Imagine that one day you inexplicably find yourself living in an extremely bad situation. Your house is in shambles, run-down inside and out, the yard choked with weeds. You've tried to fix things up, but, frankly, you've got more pressing things on your mind, including a young daughter battling cancer, a wedding ring pawned to help pay her medical expenses, and long hours at a grocery store job trying to make ends meet. Then, just as it seems almost too much to bear, you hear a very loud and annoying voice yelling your family's name through a megaphone. The next thing you know, you and your family are being whisked away for a much-needed weeks’ vacation, while a group of TV people stick around to spruce up your house. "Cool;' you think, "It’ll be nice to have a room or two redecorated." Well, not exactly.
That family-featured on the very first episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-was more than a little surprised to come home to a whole new house, not just a few revamped rooms. Now, of course, people know what to expect when they hear me shouting "Good morning!" outside their door. But that initial makeover was a revelation to everyone involved, including me-and I'm not talking just about the sheer amount of people power that went into the job (though that was pretty amazing, too). While I'd been crafting furniture, designing rooms, and renovating homes for years, until I began my job as team leader on EMHE, I don't think I realized how much difference having a comfortable, well-designed, and beautiful place to live can make in someone's life.
Sure, I've always been passionate about houses, but the experience of creating warm, inviting sanctuaries for families who really need them has made me a true believer in the power of positive rethinking. If you want to inject light, energy, and optimism into your life, making over your home-or even just a single room - is a good place to start. I know for Sure that the instant that first EMHE family walked into their new house, their lives had changed for the better. I don't think any of us, including all the neighbors and community members who had come out to help us, were quite prepared for how dramatic and emotional that moment would be.
When the first show aired, my brother called. "Dude;' he said, "there's not a dry eye in America right now:' I was crying, too, even though I was seeing the episode a second time, so the conversation was a little awkward. How, I was wondering, did I get lucky enough to get this job, the greatest, most rewarding experience of my life? And who would have thought years ago, when I was a kid drawing on the walls, breaking furniture, and pretty much destroying my family's home, that I would someday be destroying and rebuilding strangers' homes and being thanked rather than sent to my room. You don't need to have had bad luck or a tragedy in your life to be in need of a big or even a little change on the home front. We all need change.
Change is good, and that's especially true when it comes to the rooms where you've spent a good portion of your life. I'll even go as far as to say that making changes in your home can completely change your life. Think about it. When you wake up in the morning, the first thing you see when you open your eyes is your bed- room. Does that make you happy or does it only re- mind you of how much crap you've got piled up and need to find a place for? Either way, it's got to affect your outlook-for the day. How ready will you be to tackle the day's challenges if your first sight reminds you of how you've neglected your house? And how cheery are you going to be when you step out to greet your kids, your significant other, your dog, or who- ever if the state of your living quarters has already put you in a bad mood, Likewise, when you come home at the end of a day. If everything is the same as it's been for years and years-and not comforting-same, but depressing- same-your home will seem stale and, by extension, so might your life. Yet if you've taken the time to put some soul and feeling into your decor, things might. Seem quite the opposite. And the alterations don't ix even have to be major-a gallon of paint goes a long way. It doesn't matter if you own or rent where you live, it's your nest, and your habitat-it's you. Make it an inviting, fun, and relaxing place to come home to.
The key is to design rooms that reflect what you're all about. Your home should be a place with colors, textures, sights, smells, and sounds that please you. It should be completely personal, the palace you've always wanted to live in-even if it's just a mini version of that lavish pad you pictured. No matter that you can't afford the Taj Mahal; you can have the Garage Mahal! As long as the rooms are suited to you, it's going to be great. Changing your home makes you feel like you have a chance to start over. Change begets change. Change the look of your living room and maybe x you'll look at the world differently.
Change your bed- room and maybe you'll begin to get a different idea of your future and what you want to accomplish. Every week on EMHE we give people a fresh start in their homes, and it so often translates into a fresh start in life. One thing I'm certain of is that a home is so much more than the place where you eat and sleep. It is-or-it should be-a reflection of all the things that matter to you. What most people need to initiate change is inspiration. I hope that you've watched EMHE and thought, "Yeah, my house could use a change, too:' What you probably don't know, though, is that there is a lot more inspiration to be gleaned from what we do on the show that never even makes it into the one-hour broadcast. That's why part of the mission d.
