Think About Decorating Your House Like You’re Selecting an Outfit to Wear
Our flooring expert Gail Baker loves this ottoman by Hooker so much that she dreams of designing an entire house around it.
Start With a Feature Piece and Build From There
Have you ever fallen in love with a single piece of furniture or tile or décor and felt inspired?
Gail Baker, one of the flooring experts in our design center, is in love with this ottoman by Hooker. If she could, she’d design a whole house around it, but she’ll settle for a room-sized master closet with this ottoman as the focal point and a gorgeous chandelier overhead. It’s the stuff dreams of made of.
Our designers call this kind of inspiration item a “feature piece,” and when customers come into the design center wanting help selecting a new floor, tile or countertop, one of the first questions we ask is, “What’s your feature piece?” It could be a sofa, a cabinet color, a backsplash design, a bold rug, a type of flooring or the way it’s installed (keep reading to find out what one of our customers did!). Then, we build a design plan around that feature piece/look.
To help people understand what we mean by a feature piece, we like to use the analogy of planning an outfit. You usually start with one piece — a fun top, a great pair of jeans, a cute skirt, a flattering dress — and then select the rest of the outfit (shoes, jewelry, accessories) to coordinate and complement it. And just like you wouldn’t pick the shoes you are going to wear before you’ve decided on an outfit (unless the shoes are the feature piece), you shouldn’t make certain design choices before you make others.
A lot of people think they have to decide everything all at once, but we say with some details, it’s best to make decisions in phases. Select the pillows and drapery for a room after you have the furniture in place. Find a piece of art to hang in your bedroom after you have your bed, nightstands and dresser set up. And in the kitchen, wait to select a backsplash until your cabinets and countertop have been installed, said Dani Buschmann, our lead designer. “Just like you wouldn’t want to put on a necklace before you have the dress picked out. You wait until you have the dress on and then try out different necklaces to see which one looks best.” Plus, waiting until your countertop is installed means you don’t have to rely on a small sample size when you’re trying to find a backsplash that complements it.
What Do You Have Now, And Why Do You Want to Change?
If you don’t have a feature piece in mind for your project, that’s OK. Not everyone does.
Many people bring in photos from Pinterest and Houzz, and that’s a quick and easy way to see what kinds of designs make you happy. But what really helps us discover what’s right for you and your home are the answers to a few key questions:
What type of project are you working on? Is it a new house or is it one room? What’s your lifestyle like? Do you have kids or pets? If you’re replacing a hardwood floor, why are you replacing it? What don’t you like about it? If it’s a new house, what items have you already selected? What do your cabinets look like? What type of furniture do you have? What color are your walls? Basically, what do you have now and why do you want to change?
We listen carefully to your answers and then start selecting samples based on what you’ve told us. And we layer those samples on the floor of the design center to build sort of inspiration board. It gives you the start of idea of how things will look together in your space, and in many cases, we don’t get it right on the first try. “We keep pulling options down until they suddenly say, ‘That’s it!’ ”Gail remarked.
And we don’t limit our design services to what we sell in our store. We advise customers on cabinet colors and styles, even paint colors for your walls, because our goal is to help you create a cohesive look. “We don’t want to send you on your merry way and then you get lost or overwhelmed at the paint store. We want you to be excited about your project,” Gail said.
Tracy’s new house isn’t finished yet in this photo, but we can already tell that her laminate plank flooring laid on the diagonal is a real wow factor!
A Feature Look: Diagonal Design
Tracy, one of our flooring and tile customers who came in last winter to select finishes for a new home she’s having built in Washington, admits she wasn’t super excited about her project. When she met with Dani for the first time, she knew she wanted a modern look and had some ideas in mind. For the bathroom shower, she ended up selecting white subway tile with dark grout, and for the main flooring, she went with a laminate wood plank. But rather than opt for the traditional straight-line installation, Tracy asked for the planks to be laid on the diagonal, and it made all the difference. Talk about a wow factor! For Tracy, seeing the end result was more than gratifying. “It was the first time I was really excited about everything,” she said.
Tracy selected white subway tile with dark grout and coordinating accent tile for the shelf insets to give her shower a modern look.