A Home Decorating Trick That is Fun + Free
A home decorating trick that will help you gain a new perspective on any or all of the items in your home.
In my last post, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging, but I thought the little surprise tweak I stumbled on after I painted the brick walls in my bedroom would be better suited to a post by itself. It will make it easier for readers to find in the future instead of buried at the end of another post plus…who doesn’t love a little drama!
When decorating, I love nothing more than a happy accident that ends up being completely right. I look for these unintended ah-ha moments whenever I can. You know the ones you didn’t plan, but just happen and offer options that you may never have considered otherwise.
Like the time I was moving my youngest into her college apartment and had to pick up and hand her a back-of-the-door-style mirror that was behind a stack of moving boxes. To get it to her, I had to raise it horizontally above my head and pass it to her. As I was passing it to her, it passed right over the threshold of the door to the room.
Visually seeing the mirror cross over the door and reflecting the window across from it, allowed me to see that the mirror looked like a transom. All I could think of after this was that when I got home I would be making a fake transom above the door in my studioffice. I liked the idea so much I even created it again in the “hallway of darkness” to help reflect light into the space.
So what little tweak did I make?
I like to see the architectural details in my house, like this sidelight and an identical one on the other side of the sliding door in my bedroom. They add a bit of eye-pleasing interest.
When we moved into the house, the previous owner had thick heavy lined drapes that covered a portion of the glass. I like minimal window covering and removed them right away.
We need drapes to filter the sun and for privacy, so I designed and made new drapes that would have little stack-back, but they still mostly cover the sidelights…
…no matter how much I try to push them back :-(
Last week when I was painting the brick walls, I had to move the furnishings and pushed the drapes away from the walls so they would not get splattered with paint. During the painting process, I had to go out of the room to get something and when I came back in, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I liked the drapes flanking the door allowing the feature of sidelights to be seen.
“Sometimes the best decorating advice is not to follow rules, but simply seeing what we have with new eyes.”
Many may not even notice the difference, but when you are in the room, seeing the drapes framing the door in the center made a huge impact on me. I loved seeing the sidelights and the drapes in the center. The room height feels higher since the vertical line of the drapes is in the center and draws your eye up. I know it is just a visual thing, but I liked it… a lot!
Even if I just keep them in the center for a while, I like having options. The fun fact is that I can change them on a whim depending on my mood when I wake up in the morning. :-)
Sure, I could make 4 narrow panels and place two at the ends and two in the center, but I am not going to do that. This would be the conventional way of hanging drapes, but why follow a rule book when you like what you see. When it comes to decorating, try to think beyond the conventional way you think something should be done. Press the reset button in your mind to free it and open it up to new possibilities.
A Fun + Free Decorating Trick to Consider Trying
The reason that I decided to share this idea with you is that change can be a good thing, even small changes. Seeing the drapes in a different position didn’t cost me a dime and reminded me of a post I wrote a few years ago where I explained a decorating trick I do when I need to see a room in a different perspective.
I learned it when I worked in retail display. You can read all about it in this post: Upside Down and Reversed Decorating Trick.
Try This Decorating Trick
In a nutshell… Our brain is so used to seeing things in a certain order that we don’t really “see” after a while. Sometimes, you have to look at your decor at a new angle, literally.
So even if it seems silly, try to keep an open mind about every object in your home. Once and done can be limiting. When you need a change of decor and don’t want to go out and buy new decor, start moving things around to see how they look in a different place. Or grab a mirror and start looking around your home to see it in a new angle. You may like what you never saw before.
If there is one thing I want the decor in my home to be … it is to make me smile. If it feels right, it clicks no matter what anyone else thinks. Decorating is personal and allows us to really feel comfortable at home.
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