Decorating Advice and Paint Colors

One of the best bargains that I’ve seen for Memorial Day weekend are the clearance deals that they are having at Linens ‘n things on Nate Berkus home accessories.  I had no idea that he had his own line, although he should because I recently voted him the best TV decorator, which is a high honor that many people were coveting   I’m sure that’s the greatest of all his accomplishments. 

I hope that the fact that so many of his items are on clearance doesn’t mean that the line isn’t doing well.  I love clearance more than most, but I so want him to succeed.  I was very impressed with the line, it was very Nate, not just a line that was designed for him that he put his name on like a lot of celebrity designers.  You can tell this is all him.  Lots of sea life, very elegant, clean, homey looking.  I wonder what they would do if I offered them full price at the store instead of the clearance price, because it’s definitely worth it.  Have a safe shopping excursion this memorial day!

I often walk into a home & I can tell within a few years of when it was decorated. No, I’m not some sort of weird breed of decorating psychic. It’s just that we all have our gifts. Why does this matter? Well I often walk into a home & I can tell within a few years of when it was decorated. It leads me to assumptions about the homeowners financial situation, & how much they care about their home, even their personality.

A dead giveaway is the flooring. For instance, my house has both cranberry & forest green colored carpet. Can anything scream the 1990′s more? It would’ve saved a lot of money & work in the long run if I would’ve gone for a hardwood floor. I can’t think of any era where hardwood floors have been out of vogue, & laminate floors look just as good & are easy to maintain. So the big question that I often ask myself everyday is why didn’t I? I didn’t think that I could afford it. I didn’t shop around, I just had it in my head that nice flooring was for really expensive homes & it would cost too much. I should’ve looked around because places like discountflooring.com have fantastic prices. There are over 20,000 different types of flooring at this site, including glass. There is sure to be something there for your home whether you like cork, bamboo, travertine, laminate, or even granite. With 20,000 choices, you’re sure to find something that is perfect for your home & your budget.

One of my favorite decorating shows is “Designed to Sell”, where they help homeowners get ready to sell their houses that they couldn’t sell by themselves. One of the things that always adds tens of thousands of dollars worth of value to these homes is just changing out the flooring. If you’re working in a small area like a bathroom, you can put down a really expensive material like travertine, & it might only cost a couple hundred dollars. This shows homeowners that the house has been cared for, & that the people that lived there took pride in it. Sometimes, they do such a good job that the homeowner’s decide not to sell because they love their remodeled home so much. I think it pays to have a really beautiful classic floor that won’t ever date your home & will thrown even my decorating psychic powers off.

I’ve never been much of a gardener, because it is well, you know outside.  Outside is where they keep cold, wind & dirt.   I do love a beautiful garden to sit in though, so I was going to have to get over this.  I learned some great gardening lessons from that old show "Surprise by Design".  It helps me to be able to relate gardening to decorating, it makes more sense to me if I think of the garden as a room. 

• White is one of the brightest colors that you can use in gardening, even more so than orange & yellow.  It should either be used sparingly, or used to the extreme.  I saw a garden with only white flowers & it was gorgeous.
• Green is nature’s neutral.  So use colors that go with green, purples & blues are some of my favorites.
• Before this I just had too many different kinds of flowers in the garden.  It looked like a nursery had exploded.  I needed to bring in more of the neutral (green) to balance things out.  I wouldn’t use 20 different colors in decorating, so I shouldn’t use them in gardening.

Gardens have different feelings.  They can be elegant, fun, or traditional.  It’s ok to do a little planning & think about what I want my garden to feel like.

Tags: gardening, flowers, surpsie by design, home & garden, decorating, advice, lessons, tv