Decorating Mistakes: Color Count

Every now and then I like to talk about common decorating mistakes that many people make.  It's so easy to avoid them.  And, when you do, your home automatically bumps up to a more pleasing level.  Since I work for several realtors, I get to see how much homes are almost instantly changed when simple rules of decorating are followed.

Often as new accessories and furniture are added over the years, the old stuff remains.  The problem is you lose a co-ordinated color flow, and the new additions don't shine like they should.  Take a picture of your room and on your computer screen, analyze how many colors there are in the room.  Have you held onto the peach candle that Aunt Matilida brought back from Hawaii? . . . even though there's no more peach in the room! 

You should be able to draw imaginary lines, a sort of connect the dots, from one item to another, matching the complementary colors.  If you find there are items in the room that cannot be connected to anything else, it's a big clue that they have to go.

That's what I call, the discipline of decorating.  If you don't have the discipline to remove the items that don't belong, then any attemps to make the room look attractive just . . . won't work.