“Going green” is the new buzzword being thrown around in every corner of the business, from home furniture products to design materials. It seems like everyone has slapped the green label on their products, often in what’s just a thinly veiled attempt to get you to go out and buy more.

Why not go green by the adage “less is more?” Try to find creative ways to use what you already own and love. Get rid of the clutter that hides the good stuff. Using what you own is green—it avoids burning fuel for transport, and you’re not using any resources beyond what you already have.

More is not always better—it can be wasteful. Just because you have the monetary resources to buy something, ask yourself—is it necessary? By the time most people have the discretionary income to hire a designer, they’ve already accumulated a lot of stuff. Establishing goals, sorting through what you already have, and finding the courage to pitch, recycle, or give away items lets you and your designer work together to simplify your home and your way of life.

If you still want to buy, consider this—buy less, but buy better. Be selective, and buy the very best you can afford. You’ll only scream once when you go top-notch, and it will still be around long after you are.

Taking less action—just one way to go green.

Stop procrastinating.

If you really want a change, start with a plan. Don’t procrastinate, or your rooms may stage a hostile takeover and decorate themselves. This may already have happened to you—rooms are sneaky, and usually operate at night, in the dark.

You know what we mean. You wake up one morning and your walls are “greige,” an unpleasant muddling of white, gray and beige. The carpet—usually a random hand-me-down or overstock from Bill’s House O’ Carpet—has staked a claim under a bulbous sofa. “Almost retro” tables and chairs clutter along the walls with all those other furniture deals advertised as “too good to pass up.” Like those obscure relatives that visit each summer, the objects make the room comfortable enough, but vaguely annoying, and you feel too guilty to throw them out.

Maybe you’ve got a table you thought was bound to look great once you refinished it and put on new hardware, but 10 years later it’s just gotten sadder, and hisses at you for neglecting it. Maybe the lighting feels like you’re in a bathing suit dressing room at Macy’s, the curtains that hung with pizzazz in virtual catalog rooms in your house look more like they need a Humane Society intervention, and the overall tableau looks like an archeological dig with each layer exposing the least desirable trends from the 90’s, the 80’s, and God help you, the 70’s. When you felt “hip,” you thought it eclectic, but now you feel overwhelmed, and you call it what it is: a mess.

Don’t despair. You might get lucky and sell the whole lot to the Museum of Modern Art, where it will be exhibited next to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

And don’t worry, you’re not alone—we all thought we had time and energy. Now we’re clear that we have neither. We can be “energy-efficient” (note that I shamelessly use an overused phrase) by making better decisions this time around. Find comfort in the knowledge that you are armed well with the very thing you need to overcome the decorating blahs—a functioning frontal cortex.

Take an “ego inventory.”

What’s an ego inventory? An admission that accumulating things does not always get you what you want. How many times have you found yourself spinning in circles about where to begin only to “solve” the problem by going out and buying another thing that you ended up regretting? Many shops filled with such impulse buys are only providing future landfill.

Without a plan, your mistake started before you left the house.

No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.
-Albert Einstein

Is this all a ploy to get you to hire a professional? Maybe—it depends on your mindset and how honest, disciplined, and objective you can be. As Einstein noted, the mind that makes the mess may not have the perspective to fix it. Seeking another viewpoint can help stop the circular thinking. Consider at least consulting with a professional, or asking a friend whose home you admire to be your decorating boot camp sergeant.

That’s Step One: Don’t buy anything without first having a plan.

Whether you tackle your own home design or consult a professional, you’ll first need to take a functional inventory of what you already have and whether it works for you. Then, move on to Step Two: Analyzing Your Home and How it Functions (Click Here).

Before you “decorate” a house—and this also applies to single rooms—or embark on a costly renovation, you need to inventory how your house is working for or frustrating your lifestyle. You can’t fix something until you have clearly defined what is wrong, so ignore trendy decoration and focus on function—for now.

Making it pretty is easy if you get the “bones” right. You are paying to live there, so make sure you get what you are paying for.

Take inventory on room use.

We encourage our clients to consider the following questions:

What is the use of each room, and how is it being used?
Many dining rooms act as dust magnets while people congregate in the kitchen or adjoining family room. Living rooms seem to have virtual velvet ropes across their thresholds, defying visitors except to open Christmas presents or vacuum. Placed too far from the family hub, they come to resemble a museum piece—“Still Life with Pristine Sofa and Fireplace Tools.”

