Simplicity to Your Advantage

Great-looking furniture makes any room attractive, right?

Wrong.

Furniture alone -- whether modern or traditional in style -- can't ensure the success of the design of an interior.

A room's overall appearance depends on many elements, with color and scale always counting for a lot.

Money also does not decisively determine the outcome.

An appealing setting can be created on a modest budget, just as a huge investment can result in a disappointing design. Knowing how to put the available pieces together is what matters most.

QUESTION:

The previous owner of our contemporary yet somewhat rustic summer home painted all of the living area white. That includes the wooden ceiling, beams, walls and floor. The stone fireplace looks gargantuan as a result, and so do our rust-colored chairs and brown sofa.

How can this unfortunate design be fixed on a limited budget with some color and freshness?

ANSWER:

You can achieve a lot on a limited budget just by changing the room's color scheme

Professional designers refer to such a quick and easy makeover as a "paint-and-powder" job, although it also usually involves changing the fabrics in the room. I came across a photo of a room a lot like yours in "1,000 Home Ideas," a book by interior design writer Stafford Cliff. It was published earlier this year by Firefly Books.

This photo should be captioned "after" because it suggests how such a setting can be transformed from a "before" that included brown furniture and an all-white floor.

This is no half-hearted makeover, even though it involves little more than color.

The boldest and most crucial move here was to paint a random set of bright stripes on the floor. The reds, yellows, whites, blues and greens lead the eye toward the fireplace -- which makes good sense because that is the room's focal point and takes the place of a new floor or carpet.

If you rely on other surfaces to alter the overall appearance of the room, you can keep the ceiling and beams white.

The walls, however, should be done over in a much lighter shade of one of the colors used on the floor.

In this case it was a very pale blue/gray. The sofa was covered with a simple white slipcover. I'd actually do the same with all the other seating in the room to create an even more put together and cool effect.

Accents such as the shades on the standing lamps pick up colors from the striped floor.

This is not an everyday solution, but a bank loan also isn't needed to finance a redesign like this one.

HOME DECORATING, INTERIOR DESIGN, HOME RENOVATION & HOME IMPROVEMENT

(Readers with general interior design questions for Rita St. Clair can e-mail her at rsca(at)ritastclair.com.)

(c) 2009 DESIGN LINE DISTRIBUTED BY Tribune Media Services, Inc.