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Decorating Trends to Avoid: Fantasy vs Reality, Part 1

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Ceiling Pendant Fixtures: The Good, the Bad, the Misplaced

How to be Smart Choosing Decorating Trends that Work for You

Sometimes I see decorating trends in the media that look dramatic, but are a disaster when transferred to the average home.

A trend I am seeing a frequently is a dramatic ceiling fixture in the middle of a living room such as this:

decorating trends to avoid: pendant light in living room.
Dramatic pendant lighting is a popular decorating trend. But does it work in the real world?

This sculptural lighting fixture adds softness to this angular and spare interior.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2 Problems with this Decorating Trend:

1. Most of the light in the photo is provided by the photographer’s flood lights. The pendant lamp, as beautiful as it is gives only a little light in the center of the room, near the ceiling; leaving anyone sitting on the sofa literally in the dark. (The recessed ceiling lights only illuminate the artwork on the wall, and the floor lamp illuminates the corner.)

2. You need a 12-16 foot ceiling to accommodate the fixture.

decorating trend ceiling lamp in living room - failure
This example of ceiling lamp decorating trends applied to the real world doesn’t work.

In this photo the ceiling fixture takes up the center of the room. It is so low you must walk around the low-hanging lamp. The pendant lamp in this living room hinders the sight-line between people sitting in the chairs in the foreground and anyone sitting on the sofa in the background.
 

This room already has a wonderful focal point in the mantelpiece. The ceiling lamp only distracts from this.

Not all decorating trends work in all spaces, no matter how appealing.

How to Make Smart Choices

A cell phone camera and a measuring tape are your friends.
– Take a photo of your space, print it out and sketch-in what you are thinking of adding or changing
– Measure the item you want to add and then measure the space it will take-up in the room. You want to be able to move around in and use a space not squeeze furniture and decor into it. Be ruthless.

You want to make your home beautiful. Get help creating a home that is beautiful, functional and fun with Linda Varone. Contact me today.

What decorating trends would you like to see reviewed? Make suggestions in the comments box below. I will be happy to write about them.

After-Plus: Before and After Room Arrangement

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After-Plus: Sometimes the Best Improvement to Your Home is the Easiest: Room Arrangement.

Living Room arrangement - too spread out
Does your room arrangement need fine-tuning?
Furniture arrangement - lonely sofa against wall
Does your sofa look lonely too?

These proud After photos shows an older home with freshly painted walls, floors refinished and gleaming, woodwork stripped of old paint and varnish, a large mirror above the mantelpiece and personal treasures and artwork on display. This After photo shows a room that is amazingly light and airy for an older house. The owners are rightfully proud of their work. But….some simple tweaks to the room arrangement makes a huge improvement.

After-Plus Challenges

These After photos shows a room with several doorways and openings. There is no solid wall to anchor a sofa. The sofa is placed under the window, but the several plants in the window suggests there is a unattractive view or privacy issue here.

Looking though the doorway in the back, there is a leather sofa suggesting this room is the family/TV room. The glass doors reveal the table and chairs of a dining room. With all the doorways and other gathering spaces this room may end-up being a pass-through space that is rarely used.

This room may be intended for quieter activities such as reading or intimate conversation, but the current layout works against that. Let’s use room arrangement to create some intimate spaces within this larger room.

This room is lucky to have a fireplace. Even though it’s not a working fireplace it is the the focus of the room and gives it soul. Fireplaces are natural gathering places. Take advantage of them.

After-Plus Solutions

Furniture place in cozy arrengement neart the fireplace
Crete a cozy seating area near the fireplace.
Cozy seating with sofa anchored by console table
Anchor the sofa with a console table.

There is a gap of about ten feet between the sofa and the fireplace. Too big for an intimate arrangement. The solution, as you have already guessed, is room arrangement: move the sofa closer to the fireplace. This will create a cozy sitting area for reading and quiet conversation. To complete the arrangement and anchor the sofa, add a console table behind the sofa. This will also provide additional display space for plants and personal treasures. Lighting is very important – a trick is to run the electrical cord from the outlet below photo to the right of the fireplace, along the baseboard and under the area rug. Now this would not work in a high traffic area, but I think it will work here.

Furniture does Not Need to be Placed Against a Wall.

“Floating” a sofa in the middle of the room can successfully create a cozier room if anchored with the right-sized area rug and a console table or short bookcase.

An optional touch for this room would be to place a small round table in front of the window with a chair or two for crafts or a romantic dinner a deux.

Your Own After-Plus

If you are challenged by a room that is not working for you contact me today for a collaborative consultation. Sometimes a fresh set of experienced eyes will see the solution that has been eluding you. You deserve to love and enjoy your home.

