Redecorating Your Home

How to Redecorate

Get started with 4 easy steps by Sheran James

You're considering redecorating, but you're not sure if you need to. Where to begin? No need to panic. It's easy if you get organized.

The first step is to get a grip on your style. Go to the room you want to redecorate and follow these four initial steps:

1. Get Honest
   Take this Test: Somebody you like and admire is about to walk into this room. How do you hope they would complete the following sentence?
   "When I walk into this room, I feel as if..."
   Examples:
   "...I'm in a chateau in the south of France."
   "...I could collapse into that sofa with a good book and put my feet up."
   "...my name should be Winthrop and I should be wearing a smoking jacket."
   What do you want them to say?
   "............" (state the response you pray for)
   What do you worry that they might say?
   "............" (state the response you fear)
   Your answers to this test will tell you what isn't working with the way you've decorated your home. So how do you go about changing things?


2. Get Analytical
   Ask yourself: What made you choose your home in the first place? Was it the location: the surrounding trees, lawns, water, woods, buildings? Was it the facade: the shape of the windows/doors, the color/texture of the stone/wood/brick? Was it the look of something inside: a built-in bookcase, a piece of furniture, a sense of brightness, a memory from childhood?
   Analyze what it was that spoke to you, and what it projected about the style of your life once you lived there. Therein lie the clues to your comfort level and aesthetic.
   If you've changed, or if the style of your room can't support the way you want your life to look, you may need to move, or compromise. Your alter ego and the soul of your room need to become one.
   Find the form of decorative self-expression that will suit both you and the rooms you inhabit (maybe it's more Provencal cottage than French chateau).
   Capitalize on whatever it was that drew you to your home in the first place (a feeling of coziness, of being tucked in on a cold winter's night; a feeling of openness, spaciousness, brightness).
   If you were attracted by something external, bring a little of the outside into your rooms, via reprised architectural motifs, fabric textures, foliage, color tones.
   If it was something internal - an architectural detail, such as a fireplace or a window — emphasize it, make it the focal point of your room.


3. Get Practical
   Is the style that you've decided on conducive to the way you live? If you have a houseful of young children and animals, picking an all-white décor or upholstering with delicate silks and laces would be courting disaster.
   Are your rooms in the right place? Answer the following:
   a) Which is the best room in your home, the room with the best shape, the best light, the best architectural features — in other words, the room that persuaded you to choose your current home?
   b) Which is the room you spend most of your time in?
   Are (a) and (b) the same?
   If you own your own home, then they should be. If you spend most of your time in the kitchen, why not give it the best room in your house? Knock down walls, if that's practical, to make room for comfortable seating, a table/desk or banquette area, a window with a view.


4. Get Resourceful
   You now know what you need to do. So how do you go about doing it?
   You can hire a decorator, or, if you're on a limited budget, you can do this on your own.

Now, get started!

Sheran James is a designer/writer whose recent book is "Room Redux: The Home Decorating Workbook" (Chronicle Books, 1999).