8 Reasons Your Home May Not Be Working

Living beautifully in a home is like dropped stitches in a sweater. The piece starts out with a distinct pattern to follow, but then something goes amiss. The yarn gets twisted, a knot forms, an extra stitch is knit, or a different stitch is inadvertently made. But this is what can make the sweater all the more complex and interesting. Or just a plain mess.

But like a sweater altered with intention, a beautiful home also can be made when the pattern is altered to suit how you want to live everyday and how you want your home to look.

When you walk into a well-designed home you just know is it good. Like a good story. You just know the story is good without necessarily knowing why it is good.

There is always one common denominator in a good story. It’s when the change happens; the wild storm at sea, the invasion of an army, the near fatal car crash. These are the dropped stitches, when things get interesting…when the story truly begins.

An interesting home, like an interesting story is unique, nuanced. And it needs to be true for you.

Just like characters in a good story are not clichés, nor should your home be a cliche.

A home should be engaging and impressive, but at its core, familiar and safe.

It may be that the home suggests sunny, lazy afternoons spent without having to leave the room…the comfort of warm winter evenings snuggled in a deep-cushioned sofa…the inspirational reading hours sunk in an armchair next to the fireplace…the dinner party camaraderie of conversation and shared meals.

Now that last image comes directly from the reign of Queen Victoria. But this would mean that I actually attend dinner parties, but I can’t really remember the last time that happened. Most social events I attend involve some sort of sporting event with stale bags of Cheetos and a paper cups of cold coffee, and I am rarely (never) asked about my knowledge of nineteenth century British royalty or art, which frankly is a shame.

Most people do not see things as they are because they see things as they are! – Fr. Richard Rohr

Nevertheless, the truest lesson I know about designing a beautiful home – and life – is that we must move in the direction of our true calling, not anyone else’s.

Truth or dare.

Our story is just that. Our story, not anyone else’s, as is your home. If you don’t tell your stories as they are meant to be told, you are somehow diminished, living with your eyes wide shut. If you are open and honest and true, others will benefit, yes. But so will you.

We need our home to remember who we are. Or who we were. Or even who we want to be.

The oil painting of dry rock fences from the island of Inishmore, the Persian carpet purchased after years of waiting, the vase that was a wedding gift from your childhood friend, the burled walnut sideboard inherited from an aunt, the platter that your Grandfather brought over from his homeland, or the chair from your first apartment.

This collection can only belong to one person: you.

We now ask of our home: what needs to be corrected? And why now?

All things communicate.

We need to rely on a certain kinds of chairs, dinnerware, and bed coverings to straighten and secure us with who we are and who we want to be. Home is the place where our soul feels that it has found its proper physical container, where, everyday, the objects we live amongst remind us of what we hold most dear. The smallest things in our homes can offer encouragement, they can be reminders, consoling thoughts, warnings or correctives, as we go about time in them.

Thomas Moore maintains that if you don’t love things in particular, you cannot love the world, because the world exists in individual things. Without a connection to things, we can become bereft, separated from the world, maybe even dismissing the value of people and home.

Like the mission statement of Calgary company, HouseCharming: every home should be a haven that creating feelings of delight and happiness, thus inspiring one to contribute to a higher quality of lifestyle and thus, community.

As much as we try to replicate the feelings we’ve had in homes we visited and loved, usually there is often something in our home that is disingenuous – just a bit off.

Interior designers make it their business to study these details that make each room work well and look beautiful.

Elegiac Inculcations Why A Room May Not Be Working

Well, I can’t really prove it, but generally these problems don’t just arise unless the Rapture happened and it believed in Jesus.

But I know what’s going to happen here.

It’s going to lead to a litany of questions. “Is a bench seat better than two cushions?”, “What colour leather should I buy for a sofa?”, “Is burgundy trendy?”, “Should I buy everything from the same store?”, “Are matching chairs passé?”, “Where should we put the new baby?” And so on.

1. Selecting the Wrong Sofa

As far as I’m concerned, there really are two important decisions in a person’s life: choosing a mate and buying a sofa. If that seems like an overstatement, you just haven’t found the right mate.
This can give anybody a case of discouraged

2. Falling Into the Showroom Look

The two worst qualities imaginable in a writer is being lazy and being a perfectionist. As so with designing a room, these also are the essential ingredients for torpor and misery. If you want to have beautiful home and live a contented, creative life, you do not want to cultivate either one of those traits. 

Instead you need to learn how to become a deeply disciplined 80/20 person.

There is nothing worse than walking into a house that looks like it just backed up to an IKEA store. And if I never see another LACK wall shelf again, then I will consider my life a triumph.

Steer clear of trends and stay on the side of timeless and classic. A mistake many make is being taken in with trends. People go to an home show and see a countertop that changes colour when they touch it. Or see brightly coloured kitchen cabinetry. Yes, it is new and exciting, but will it stand the test of time?

The secret is in sticking to a high/low mix and blending the expensive with the budget-friendly, if you can’t afford all high.

3. Poorly Arranged Furniture

Think of your furniture in your room like friends at a party. Some people are animated in intimate clusters and some are alone – strained and stationed against involvement. These are the wallflowers, and wallflowers don’t tend to have much fun. They just sit quietly on the couch making everyone feel awkward for having a good time.

4. Buying an incorrectly sized rug

In a more formal room, an area rug can fill the space, leaving 12 inches of bare floor around the edges of the room. If you do not want such a large rug, you can ground the furniture by having the front legs of the sofa and accent chairs sit on the rug. Or alternatively, have two inches of floor exposed in front of the seating units.

5. Hanging Art Incorrectly

The last thing you’d want is to undermine any art’s beauty is by hanging it poorly. That being said, the right piece can exponentially elevate a lackluster room. Beauty (and art) is in the eye of the beholder, so don’t worry about pleasing anyone but yourself.

Collecting art is a personal journey, whether you’re making purchases on a piece-by-piece basis or cultivate a long-term collection. The key is to select pieces that resonate with you so that your collection begins to reflect who you are. You may find that the process of collecting art is less intimidating than you may have assumed.

6. Improper Lighting

You cannot ignore the principles of scale when it comes to choosing ceiling and table top lighting. Choose lighting proportionately to the size of the room, the height of the ceiling, the table it is on, the table underneath it.etc. Beyond regular overhead lighting (which should always be on a dimmer), what other places need mood, task or accent lighting.

Is your reading nook dark and gloomy? Do you have adequate bedside lighting? Is your staircase poorly illuminated?

Think of adding lighting at eye level in all rooms with table lamps and sconces to cast a more flattering light, and disperse your light sources around the room — ideally in a triangular shape in each room.

7. Not Mixing Periods and Styles

Work with what you already have as much as possible. Take stock of what you have and see if you can work with something you already own. If you can’t, then you wait until you can actually do it correctly. 

In the immortal words of Mark Twain, “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” What this means, other than procuring a good whiskey, is that too much of one thing is never a good idea.

It may be best said to follow the one or two of the 2 Cardinal Rules of Design: Less is more and contrast is far more interesting.

8. Insufficient editing

Or as I like to say, punctuation-ally challenged.

How do you decide what souvenirs and tokens of your life to keep and what to give away?

Think of it like having relatives come to stay. You love them, you’re thrilled they are going to be with you for a while, but you’re relieved when they leave. It’s just as important to continue defining who you are as to continue eliminating who you are not.

Comments

  1. It’s about time…to say how much I enjoy these postings from you.
    thank you. Susan