Behind this book is to give you more of the inside scoop on what goes into each project as well as an insider's view of "Ty's secret rooms;' the rooms that I personally create for families. I want to share my passion for intelligent, imaginative design and let you in on all the tricks for crafting unique, personal interiors that I've learned down (sometimes literally) in the trenches. By the end of this book, you'll know exactly what it takes, from Step A to Step Z, to bring a little more style into your life. Unless you have the ABC network and your entire town standing by with a wrecking ball, it's easier and far more affordable to tackle one or a few rooms at a time, so I've narrowed this book down to three high- impact areas of the house: bedrooms, living spaces, and work spaces.
I'm also going to talk about the elements of style that apply to all rooms, including what to look at before you leap (what stays, what goes, how to make a floor plan); how to decide what style you're going to go for; and how to use color and texture in ways that are unexpected, but not insane. You don't want it to look like you got inspiration from a clown college (though maybe Bozo Bohemian is your thing, which is fine by me). I also want to encourage you and give you the nail- by-nail instructions on how to build some of your own furnishings. The TV audience might not know it, but I design custom furniture for just about every room I do on the show. Someone else usually builds it for me now only because the show's time crunch makes it impossible for me to build it myself.
But I've handcrafted hundreds of different pieces over the years and I still love it. The great thing about building your own furniture and accessories is that it's not expensive. It is terribly difficult and it's so gratifying to know that you've created a major design element (or even a minor one) for your home with your bare hands. Your friends will be pretty impressed, too. Really, you’ve got to try it. Keep in mind that you don't have to overhaul a room completely to give it a striking makeover. Sometimes fooling around with just one or two elements is all you need to do. My goal here is to give you tons of ideas from which you can pick and choose. We'll talk about walls and floors, lighting and storage, wallpaper and fabric-yes, I'm going to talk xii about wallpaper and fabric.
This might seem slightly weird if you, like most people, think of me as just a nail-and-hammer guy. I am a nail-and-hammer guy, but I have an extensive background in art and design, and they're my passion. Wow, did I just say the word passion? Didn't expect that either, did you? . When I was a kid growing up in Atlanta, the only way my mom could get me to sit still and focus on anything was when she gave me a sketchpad or some kind of art project to work on. Otherwise, I was wreaking havoc, unscrewing the legs of the piano, drawing a picture on the wall with crayons-why not?-and basically redesigning the house. I wasn't much better in school.
I definitely had some issues with conduct and, being who I am, a lot of excess energy. So I caused chaos in the classroom, climbing in and out of windows, slapping Johnny on the back of the head. As it happens, my mom was studying to be a child psychologist and, as part of her course work, she came to my elementary school and asked to study the worst kid in the school. Who do you think was sent to the front? Oh yeah, it all made for some interesting school and family dynamics. But I wasn't completely hopeless. I had some trouble studying, but I found that I could do well if I had a visual frame of reference. I was good at geometry, for instance, because it involved shapes and putting things together. And I found that I could memorize facts for history class if I drew little pictures of battle scenes or whatever event was in the curriculum. Approaching information visually made all the difference for me-and it still does. I always wanted to be an artist, but my parents were a little skeptical about the idea, since it's not the easiest route to a solid bank account. So I figured out that I could go to art school to become a graphic designer, which might landed me a legitimate job. It turned out that I loved it. I loved it so much that when I was asked to do one project, I'd do three. (I was a real overachiever beaver on that one.) I also started doing carpentry, working on building houses, but I never thought of it as a future vocation; it was just a way to pay for school. After I graduated, I got a job at a graphic design studio and won some design awards while continuing to study painting and sculpture.
It was all going well, but not long into it, I met a model scout who encouraged me to try modeling. The pay, he promised, would be great. So, even though I had hilariously long hair with a kind of funky rat tail in the back, I went into the modeling agency office. A week later I was on a plane to Japan and entering what would become my wanderlust phase. Modeling gave me the travel bug and opened new worlds for me. I had never been anywhere. Now I was going to Europe and Asia and living in New York City, Japan, Thailand, and Italy. I wasn't exactly striking it rich by modeling, but I was seeing the world and in the process learning so much about different cultures, different religions, and different ways of life. I began to see everything, including art, architecture, and furniture, in a completely different way.
