Decorating 101: Never Ignore the Elephant in the Room

Whether you build it or buy it, a house never feels like a home until each room looks and feels lived in. Some go with the simplicity of a flower arrangement on the dining room table and others turn to lining hallways with old family photos, but whatever the direction, thinking big is usually the best way to start the process of decorating a new home.

Otherwise, overlooking larger items like couches, tables and chairs for specific paint colors or artwork can lead to a slew of problems down the road.

“It’s easier to get the bones in a room, the larger pieces, first,” says Kimberly Parker, an interior decorator for Shore Décor. “Start with the furniture, the area rug, and you can go from there to accessories, window treatments, art. You want to get your basic main items in first.”

The two most important reasons for buying a couch first are a matter of longevity and color –longevity, because the average couch lasts a person 10 years, and color, for personal tastes and as a base for how the rest of the room will be decorated. Choosing a couch after paint and carpeting have been picked out can often become a nightmare situation of trying to match colors. Making paint that matches a couch is much easier than finding a couch that matches your paint.

“I’ve been doing this 28 years and the biggest mistake is most people, when they’re selecting colors, sometimes they’ll select paint colors first or a drapery fabric, and then spend the next 10 years trying to find a sofa to match it,” said Lynette Dudley, owner of Window, Wall and Interior Décor.

Companies like Sherwin Williams and Lowes offer services where decorators can bring in a fabric and have a complimentary or matching color mixed for them in the store.

Choosing the right color for larger items like couches, chairs and bedroom furniture is also about finding a color or design that you not only like enough to build a room around, but like enough to sit on for the next decade. For that reason, decorators recommend taking your time in choosing any furniture, making sure to order what you want instead of just taking what may be on the showroom floor.

“People need to give themselves plenty of time,” said Parker. “They’re doing something as important as their main home and they can’t walk in and expect it to happen in one day. It’s better to wait and order furniture that’s custom for them. It’s basically an investment. You need more than one or two days and to make sure you have time to custom order something.”

“I have heard people say they wish they had not rushed into something,” added Mandy West, also an interior designer with Shore Décor. “A sofa has maybe 10 years of life. If you’re going to look at that for 10 years, you’re going to want to make sure you want to in five or six years.”

And if you decide to redecorate before the couch and chairs have worn out, you can get them reupholstered and start the whole process over again.

“If you have a fabulous sofa that you love and is comfortable … some say it costs the same to reupholster than to buy new. If you use a good upholsterer, it’s a brand new sofa. You can get exactly what you want and you know you have something you like sitting in.”

Other items to consider when choosing bigger furniture are making sure it will fit through the doorway, measuring the dimensions of the furniture and the doorway first, and finding out how the fabric holds up to wear, tear and stains from children or pets.

Once a room’s centerpiece has been finalized, decorators let the remaining design fall into place according to each person’s specific taste. Some guide customers with room vignettes on the showroom floor and others provide thousands of samples, covering everything from artwork to window treatments and all the little pieces in between.

However, before reaching this phase of the decorating process, people should have a general idea of what style they want and how much they are willing to spend.

“It’s important (to have an idea) but if they’re not sure, we have lots of suggestions,” said Parker. “We can put together different design schemes to narrow down what they do like. You may not realize you are attracted to a certain style or color until you saw it in a showroom. But if the customer has a handful of items they know they want to use – antiques, artwork – we can look at that and add some pieces that marry well with what they have.”

And if you choose everything just right, once the last framed piece of art has been chosen and hung on a wall in which you chose the color, what once felt like a house will have truly become a home.