Maybe you have a guest room that’s only been used a handful of times? Or a family room that resembles the size, height, and shape of a football stadium, built to accommodate a TV the size of a JumboTron? Maybe you squeeze into tiny “away” rooms like a library or den because they’re cozy and scaled for humans and not aircraft carriers? Ask yourself whether you truly use and enjoy these spaces, or whether you feel a societal obligation to have them.

Know the purpose of each room. Try to imagine it as an empty box—there are a million ways to fill it, which is far too many options and precisely what confuses people. They end up trying to create rooms that “do it all.” Just like people, rooms are pushed to be “jacks of all trades and masters of none.” Be realistic—unless the room is enormous, start with two uses at the most, and keep in mind how many people (and their ages) will use the room at any one time. In short, challenge your beliefs about single-function rooms.

What activities need to happen in your house?
Make a list of each person living in the house, and include their daily activities during a typical week. Include sleeping, dressing, meals, studying or office work, hobbies, and entertainment like music, TV, or games. Then list less-frequent activities, like a monthly get together, bi-weekly bridge game, or family holidays—anything the family does that requires space.

Make a list of all your current rooms and how each one is used. We’re here to explore how many activities can be moved from overused rooms to underused ones to balance out house function and better use all your space.

How do family members engage with one another?
Consider each person and how their activates interrelate—for example, does one child need a quiet study area while another has to practice an instrument? Does a mother need to be near a napping baby while working or making dinner?

Do your current rooms meet these needs?
Then determine whether you place each activity in an existing room or rooms. Related activities should occur near each other. Food preparation, storage, and consumption should be in close proximity, as should bedrooms, linen storage, and laundry. Garage, mudrooms, garden/potting rooms should be near each other, and guest areas and the family areas are ideally situated with a buffer of a common room.

Map your house using index cards.

To better see how activities flow through your house—especially if you are visually oriented—we recommend using an index card to represent each room. Position the cards to resemble a simplified floor plan, and label each card with its room name at the top. List all activities beneath the name. This shows you at a glance how current room placement affects the way life flows through the house, and makes it easy to see which rooms are “empty” and which are crowded. Note which side of the house has light, breezes, and views, and consider switching rooms so daytime activities can take advantage of scenery and sun.

Combining more than one activity in a room—such as a library/dining room, office/library/guest room, kitchen/office, or master bedroom/exercise room—makes the best use of floor space. Natural room pairings include a single wet area for laundry and a mudroom.

Switching rooms around can breathe new life into the flow of a house. Obviously, changing kitchens and baths can be costly renovations, but surrounding rooms may often be changed easily enough to add efficiency. If you are tight on space and you have an eat-in kitchen, consider changing the use of a room dedicated to formal dining. The freed space would make a great office, quiet reading room/library, or an “away” room. Any room can morph into a dining room with a folding table (or table base and top), a table pad, and tablecloth.

For specific rooms, consider whether putting in doors would provide privacy or sound protection. Glass-paned doors provide a sound barrier but allow light. Would removing doors open spaces up? Note whether the shape and size of the room lends itself to an optimal room use—an L-shaped room, for example, allows for two activity areas. Are there built-ins or a fireplace? Are they needed? Note the position and shape of windows and doors for the flow of the floor plan, keeping in mind whether these features help or hinder the overall goals for the house or room.

Keep asking what you want the function of the room to be, and plan to make the room accommodate it. If that’s impossible, consider changing the room or its location.

The form should follow the function for each room and the house as a whole. This  defines a well-designed house.

Objectively looking at the way your house is functioning puts you in a better position to determine if you can:

a)    live with what you have
b)    renovate to add modify spaces, or
c)    move to another home.

There is a lot to consider, but the process is well worth the time investment. The inventory of activities will help you weigh the pros and cons of renovation or relocation.  You may be able to avoid both with some simple in-room efficiencies or room switches.

You need a clear understanding of the function of each room before placing furnishings.

Taking stock of all your furnishings—all the “stuff”—can be a challenge. Sometimes all the things you own become what owns you, whether they’re under your roof or any other. If that “other” place is a storage facility, empty it. Use it or lo$e it—coy, but a good rule anyway, because storage fees pile up. Many of our clients have added up the cost over the years and found that what they paid in fees to memorialize Aunt Bessie’s bureau could have purchased the cool thing they wanted in the first place. So drop the guilt, grow a backbone and get rid of things. It is a bad economy; you can’t afford to waste money saving things for ‘some’ day. Note that items being held hostage by a friend or relative must be retrieved by you and/or your attorney or hit man, not your designer.