When I came back from traveling, I returned to both construction and graphic design and worked for a while on movie sets (you can actually catch me in the credits for the Nicolas Cage film Leaving Las Vegas). I was once again living in Atlanta and renovating a warehouse I'd bought with my brother, when I went on an audition for a cable show. The premise was that two neighbors would swap houses while we invaded and made over their homes. The producers of the show, Trading Spaces, were impressed when I showed them the simple trick of using a speed square to cut straight 2 x 4s and I thought, "Wow, you guys have never seen a speed square before? You definitely need a carpenter:' And for four years, I was it.
The carpenter guy It was the perfect job for me. I got to build things and be my off-the-wall, wiseass self in front of the camera. Every week, though, we'd wait for the family to come home to see if they were going to like what we did to their house. And sometimes they definitely did not-infact; some people came home and cried. The shock value was a lot of fun, but I also thought it would be great to do a show where we do something for people who need help and who actually like what we do. I thought, "Why not cry for the right reason?" Enter Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The producers asked me, "Do you think we can build a house in seven days?" and I said," 0, but it would definitely be good television to try." And so we did, and it's been an absolutely amazing ride.
During that first episode, when an entire community, not to mention a couple hundred construction workers, five designers, and a production staff came together xiii g. to make something incredible happen in one week, I thought, "I don't know how well this is going to play on television, but I know that I have to do this again:' The years I've spent working on EMHE as well as on my other 'Job"-designing a line of home fashions for Sears- have helped me refine my ideas about what constitutes good design. More than anything, I think, good design artfully brings together practicality and emotion. It allows you to capture a mood -and that mood could be transcendental calm in, say, a bedroom or maybe wicked crazy fun in an entertainment room- without losing sight of the room's real purpose.
With this book, I hope to get you to look at your home with fresh eyes and contemplate the possibilities. How can you integrate the things you are passionate about-whether it's music and dance or nature or a particular culture-into the look of your home? How do you grab elements from a particular style and make them your own? I think you'll find that it's not that hard or expensive. You're not going to have to leave the bank with a wheelbarrow in order to create a home that's stylish and intimate. You'll see.
It's all incredibly doable. And the rewards are just fantastic. Take it from someone who has had the good fortune to help all kinds of families settle into stylish homes. Revamping your own rooms is going to be uplifting. It may even change your total outlook on life.
Ten Ways to Know That Your Home Needs a Makeover
1. You wake up and can't see the floor because clothing, books, and debris are everywhere.
2. You can't open the door of the closet because you've shoved so many things into it.
3. You're using plastic storage bins as dresser drawers and milk crates as furniture.
4. You've made shelving out of cinderblocks and 1 x 12s.
5. Your clothes are in garbage bags or in boxes still labeled "Closet.
6. You're sleeping on the floor with the moving blanket that you still have from when you first moved in.
7. There's absolutely no artwork up except pizza boxes.
8. There are no blinds on your window, and the first thing that hits you in the morning is the bright sun, shining like a laser.
9. You're lying in bed, a bus goes by, and your whole house rattles and rolls, then a little bit of drywall falls off the ceiling and hits you on the head. (I speak from experience.)
10. It's the holidays, the family is coming to visit, and your mother-in-law or step- mom or grandparents walk in and the first thing they say is, "You know, we think we'll get a hotel room.
I've done many things in life without planning ahead and with little forethought. I used to get plans for home makeovers written on napkins and then try to wing it. Sometimes it would all work out. Sometimes-well, let's just say, better luck next time. Having done it both ways, I highly recommend going the premeditated game-plan route, even if you're just doing a small design renovation. It may seem like we're flying by the seat of our pants on EMHE, but we actually go in with a pretty well thought-out plan. And not with just an architectural plan, but with a design plan for each room.
Not every idea ends up working, and sometimes-make that a lot of times-we have to improvise at the last minute. But we wouldn't get the results we do if we didn't map out everything beforehand.
