for your living room or entryway.
Don’t go shopping just yet. You might already have everything you need to style a cute little vignette—if you look in the right place. Take the time now to pull together all your pretty, interesting things. Maybe set them on the floor or the coffee table so you can see them all together. Without actually styling anything just yet, group together similar “props” (in style or color) that you might want to display as a collection. If you live in a one-bedroom or studio, don’t worry about keeping kitchen things in the kitchen or the artwork in the living room. Let a beautiful piece of serveware such as a cake stand become the stage for a side table vignette. Here are a few of my favorite everyday props for styling that you might overlook:
• Stash boxes. These are both good fillers and good at being filled with things you want to hide.
• Sculptural objects. Don’t overthink this. Every surface is dying for a pretty sculptural object to help it.
• A tray. Trust me, every room needs a tray to hold a bunch of little things together.
organizing
(or starting)
your collection
Are you a natural collector but feel no one actually notices your collections? Maybe it’s just a matter of organizing them so they make sense to the eye. For small items that won’t stand up on their own, consider framing them, either together in one large frame or separately, to hang them as a gallery wall. For a large collection of items, come up with a catalog system so that you can keep the best on display and store the others away. Then when you get bored, you can easily switch them out for a brand-new look.
Don’t have a collection yet? Here are some tips for getting started without getting overwhelmed:
• Think about what you might want to collect before you even start shopping.
• Let one thing that speaks to you at a flea market inspire a whole collection.
• Remember that you don’t have to be obsessed with something to collect it—you just need an appreciation of its shape or story.
• A collection can be as ordinary as they come; the simplest and cheapest items look the best when displayed en masse. Even spoons can look beautiful when displayed together.
• Identify what you’re really into and then research items that might represent it. If you love Julia Child, you might collect vintage French salt cellars.
• The more specific the item is, the more interesting, though if you go too esoteric, you risk not being able to grow your collection without spending a lot of money and time.
• Don’t collect every single teacup you find—make sure there is something unique and special about each item in your collection so it adds to the whole and doesn’t just take up space.
Every room needs something random to pique interest, give people pause, and keep the room from looking too perfect. You probably already have those things. Look around. What’s the first thing people comment on when they walk in? Is it the large drawing of a blimp that you got from the flea market? Or is it the wire sculpture face of a woman that is both engaging and terrifying? What interest or obsession sets you apart?
Figure out that quirk and embrace it. It’s what will keep your home from looking like it was plucked straight from a catalog. And it’s what will keep the room interesting to you. If your room bores you, then it will totally bore everyone else. Collect these things and add them to your pile of styling props.
By now you should know what’s missing from the stuff you already own. It’s those pretty details like flowers and an objet d’art that you sprinkle in with the rest of your collections to make your home really come alive. For magazine shoots we stylists always bring in a ton of books, plants, art, lighting, vessels, objects, pillows, throws, frames, and yes, even food. The number of pretty glass (and often French) water bottles that I’ve purchased is uncountable. And lemons—but not just any lemons. Lemons with leaves on them so that I can style those leaves to ever so naturally fall over the lip of the beautifully hand-thrown bowl. Learn this, future stylists: Everything looks better in a more natural state—chunky rustic loaves of bread, wooden crates, or even some books with their jackets removed to show their pretty linen surface.
Now is the time to style your first vignette. Turn on some music to get your creative juices flowing, and start by tackling just one corner or surface. Give it your full attention before you move on to the next one. While this is the fun part, it might take you longer than you think to get it right. Reference the lessons you learned in Chapter 2 to create your first vignette with contrast, using my rule of threes. Once you finish one vignette, move on to the next, keeping in mind how it might relate to the first one (remember, you’re striving for balance throughout the whole room).
While it’s easy to obsess over details in this stage, try to keep things from looking too perfect. Don’t hand-chop every pillow or fold your throw too nicely. Let it all hang a little loose and casual so it looks like you actually live there (and so guests don’t feel too uptight). Stylists even want the water carafe or jug of juice to be either one-third full or two-thirds full, but not half full (ha!) and certainly not all the way full. That’s not “natural” or “real life.” Two-thirds is my personal favorite, and yes, I’ll pour out that extra one-third to get it. It’s a bit OCD, but worth the effort.
Once you finish styling your room, you can take a step back and look at your work, but the only way you’re really going to focus on what could use tweaking is by capturing it on camera; this is one of the most objective ways of seeing your space. You don’t even need a fancy Canon to do it, either. Use your smartphone (then if you love the photo, you can easily share it on Instagram).
Once you have your shots, load them onto a computer if you can—it helps to see the details enlarged. Take notes on what you see—does one corner look too cluttered or minimal compared to the others? Would one vignette be better on a different surface? Should the flowers come to the center of the room? Keep a running list of what you want to change. After each shot, I ask myself, If you, Emily Henderson, saw this in a magazine would you stop and think it’s a beautiful room? And if not, why? Then I fix it.
nice shot
I turned to my amazing interiors photographer David Tsay for his dos and don’ts on how to snap interiors with a smartphone. Here’s what he said:
• Do take photos of the room at different angles: whole-room shots while standing in the entrance, straight-on shots of a piece of furniture, and close-up shots of your vignette at a three-fourths angle as if you’re peering right into the collection.
• Do turn off all the lights. Different lightbulbs give off different colors and intensity, so it’s best to shoot in natural daylight.
• Don’t use your flash. Instead, invest in an inexpensive and lightweight tripod that fits your phone. Most of the time, your exposure will be slow without a flash, so this will help keep the image from blurring.
• Do plug in your earbuds if you have an iPhone. You can use them as a camera shutter so you don’t shake the phone while snapping away.
• Don’t fall back on ready-made filters, which can get boring because everybody uses the same ones.
• Do play with the photo settings. Instagram and other photo apps let you easily tackle enhancements that will bring more life to your shot.
• Don’t keep them to yourself. Tag your photos with #styledthebook so we can see the results!
Now it’s time to take off your stylist cap and put on your art director cap. A stylist never nails it on the first try, as she always has an art director breathing down her neck, changing his mind or coming up with a new idea. Now it’s up to you to decide what needs editing, improving, and scaling back. Take a few things out of your vignettes, then snap another photo, and compare the two. Which is better? Rework your styling, being as judicious as possible.
There. You did it. And you’ll love it for maybe … a week. Maybe longer. But there is a chance you might get sick of looking at that needlepoint pillow of the Space Needle or vintage animal mask collection every time you walk into your living room. Lucky for you, styled vignettes are not permanent fixtures like your sofa or coffee table might be. You can—and you should—switch up the details whenever you want.
Refreshing the styling of your home is the quickest way to redecorate and make your space feel new again. The best part? You don’t have to buy a thing if you don’t want to. It’s all about rearranging, editing, and curating your look for the way you want to live. Now it’s time to have fun with some decorating porn. Keep flipping for the world’s biggest collection* of my styling ideas, tips, and tricks I’ve learned over the years.
* This hasn’t actually been verified. I called Guinness and they are still getting back to me.
