Saturday, January 31, 2015
Decorating Rules – To Break or Not?
Some rules are made to be broken but others – not so much.
There are lots of “rules” when it comes to decorating. At House By The Shore, we’ve heard them
and so have you, keep small rooms light in color, don’t mix metals, etc. Those are the rules you can and should
break! There are other rules however
that should give you pause. Why? They
have to do with what will make the room’s décor feel right. Here are rules we won’t say we never break
but find that we rarely do and also some we think you should just ignore.
Lighting:
Have a mix of light sources – ambient, task, accent and
decorative – in every room. Lighting has
been scientifically proven to affect your mood.
Don’t break this one; you’ll be happier if you don’t.
Lighting rules you can break – there are all types of
standards and lots of math that come into play here. For example to determine an entry way fixture
you should take the height and width of the room and add that together in
inches and that sum is the diameter of the fixture. So if you have a 10’ x 12’ entry that would
be 22” and that is the diameter of the fixture you need. Well folks, it is all about scale. A 24” diameter fixture will be fine – a 10”
one, probably not. You don’t have to stick
to these verbatim.
Good to use as a guideline – chandeliers should be about 1’
narrower than your table and hang somewhere around 33” above the table. However this can vary depending on the height
of your ceiling. The main thing is scale
again. If it looks right, go with your
gut not the measurement.
Lamp height – this one we don’t break. When sitting, the bottom of the shade should
be eye level, otherwise you’ll be looking up at the bulb. Typically this means the middle of the shade
is going to be somewhere between 36” and 42” inches from the floor.
Rugs:
The biggest mistake you can make here is going too
small. We stick to a rule of having the
rug cover about 60% of the room minimally.
You can take it to within 6” – 12” of exposed floor space. The room will fill awkward if you break this
one.
Don’t put a rug on carpet.
Hogwash – break it all day long.
In a seating area, the legs of the furniture should all sit
on the rug or off the rug. In other
words, the rug should be large enough for the furniture to be on it or small
enough that it is centered in the middle of the furniture grouping.
Living Rooms:
Art over your sofa shouldn’t be the width of the sofa. Spatially it will look better if the width of
the piece or the grouping is about two-thirds the width of the sofa. The art should hang where the bottom of the
frame is about 8” – 10” above the sofa (this keeps heads from banging into
it). The middle point of the art should
be about 5’ off the ground – this one can vary though depending on the height of
your ceiling so you can break this one – the other two, not so much.
What size coffee table?
It depends on your sofa. Again
shoot for two-thirds the width of the sofa for the length of the coffee table
and typically you want it a couple of inches lower than the sofa. Lower you can break in our opinion, a little,
not by a mile though or it will be very awkward. You should have 18” between the sofa and
coffee table though. No one is going to
get out a ruler here but you won’t have enough room to walk freely if less than
this.
The number of pillows on the sofa is determined by the
length of the sofa. Forget it – go with
what you like. This one was made to be
broken!
Art:
Never, ever hang it to high!
Never, ever break this one!! The
mid-point should be average height eye-level.
Dining Rooms:
Each diner should have 24” of space. Don’t break it – less than this
Keep 2’ between a pulled out chair and the wall – again, we
wouldn’t break this one or someone may have hot food in their lap.
Rugs in dining rooms – they have to be large enough that a
chair pulled out is still on the rug.
Don’t break it; this is a safety issue not to mention an attractiveness
issue.
Bedrooms:
When you enter the room, the bed should be the focal
point. We agree completely.
Art over the bed? Two-thirds
again. It will be underwhelming with
anything less.
Bedside tables look best when they’re a couple of inches
lower than the top of the made up bed but this one isn’t set in stone. You just don’t want it too far off either
way.
Lamps – scale is important.
They don’t have to match but they should be the same height. Use a stack of books underneath one if they’re
not.
Pillows, you can’t have too many – well maybe you can. The main thing is vary the size and the
tallest are in the back and shortest in the front.
Patterns:
Check out an earlier blog post: Mixing
Patterns Like the Pros. Again it
is about size and scale.
Hopefully this advice will help you decide which rules you
can break and which ones you should stick to.
The main thing when in doubt – how does it “feel.” It shouldn’t make you feel awkward and
instead your choice should make you feel all warm and cozy!
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