Prepping for a makeover can be boiled down to twelve steps (not those twelve steps, though sometimes they can help, too). A lot of what's involved is simply looking at a room in a way that you've never looked at it before. Where are the windows? How high are the ceilings? What shape is the floor in? Make sure you've got a tape measure because you're going to write down the room's dimensions and draw up a floor plan. You've got to take some kind of measure of yourself: your passions, your personality, your memories, your fantasies, your sense of style, what makes you feel comfortable, what kind of mood you want to set-those things will all play a role in determining what the room is going to look like.
You'll love a room, even something as utilitarian as an office, so much more if you put your heart and soul into it. Start with a Style Folder I'm always working. Even when I'm not involved in a specific project, I'm keeping an eye out for things I like: layouts from home decor magazines, pages from art and design books, fabric swatches, samples of colors and textures I dig, photographs of clothes with patterns that look great, brochures from hotels, snapshots of rooms, signs, art, restaurants, gardens, lobbies. I save anything that I think is awesome- looking and that might serve as design inspiration at some point. (I also collect airsickness bags from planes, but that's another story.)
When it comes to redoing a room, there's one word I can't reiterate enough: research, research, research. Just to stay organized, I file everything in a "style folder." You don't have to create a style folder with one particular project in mind-simply collect things you admire with the hope that they'll one day be useful. If you just toss in everything that catches your eye, you'll probably see a certain look start to emerge. You might not have been aware that you were drawn to certain colors, patterns, or types of furniture.
How to Plan for a Makeover Magazines are a great place to start. If you have your own subscription, you can just rip out the pages and file them away without having to save stacks and stacks of issues. Also look at as many home design books as possible. When the costs get prohibitive, see what your library has on hand (and if its selection is small, see if they can borrow from other branch. When you're saving things, though, don't think only about pictures; think about texture, too. Start touching things. Feel the difference between linen and Egyptian cotton, burlap and velour, and whenever you can toss samples of textures you like into your style folder, do so. (It would 'probably be bad form to shear off a piece of the bedspread in your cousin's guest room, so just write down the fabric type and what you liked about it then tuck that note into your folder.)
There are a lot of ways to make a style folder. You can dump everything into an accordion folder. I like to take photos of everything from fabrics to magazine spreads with my digital camera and upload them onto my computer. (You can also scan things directly into your computer and skip the photographing part.) This lets me organize everything into files on my desktop, print out whatever I want, and take it with me when I need to. Just remember to back up your hard drive. That's a lesson I don't want to learn again. Fixing them is hard and it will drive you crazy. Good times! The Twelve Steps Making over a room can be a messy job and I'm not just talking about the paint, dust, stray bolts and nails, and all that other stuff that gets all over the floor.
I mean that there's a mess of things you have to think about and a mess of ideas you have to juggle. It's easy to forget things or make mistakes. Sometimes mistakes are no big deal, and in fact, you can even end up going in a different and better direction because of a mistake. But more often mistakes are costly or, at the very least, frustrating, so try to avoid them from the start. Because of the intense nature of EMHE, and, let's be honest, the intense nature of me, I probably seem like I'm all over the place on TV. I'm actually a pretty methodical guy and this is one place-the planning stage-where being methodical definitely pays off. That's what these twelve steps are for. Think of them as your guide to getting organized (and preventing future screw-ups). And here's a tip: Write down everything.
Don’t risks letting any of the good ideas running through your head get lost in the water? And make sure you can read your own handwriting. Hieroglyphics are even more confusing. 6 How to Plan for a Makeover 1. Snap a Photo Take a "before" picture of the room. You'll want to remember it the way it was because it's going to be oh so much better! Okay, now you only have eleven more steps to go.
2. Assess what you Like and What You Don't Like Make two lists: one for what you like about the room and one for what you don't like. This is just to get a general sense of what needs to change.
The furniture?
The wall colors?
The window treatments?
The floor?
