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I.O. MetroGet schooled: The dos and don’ts of designBy Mina Mineva • Photos by Jennifer Kettler and Victoria Belle-Miller
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re not alone. The women attending CHL’s decorating class at I.O. Metro were embarrassed and amused by their decorating mistakes. After some whispered consultations, the participants listened attentively as Becky led the class through an information-packed discussion on how to fix the most frequent decorating errors in a reasonably priced way.
For the wall space around the fireplace, Becky suggested installing adjustable bookshelves, which allow for flexible design and help keep the room uncluttered. The movable shelves also allow the owners to brainstorm original ideas for filling the empty shelf space. Becky gave the class some guidance: Remove some shelves, paint the background of a shelf a different color than the wall, and place a piece of art, or add a vase with florals.
Referencing her own living room, class participant Lisa Kliethermes shared her troubles with placing furniture without lining it against the walls, which is one of Becky’s rules. She asked the design consultant for advice. “If you float the couch in the middle of the room, facing the fireplace, you can put a table behind it,” Becky said. “The back of the couch facing the door is not appealing. But when you add the table behind it, it becomes more inviting.” Eileen Long asked Becky’s opinion on placing the room’s furniture so the pieces form a conversational area or a friendship grouping. “I really like that,” Becky said, which brought her to another frequent design problem: poor traffic flow. “If you are watching TV and people have to walk in front of the TV, saying ‘Excuse me,’ in order to move around the room, that is poor traffic flow.”
Even after envisioning and planning the space, some furnishings remain a designer’s nightmare because of their unattractiveness, particularly a man’s favorite — the big fat recliner. Becky advised the women to replace recliners with a more appealing piece, such as an ottoman, that men can plop their feet on. “Guys can make design kind of difficult,” she said, which prompted knowing laughter from the class.
Becky advised that the front legs of the furniture “catch” the edge of the rug to anchor the grouping. A plain space can withstand a bold carpet. Neutral, textured rugs are flexible. Using paintings and artwork to help set the ambiance of a room is also important in decorating, but Becky warned against buying and hanging mass-produced prints, which she referred to as motel art. Not all art pieces are expensive. Several of the class members mentioned researching and visiting local art shows and galleries. Becky informed the group that today’s artwork trend consists of bolder and larger images, which also look sleek and clean. The appropriate size of a painting depends on the scale of a room, especially its ceilings. For instance, a house with tall ceilings needs large pieces of artwork to fill the wall space. The class found the most useful artwork tip to be how to find how high a piece of art should hang above furniture. The bottom of a painting should hang six to eight inches above a piece of furniture. The width of the matting is a good guide for the space between the paintings: If the mat is four inches, place the artwork four inches apart.
Some other options she mentioned are converting color photos to black and white, using digital photo frames, updating photo frames, organizing pictures in an album that could be placed on a table or a bookshelf and putting most of the pictures away in a cabinet. “Pictures could look so tacky sometimes,” Judi Schoonover said. “I have a roosters room though. What do I know?” Themed rooms, such as seashores, stuffed animals or barnyard animals, which are full of figurines and matching furniture, might have significant and sentimental meaning to the owners. But from a designer’s standpoint, Becky said they create a decorating fiasco. “It just gets out of hand,” she said. “It looks like a gift shop at the Lake of the Ozarks.” Choose a few favorites from a collection to display, and store the rest. The pieces will stand out, and you can rotate the collection. Becky also introduced the current décor trend — design without borders — that allows for a mixture of styles and eras. Some examples are a dinner table with mismatched chairs, an old ’60s chair painted in green and a contemporary piece of art hung above an old grand piano. The abstract combination of modern objects with antiques creates a mixed eclectic mood, she said. Some of her other tips on how to refresh furnishings at a reasonable price included purchasing decorative chair slipcovers, buying new throw blankets, adding mirrors and updating the room accessories. Another option is reupholstering, which could end up being expensive, but some things are worth it, she said. “My kids fight all the time about who will get the sofa, and I am not even dead yet,” Becky said. “That would be something that I would upholster.” As long as the furnishings are quality pieces, they don’t need to be replaced when updating the room’s style, she said. Becky also stressed the importance of having a color flow from room to room. For example, if red is the main bedroom color, it should occur in at least three different places in that room (on different objects). Then in the next room, the color red needs to be the accent color, which could appear on pillows, covers or other accessories. This way, the red color flows around the house instead of suddenly changing, Becky said. Before ending the class, Becky explained the posters behind her, which presented the current design styles: Bohemian chic, which uses a rich combinations of styles, textures, patterns and colors; Eco Décor, which uses a lot of florals and leaf plant patterns; Indigo Jewels, which uses turquoise and gold color combinations, colored glass and copper; New neutrals, which uses glass, mirror, texture and contrast. Becky’s last tip for the group concentrated on how to ensure a home is free from decorating flaws. Take a camera and walk from room to room, snapping pictures of the walls and room space. She said this objective décor test makes design mistakes stand out while helping people see their home like they have never seen it before. Free Design Consultation ServiceSet up an appointment by calling or coming into the store. The consultation consists of two appointments: During the first session, a designer will visit the client’s space to take measurements and photos. Within two weeks, the clients will be called into the store for the second session where they will meet with the designer. The designer will provide them with a booklet filled with decorating suggestions and product costs. Becky Erdel’s 25 Design TaboosDisplaying too many family photos Store InformationHours: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 12 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday Location: Forum Shopping Center Phone Number: (573) 445-9600 E-mail: columbia@io-metro.com |
p: 573.499.1830 x1015 Columbia Home & Lifestyle |
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Design consultant Becky Erdel
Becky first talked about the importance of choosing a focal point in a room before starting to decorate. This is considered the “wow” factor. Most people tend to use the fireplace wall because it is the first thing a guest sees. In many homes, this wall is also designated for the TV, which is not necessarily a design crisis if it is a flat screen mounted over the fireplace. “Men are proud of their flat screens, and they like to show them off,” Becky said. The class members laughed and nodded in agreement.
Although these tips received positive reactions, the women seemed most interested in Becky’s advice about purchasing a small, battery-run “tap” light. Because some spots on a bookshelf become darker at night, Becky suggested the women place such a light inside a semi-transparent vase or a bowl. The light will enliven a dark bookshelf and change the feel of the room.
To avoid this problem, Becky suggested drawing the room and furniture to scale on graph paper, cutting out the furniture and using a glue stick with reusable adhesive to place the objects around the room until finding the best fit. “It’s like drawing,” she said. “You have to see it, or you cannot do it.”
Another Becky design rule: The furniture needs to relate to the floor. The floor can be of any texture or pattern, but it needs to connect with the furniture in the room. Shag rugs are making a comeback, but jute and leather rugs are also popular, according to Becky. Kliethermes, who has been searching for the right rug for a couple of months, spoke about her struggles with trying to find something that would relate to her furniture. “It’s hard to pick out a rug,” she said. “It’s almost like a painting on the floor.”
To Becky, one of the most frequent decorating problems is the display of too many photographs, especially the annual school pictures that are almost identical. The class clearly knew what she was talking about. “Put some photographs on bookshelves, but do not overdo it,” Becky said.