What makes the cut?
List all the furniture you absolutely love, no questions asked. List all the furniture your significant other refuses to part with, no matter what threats you have lobbed. You may need a referee (the “keen eye for the furniture shy”) to help.

It’s OK to consult a trusted friend or designer, but do not take a consensus of everyone you talk to or you will end up having a house that looks it was designed by a committee or government entity—or both. If you are not looking for the airport hotel lobby look, choose the furniture that means something to you. What should be left is functional and/or beautiful- one or both. To quote William Morris:

“Do not keep anything in your home that you
do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

Get rid of the tired stuff. If a piece of furniture fails to be useful in any room, be honest and give it away or sell it. Perhaps you can trade furniture with friend, neighbor, or relative. The Salvation Army would love more donations.

Furniture placement
There are entire books written, and courses taught, on furniture space planning. This post only scratches the surface on the bare-bones basics. But if you keep function and comfort as your top goals, your rooms should serve you well. Here are a few common-sense tips:

Each room needs to have a visual focal point, which is the primary focus of the main furniture grouping. This can be a fireplace, a window with a view, a TV, or your favorite piece art, or it can be the furniture grouping itself. Plan to place the biggest things first, balancing the visual weight of sofas and larger case goods like bookshelves, armoires, and pianos around the room. (For example, placing a larger sofa opposite a window or a seating grouping opposite a piano avoids having the room feel like it is “tipping” towards one side or the other.) Consider placing larger pieces parallel or at right angles to the walls. You can “float” furnishings in the center of a room by arranging a conversation area of seats facing each other—say, a pair of club chairs opposite a sofa. You may be able to place this grouping on the diagonal to the four corners of the room- to help break up the medical waiting room effect of furnishings pushed against the perimeter walls.

Next, place smaller items like side tables within easy reach of seating to provide a resting place for a book or a drink. Try to use a smaller coffee table or a small grouping of tables in front of larger upholstered items such as sofas. It can be a table or an ottoman, as long as it gives you a flexible place to put whatever you want to keep at hand. An old solution is to place a tray on an ottoman to turn a footrest into a table. Try to avoid an enormous coffee table that looks like you used a crane to set it in place—it is impossible to move and it strains conversation because it forces a widely spaced seating arrangement. Try to stay within eight feet of length (inside dimension) of a grouping or you’ll need a bull horn to be heard.

Let there be light
Appropriate lighting on tables (or floor lamps) helps improve the task function of the arrangement for reading, dining, television, and conversation—more on the specifics of lighting in my next blog post. For now, place table and floor lamps next to or slightly behind your seating. Remember, each seat should be comfortable, have a place near by to set things down, and a good light. This is 98 percent of successful design.

Keep in mind the location of entry doors and how people traverse the room. You can control traffic by how you place the primary and secondary furniture groupings. Allow a 36-48-inch minimum width between walls and/or furniture groupings for easy walking, 30-36 inches between groupings for passage, and 15 inches between the sofa and cocktail table. Allow a 3-4-inch space around a smaller table, and plan 30 inches between the hearth and any furniture. For dining rooms, allow 48 inches from the edge of the table to the wall to allow passage behind seated guests.  Allow a 24-inch width for each seated guest and 6 inches from the guest to the corner of the table. A good table setting depth is 18-24 inches.

Never stretch an electrical cord across a passageway, even under rugs. It is a safety code violation for a reason. You may consider putting a floor jack beneath the sofa or a club chair to power your lighting needs. Some contemporary homes forgo table lamps for overhead recessed lighting, but I find a single source of light to be limiting. It is hard to read a book, and overhead lighting alone is not flattering—it gives everyone dark circles under their eyes, as the light hits the bridge of the forehead. Table lamps help create softer pools of light and shadow and help ameliorate the “Frankenstein” effect of ceiling fixtures. Additional details about the basic rules of lighting to follow.

If you need additional information on space planning read:

Mark Hampton On Decorating by Mark Hampton
Interior Design Illustrated by Francis D. K. Ching

All books on interior design will feature a chapter on space planning. The basic rules have not changed over the years. Many library resource books are helpful for home owners.