Now is the time to consider whether you can live with the shag carpeting left behind by the former owner or if it's time to put in hardwood floors and a few throw rugs. Walk around the room and look at its construction. Are there any awkward spaces? Does the room have symmetry or are the windows and doors out of balance? Before you can decide on the specific changes you want to make, get a read on the big picture. What are the purpose of each room, and what about that room is and isn't working now? 3. Save Four Things choose four things that you want to keep when you make over the room. There are probably a few items that still appeal to you or that you feel you just can't let go of. It might be a piece of furniture, a work of art, a rug, a lamp.
If you've got to be crazy, go ahead and pick six. But here's the thing. Sometimes people have a tough time getting rid of stuff that they've had forever. But if it doesn't have sentimental value and it wasn't handed down by a grandparent or an uncle can this chair be saved? A little reupholstering should do the trick.
One of my first major design-and-build projects was a three-story tree house (with a sundeck) that I created in my backyard when I was eleven years old. To get other kids in the neighborhood to work on it with me- kids whose dads had better tools than mine -I took a page from Tom Sawyer and bartered, trading comic books for their help. I remember the bond I felt with those kids while we built that tree house together, and it's the same feeling I get today working with not only the EMHE team, but also the hundreds of local contractors and volunteers that help us do our job. I like to have as much fun as possible when I'm working, and I've found that bringing in a How to Plan for a Makeover crowd to help makes a project livelier and even gets you better results.
You never know what ideas someone else is going to bring to the table. So I urge you to get help on your makeover, but in order to do that you've got to make people want to come over, and that's where a makeover party comes in. The promise of music, food, drink, and a good time makes people forget that you'd also like them to do a little heavy lifting, hammering, and painting. To me, food and drink is important, but music is the key thing. Make sure you have a CD player or some other kind of sound system to keep everyone's energy up. You can even create a makeover- inspired CD for the occasion, though if your friends are very literal (and unless you're going for the Goth look) avoid adding songs like "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones.
And, hey, if you have a megaphone, absolutely pull it out! I can say from experience that making as much noise as possible gets people fired up to do a job well. If you don't want to gather a whole group of friends, call on one or two and swap something for their help. Cook them a great meal, let them use your boat or car; help them make over their own homes the following weekend. Just repay them in some way so that you can really put them to work and not feel guilty about it. There's also no reason you can't take a page from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition's book and get a group together to work on a project for someone who you know is in need of help. Maybe you have a sick friend or relative, or you know someone who has just gone through a crisis like divorce or the death of a family member. Create a surprise for that person by making over one or more of her rooms with or without her knowing; the pleasure she (or he) takes in the result will be one of the most fantastic rewards you've ever received.
And if you do it right, the project can be a blast. A few years ago I designed a mural for a bedroom belonging to a family in Colorado that had adopted several troubled foster kids destined for juvenile hall or prison. The mural was a very detailed rendering of a bandana-type pat- tern, in keeping with the fact that the house was on a ranch and the parents were horse whisperers. I had to project the pattern on the wall, pencil it in, then go back and paint each individual shape, some of which were only one to two inches long. Fortunately, a family of five that had been helping out with the whole makeover project as well as my friend Nancy, a muralist, ended up pitching in. It took us nine hours, but it was such a good time. We listened to music and chowed down on pizza while watching this beautiful pattern take shape throughout the night. It was great fun and well worth the effort. Here's another makeover party idea for you. If you're low on funds for your makeover project but rich in stuff that you'd like to get rid of, have a Raffle for Renovation party. Invite a lot of people, offer music and drink, and sell tickets for a couple of bucks. Before my TV days, I threw one of these parties and unloaded a ton of things that had been piling up in my garage.
I threw in some bikes and an old car that didn't run anymore. You can even throw in things that have no value like a bucket of bricks, just for the fun of it. By the end of the night you get rid of all that stuff you'd been collecting for years, and you also made a pretty good chunk of change that you can put toward your makeover project.
How to Plan for a Makeover
Kitchen cabinet: Getting feedback on your design ideas is invaluable. Here is me at home brainstorming with the team from Sears. or somebody very special and you're just hanging on to it because you always have, ask yourself, Is it really going to work in the new room I'll be creating? Are you just leaving it there because it's easier to shove stuff into it or pile stuff on top of it than to figure out how to organize the room more intelligently? If you really have no good reason to hang on to something, let it go. Like an old boyfriend or girlfriend you thought you could never live without, you probably won't miss it much after, well, a few months. 4. Remove Everything Else Sweep the room cleans so that it's an empty canvas.
