living room

Loving the Fireplace You Used to Hate

May 14, 2012 By Kristie Barnett 12 Comments

Ah, the fireplace. The heart of the home, the hearth, the focal point of any well-appointed living room. But what if the heart of your home fills you with contempt?

Lovely, Non-Contemptuous Fireplace

In the photos I’m going to share with you below, the wall color stayed the same and no new furnishings or accessories were purchased. A lot like that old show on HGTV, Decorating Cents (that I still miss!), this makeover is what most people refer to as an “interior redesign,” aka, “working with whatcha got and not buying anything new.” Here’s the “before” of the living room. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Design Intervention Tagged With: black paint, color, decorating cents, fireplace, hgtv, living room, paint it black, pinterest, redesign, room makeover, the decorologist

Does Virtual Design (Long-Distance Decorating) Really Work?

May 9, 2012 By Kristie Barnett 12 Comments

Obviously, if I am writing this post I think the answer is “Yes!” Some people call it “e-design” or “online design,” but I’m sure you’ve heard about it. Awhile back, a sweet girl named Emily contacted me about virtually-designing the small older home she shares with her husband. The only caveat was that she wanted to keep the paint color in her kitchen and dining area, so everything needed to tie in with that. You may recall the article where I shared the Inspiration Board for the space, but here again is the design I created for her:

OB EHs Inspiration Board1 Does Virtual Design (Long Distance Decorating) Really Work?

Virtual Design Inspiration Board by The Decorologist

If you want to see the Inspiration Boards that helped us narrow down the options (rugs, lighting, and dining room furnishings), check those out in my prior article here. What’s really exciting for me is when a Virtual Design client sends me “after” photos of the finished design, which Emily did a few months ago. Let’s take a look at the REAL “before and afters.”

March2011 015 Does Virtual Design (Long Distance Decorating) Really Work?

Living Room/Dining Room Before

Speed Staging with The Decorologist

April 11, 2012 By Kristie Barnett 14 Comments

No, I didn’t say Speed Dating! A few months ago, I began offering a “Speed Staging” service as an option for those putting their homes on the market. It works well for homeowners who have nice furniture and a good supply of decor items.

DSC 5795 Speed Staging with The Decorologist

The Decorologist Home Staging in the Greater Nashville Area

How it works: The Decorologist and an assistant show up (never having viewed the home), make a quick appraisal of what needs to be done, then Speed Staging begins! Below is the living room of a home I worked in yesterday – take a minute and think about what you would do to make it market-ready before you move on to the “after” photo.

DSC 5773 Speed Staging with The Decorologist

Living Room Before Speed Staging

You can see it’s a nice room, but a few important changes will make the room a WOW room. This view is from the entry of the living room. You have to navigate a bit to get through to the kitchen, right? Now, for the after. This is what we did, using only the homeowner’s furnishings and decorative accessories: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Design Intervention, My Decorology Tagged With: conversation area, decorologist, furniture arrangement, home, living room, nashville, speed staging, stager, staging

Get Your Furniture Arrangement In Balance

March 26, 2012 By Kristie Barnett 19 Comments

I see it all the time: rooms that lack balance. When your furniture is not balanced, the whole room feels off-kilter.

house beautiful living room Get Your Furniture Arrangement In Balance

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Here’s a good example off an off-kilter room I worked in last week. From this angle it didn’t look so bad, in regard to furniture placement. There wasn’t a lot of color in the room, obviously. First of all, I suggested we move away from the paint color that looked a bit like a band-aid. Sorry, but pinky-beige is not your friend. Just ask Color Expert Maria Killam how she feels about pinky-beige!

DSC 0422 Get Your Furniture Arrangement In Balance

Before

Paint Your Paneling, Change Your Life

February 13, 2012 By Kristie Barnett 56 Comments

There is simply no reason you must live perpetually with a dated wood kitchen if you don’t want to. Or live in a dark, wood-paneled den just because your home contains one. And, no, you don’t have to rip the wood paneling out.

Pull Up a Comfy Chair and Read This Post

You need to paint it. I know, I know: your husband says “No way, Jose!” Men have lots of reasons for leaving wood in its natural state as I expounded upon in my post, “Why Men Fear Painting Wood.”

Men Think Wood Paneling is Sexy, But It’s Not

My clients spent 16 years with dark, dated wood cabinets and wood paneling in their kitchen and adjoining den. Because their Nashville home is a 1970′s ranch, they honestly believed that they had no other choice but to live in that era as long as they lived in that home. Not true!

Before of Kitchen with Dated Wood Cabinetry

Honestly, it took a bit of convincing to reassure my clients that my plan would work and not result in a half-baked result. They thought they needed to rip out all their cabinetry and start over, which would have been prohibitively expensive. They were paralyzed by fear and lack of vision. Once I gained their trust, we began moving forward towards an amazing outcome. The proof is in the photos. Get ready for the transformation . . . [Read more...]