See More Furniture Arrangement Ideas:

“Furniture Arrangement for Conversation is the Secret to Happiness”
“How to Avoid Furniture Sprawl”

Light and Heat-Blocking Window Treatments Keep You Cooler: Save Money and Energy

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How to Keep Cool(er) During the Dog Days of Summer.

With almost universal air conditioning, we have become lulled into the habit of flicking a switch for instant cool. But this dependence on air conditioning is costly in both dollars ($$$) and natural resources. Use light and heat-blocking window treatments to keep your home cooler.

picure of sunlight and heat waves enter and are trapped within a glass house.
This is the Greenhouse Effect in your home. The windows trap radiant heat.

The Greenhouse Effect

You know about the Greenhouse Effect and its impact on Global Warming. Every time you get into a car on a sunny day and the interior of the car is hotter than the air outside, you are experiencing your own Greenhouse Effect. But do you know how the Greenhouse Effect works within your own home? Sunlight enters your home through your windows, bringing light energy and heat energy. The glass in your windows traps the heat energy, causing your home to become hotter and hotter. This can be perfect on a cold winter’s day, but during the hot days of summer, either your air conditioning goes into overdrive or your home stays hot. (Note: The all-glass modern houses of the 1950s and ’60s were designed when fuel was cheap.)

This is where smart window treatments come in.  Learn how your grandparents kept cool(er) and what Europeans in old houses still do today. For part of the day, you want to block out sunlight and radiant heat from your home. I have written about window treatments that open your views and connect you with nature.  You can have both, provided you use the right light and heat-blocking window treatments.

 

What are the four reasons for window treatments?

  1. Protection from the sun’s glare and heat.
  2. Protection from winter cold and drafts.
  3. Protection from unattractive views.
  4. Protection from nosy neighbors.
View of palm tree against blue sky, through partially opened plantation shutter
In hot climates, plantation shutters are used to filter out light, allow cooling breezes to enter, and provide people with privacy.

Learn how to use window treatments to keep your home cool.

Before the day heats up, in the early morning, close your windows and draw your drapes, blinds, and shutters, especially in bedrooms, sun-drenched rooms, and unused rooms. (Some of the older houses on Beacon Hill, Boston, have interior shutters for just this purpose.  (In the old days, shutters weren’t for decoration.) In modern Rome, there is a daily ritual of opening, closing, and adjusting windows and solid shutters as the sun moves across the sky. Are your drapes lined to keep out sunlight, heat, and cold? Are your shades room-darkening?  You may want to close out the heat in all the windows of your home, or maybe just the rooms facing the sun. If you have skylights, consider adding adjustable shades to them for the hot days. As the day gets cooler, you can open your window treatments.

Woman in darkened room opening heavy curtains to see the light outside.
Light-blocking curtains are helpful during both hot summer days and cold winter months.
Lighti blocking shades dim sun glare in bedroom
Partially lowered, these light-blocking shades soften the sunlight in this bedroom.

 

The trick is to have light-blocking or at least light-filtering window treatments.

This means curtains made from a heavy fabric, or a thinner fabric with light-blocking linings.  If your curtains don’t have light-blocking linings, you can improvise using an extra curtain rod, clip-on curtain rings, and light-blocking fabric. Measure, cut, and hang the lining fabric from the extra curtain rod tucked behind your decorative curtains. This way, the curtain is between the window and your decorative curtains.

Too often, we keep our window treatments open all the time. This is great for light and views, but we need to remember that our window treatments give us the option to close them.

If  you feel claustrophobic or cut off from nature when your window treatments are closed, then consider solar shades or variations on them.  They are mounted like window shades and are made of one of several densities of heavy plastic mesh that block out different degrees of light (and heat) while allowing a veiled view of the outdoors. You have probably seen them at your local Starbucks.

Living room with white solar shades.
These solar shades eliminate the sun-glare in this room while allowing views outside.

Open and Close: Take advantage of the cooler air outside

If it is a cool evening, open the windows to catch the cooling breezes. If the night is cool and humidity is not an issue, leave your windows open and sleep with the cool air from outdoors, moved by a fan placed in or by the window. If you need to keep your windows closed, then adjust your AC settings for a night without radiant heat from the sun. This won’t eliminate your need for air conditioning on blistering hot, humid days, but it will keep your home a bit cooler, so your HVAC system doesn’t have to use as much electricity. Your approach to using window treatments will vary as the warm months progress, and overcast days may not require any sun blocking. Experiment with this and see what works best for you.

Air conditioning makes life easier during the hot months, but we don’t have to rely on it exclusively to stay cool. Reclaim some of the wisdom of your ancestors. Use light and heat-blocking window treatments. Stay cool, save money, and conserve energy at the same time.

plantation shutter photo by simonsimages