If this is too much of an ordeal (say, you've got a three- hundred-pound armoire that you aren't going to 10 How to Plan for a Makeover want to move more than once), at least remove all the knickknacks, art, window coverings, light furniture, and rugs so that the room is as bare as possible. In other words, strip it naked. It's time to hose it down and clean behind the ears (or the nightstand).
Look at the Room in an Entirely New Way When you look at a room that's familiar, it's hard to see what's really there. That's why I suggest taking everything (or almost everything) out even if it means you have to move it all back in again before you actually get to work. Then once the room is clear, think about how it might work differently. Take a look at how much space you actually have. Notice the ceiling height. If it's low, you should keep your furniture somewhat low, too, otherwise the furniture is going to make the room seem small.
A platform bed, for instance, works perfectly in a bedroom with low eight-foot ceilings. If it's high, you'll have room for taller pieces-things like a four-poster bed and really high curtains. Next, look to see if the room is naturally well balanced. Symmetry and balance make a room feel like it’s working. Not everything has to be so cookie-cutter perfect that if you cut a room in half each side would match, but there should be some equilibrium so that the room doesn't have all the detail or large features on one side. (If you need an example, look no further than the bedroom: That's the reason we have lamps on both sides of the bed.) If symmetry isn't built into the room, you may need to choose your furnishings to create it.
Balance is a little tricky to describe, but you'll know it when you see it. Say, for instance, that there is a window to the left of the spot where you want to place your couch, but no window to the right. Instead of placing two end tables and lamps on either side of the couch as you might normally do, maybe you just need to opt for an end table and lamp on the right side to balance out the window. These are the kinds of things to think about before you choose your furnishings. While you're surveying the room, check out whether there is any space that was previously wasted. Was there some awkward area (usually wall space) in the room's previous incarnation that you never knew what to do with? Think about how you might use this space.
Can you add shelving or put up an entertainment center? Hang a piece of art or put up picture ledges for displaying photos? Carve out a cubbyhole in the wall where you can display something meaningful to you or turn it into an indoor "window" that lets light into the next room? Now think about what the room is really used for. If it's a bedroom, maybe you only sleep there, but maybe you also use it as a place to watch TV or read. Maybe it's the room where the whole family hangs out. Living rooms, in particular, get used for so many different things. Some are primarily for entertaining. Some are the site for all music and movie enjoyment. Some are game rooms. Offices generally have one purpose-work-however, what kind of work will you be doing in there? And what kinds of work paraphernalia will you need to store there?
Lots of books, files, notebooks, photographs, Figuring out the room's most important function is going to help you furnish it well and lay it out properly. You don't want to end up with a dysfunctional room. Check-out the State of Your Walls, Floors, and Ceilings Are they in good shape or do they need repair? Before you can figure out how much you'll need to spend and how much time you're going to put into this project, you need to know if repair work is called for. If it is, it's going to be the first thing you attend to because you want to start with a perfectly blank slate. Walls in particular take a lot of wear and tear. You have a couple of friends over for the holidays, people get fired up, and you know who suffers?
The walls
They get nicked and kicked. And that's not even counting all the marks furniture leaves and, if you've got young kids who are as inspired as I once was, smudges from markers and crayons. Most walls need to be spackled and sanded, though if they're really damaged, you might even have to replace the drywall. Ceilings don't tend to have as many problems unless you've had a leak. If you've got a drop ceiling with stains, you might think about replacing the whole thing. At the very least, replace any discolored tiles.
What about the floors?
When you get out of bed barefoot, do you like what you're stepping on? Is it old flooring that needs to be refinished? Is it really bad, disgusting carpet with stains? Sometimes you get a place that somebody else lived in and, well, they had animals and not very well trained animals at How to Plan for a Makeover 11 that. You probably just need to rip that thing out and start over. (Especially if you have pets yourself. Even animal trainers can't stop animals from getting wind of the old scent and marking their territory.) Decide What Furniture You Need That You Don't Already Have you’ve figured out what you want to get rid of, now think about what you want to replace it with. If your resources are limited, I suggest that you focus on getting one great piece of furniture, determined by which piece it is that you will use and look at most.