Filed Under: Design Intervention, Popular Posts Tagged With: 1970s ranch, beadboard backsplash, beadboard paneling, benjamin moore, black accents, blue, dated, decorologist, how to, inexpensive, interior decorator, kitchen, living room, nashville, paint, painting, paneling, room makeover, update, white, white kitchen cabinets, wood paneling, Woodlawn Blue

Ceiling Light Dilemmas: How’s It Hanging?

January 9, 2012 By Kristie Barnett 27 Comments

Don’t you wish builders would use a little forethought when they install ceiling light fixtures? Aargh. Most builders hang ceiling light fixtures in the dead center of each room. Is that where they should be hung? Not always.

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Just because someone installed the light in the middle of the room doesn’t mean that’s where it SHOULD be. Yesterday, a reader sent me a FaceBook message: “When one installs a banquette in the dining room along one wall, pushes the table up to it, and aligns chairs at either end and the other side of the table, where does one hang the light fixture? Centered over the table or centered in the room?”

Breakfast Room in Southern Living Showhouse – photo by Kristie Barnett

Ceiling light fixtures should always hang dead-center on the most important architecture of the room. Like dead-center to the fireplace, where ideally your conversation area should be situated. Whenever possible, ceiling lighting should also be centered on windows and doors that are architecturally-significant.

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If there is a bump-out in part of the room or if the room is L-shaped, that can change everything and needs to be considered in your interior lighting design. Particularly in a large or L-shaped room, you may need multiple ceiling lights hung over different areas of the room where seating or dining occur. If you don’t have this, you can easily hang your own ceiling light fixtures with long cords that can plug into the wall. There are lots of plug-in options in drum shade fixtures.

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To answer my reader’s question: the ceiling fixture needs to hang over the dining or breakfast table rather than in the center of the room, unless you have a secondary ceiling light hanging over the table. If you can’t rehang or rewire the ceiling fixture, simply screw in a ceiling hook above your table and swag the fixture (you may need to add more chain). That’s how we solved the banquette dilemma in my own kitchen. See how the chain is swagged here?

The Decorologist’s Breakfast Nook for Gatherings Magazine

Your lighting should always be centered over your conversation or dining area. If not, your room will always look “off” no matter what you do. As much as I love the image of the room below, it doesn’t feel quite right because the table and light fixture aren’t centered on the fireplace. However, the fireplace is in an odd place in the room – which makes it impossible to center the table on the fireplace. In this case, the center of the table wins out over centering it on the fireplace.

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So ultimately, the placement of conversational seating and your dining table should dictate where ceiling lights should hang. As part of good interior decorating, it may be worth having those fixtures moved so that your space feels “right.” Or you can try the ceiling hook method and swag the fixture where it needs to be. Either way, you’d be surprised what a difference it can make!

Filed Under: My Decorology Tagged With: breakfast nook, ceiling lights, dining room, drum shades, gatherings, hanging lights, interior decorating, kristie barnett, light fixtures, lighting, living room, southern living showhouse, the decorologist, where to hang lights

Interior Design for a Nashville Living Room and a Few Designer Secrets for You!

December 2, 2011 By Kristie Barnett 34 Comments

This is one of my favorite room makeovers to date – just finished this one on Monday. The client and her daughter follow my blog and contacted me a while back about doing a revamp on their living room here in Nashville. The reason why I love this project is because it was all about enhancing the beauty and function of the space while using what was special and meaningful to this family.

Ok, let’s get started! This is the view of the living room from the entry of the house when I first arrived. To be fair, my client had pulled a couple of extra pieces of furniture into the room for me to consider, like that wood dresser in the front. Anyway, she was looking to freshen up the paint colors (currently sage green in the living room and light yellow in the dining room. She also really wanted to add an electric fireplace, but feared that it might look too fakey in the room.

living room before

Serial Furniture Rearranging & Other Disorders

November 18, 2011 By Kristie Barnett 17 Comments

As many of you know, I switched out my living room and dining room a few months ago and enjoyed a change of scenery in my home. As the holidays approach, I decided I wanted enjoy the fireplace (sans books – see here what I’m talking about) so I switched them back.

That doesn’t mean my living room looks like it used to, since I traded sofas in the living and enclosed sleeping porch. This is where the red sofa used to sit:

photo by Heather Spriggs

Nashville Interior Decorator Shares 6 Top Tips For Redesigning a Room

November 2, 2011 By Kristie Barnett 14 Comments

Here are a few great ideas to keep in mind if you are ready to redesign a room in your home, which are illustrated in this recent before-and-after of a client’s den.

1. Stay true to who you are. With children no longer in her home, this client was ready to redesign her den and make it a warm and welcoming place to hang out with her husband and enjoy informal gatherings with their friends. This is where we started: