6 Simple Tips to Boost a Stalled Decorating SchemeEUGENE CHRINIAN

6 Simple Tips to Boost a Stalled Decorating Scheme

When you’re decorating your home, few situations are more frustrating than a room that isn’t quite coming together. The room probably doesn’t look bad and there’s nothing obviously wrong with your décor, but there’s a feeling that something is missing or that something is a bit off, and you just can’t put your finger on what it is.

If you’re in this situation, with a room that’s making you sigh rather than sing, here are six helpful strategies you can try to get your decorating back on track.

Go back to your inspiration.

If you’re not feeling right about your room, go back to what inspired your decorating scheme in the first place. Perhaps you saw a fantastic living room on Pinterest and decided to duplicate it, or maybe you used your favorite Impressionist paintings to inspire the color palette and textiles for your bedroom. Whatever your source of inspiration was, return to it and compare it with what’s going on in your room. Ask yourself what your inspiration has that your room doesn’t, or what elements in your room are not found in the inspiration. This strategy may help you discover an addition you made that contrasts too strongly with the harmony of the original inspiration. It also could help you recognize a vital element that pulls your inspiration together that you’ve forgotten to include.

Take out something big.

Sometimes, too many elements can make it difficult to see where a decorating scheme needs to go. To create a bit more space, try taking out something big. Take out the curtains in your bedroom, or a stuffed armchair in the living room. Then step back and take another look at the room. The room might feel too empty, or like it really is missing something essential, but that extra space might make it easier to see the room’s potential, or to spot things that aren’t working that the bigger item was helping to hide.

Focus on what is working.

The room overall might not be quite right, but if there’s a corner, a wall, or a particular spot in the room that you do love, concentrate on that. See if you can figure out what you love about it or why you think it’s working, then try to expand that to include the rest of the room. Maybe you played around on a small scale with a furniture style that the room could use more of, or maybe you used a lot of one color that isn’t echoed anywhere else in the room. Whatever it is, try incorporating that element into other areas, and see what that does for the feel of the room.

Add something surprising.

If your decorating efforts have stalled, it might be time to shake up your style—sometimes, what’s missing from a well-decorated room is a little dose of the unexpected. Grab something surprising, something you think would never in a million years work, and add it to the room. This object can be something from another part of your home, something from a friend’s house, or something you find for free at a flea market. It could also be an item or piece of furniture in a style you usually wouldn’t choose. A mobile kitchen cart in the bedroom? Yes. A plaid armchair in a slick, modern living room? Sure. The only criterion is that it should startle you into looking at the room in a new way. Hopefully, one of two things will happen: your mismatched object will actually work in the space, or it will be so obviously out of place that it will help point you in the opposite direction; that is, the direction you do want to go.

Take a picture. Snap a few photos of the room you’re

working on, and then leave the space completely—ideally, get out of the house to give yourself even more distance. Go to a coffee shop, sit down with your favorite brew, and scroll through the photos, looking at them as small-scale thumbnails so you can see the whole space. Try to look at the room as if you were seeing it on a design blog rather than as a room you live in and know inside out, and listen to your gut reaction. Responding to the space from a distance, quite literally, can give you great clues about what the room does or doesn’t need.

Doodle.

Messing around with your space doesn’t always have to mean moving furniture around. Print out the photos you took of the room (or work with them digitally), and draw in patterns, furniture pieces, or areas where you think something special is needed. Be bold: after all, you’re only doodling. Then, if you hit on an idea that clicks, look at your space and your budget to see if you can make it a reality.