If you're choosing something for a communal space, maybe it's an entertainment center because that's what you're using the room for. If it's for your bedroom, it might be the bed; for an office, the desk. Now's also the time to contemplate building some stuff on your own. AB I've said, I'm a big believer in doing it yourself, and there are several pieces that are easy to make (see appendix). Also, when you build some of the furniture yourself, you can make pieces that harmonize with everything else in the room. It'll save you from having to drag from one store or flea market to another looking for something that goes with the great couch or bed you just invested in.
Check the Lighting, Both during the Day and at Night The amount and type of light affects the mood of the room. To me, a big overhead light in the center of the room is dull-it makes everything in the room (including the people) look drab and unattractive. On the other hand, accent lighting-like table and floor lamps, sconces, directional lights you can aim at the walls-warms up everything. To get a sense of what you're going to need, look at the space you have available and think about what in the room you 12 How to Plan for a Makeover literally want to spotlight and where you need light for practical reasons (e.g., for reading).
Also consider how much you want to spend- lamps are generally the least expensive form of lighting because you don't need to get an electrician involved-and what lights will need to have three- way bulbs or dimmers. I highly recommend anything that lets you control light brightness and direction because there will be times when you want to soften the light. If, for instance, you sleep with someone who doesn't read as much as you do in bed, putting a three-way bulb in your bedside lamp or installing a sconce that swings out and lets you direct the light right over your book will allow your significant other the luxury of lying in bed without being blinded. Or let's say you're a single guy and you're trying to get closer to your lady. You've got sexy music cranking on the stereo, then you switch on the light, and suddenly you've gone from Barry White to Very Bright. It's a mood killer. It's also important to get a read on how much natural light the room gets during the day.
The more natural light you have permeating a room, the more joy and happiness the room will radiate. Use daylight as one decisive factor in selecting your window treatments. If the room isn't particularly light, you don't want heavy shades, blinds, or curtains that will diminish it further. Yet you don't want to lose all sense of privacy. There are a lot of different shades designed to deal with this dual problem, some of which are made of synthetic mesh that lets light filter through while blocking prying eyes. You can also get bottom-up shades that allow the sun to shine in at the top while providing coverage at the bottom.
There are ways to get creative with this, too. In- stead of putting up window treatments in my old house in Atlanta, I created shoji-like screens out of white Plexiglas and placed them in front of the windows. They let in light but blocked out my neighbor's backyard. I also planted bamboo outside the window, which created wonderful shadows on the screens.
If you're going to redo the room on a pretty big scale and you don't think it has enough light, you might even think about making some structural changes. Add another window or a skylight if possible. Or you can actually cut a space-a square, a rectangle, a circle, an arched rectangle, any shape really-into one of the walls to let in light from another room. It can require having to move some of the electrical, but if you get lucky, you'll miss it and you won't have to move anything. This will not only make the room brighter, it will open it up a bit so that it seems to have more space than it actually does. And that's always a plus.
Fantasize About What Your Dream Room Will Look Like Close your eyes and picture the room you've always wanted. Does it have swaying fabric hanging from a bed or a clean-lined headboard?
Does it have a cushy couch or minimalist chairs and an angular coffee table?
Is it filled with books or art? Is the floor bare or covered with a soft rug?
Maybe it's reminiscent of someplace you saw while on vacation or in a design book. Is it a room that's all about luxury, light, earthiness? Do you want it to be as simple as, say, brown leather chairs surrounded by white walls or as elaborate as a room filled with carved furniture and Indian tapestries?
Is it a room you remember walking into as a child and thinking, "I want that room when I grow up"? Also think about what you want it to feel like, literally. Do you want to sink into soft, cushy fabrics, or do you like the feel of fabrics that are taut and sleek?
Visualize absolutely everything about the room, including how you'd like it to smell.
Fantasize, too, about breaking your old habits and traditions. If you've always gone for country, visualize what it would be like to have rooms that are contemporary. The options are limited only by your imagination.
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