| Interior designer Bunny
Williams has been involved in a passionate love affair with an 18th-century
New England manor house that she found in sad repair. Bunny and her antiques
dealer husband renovated and decorated the well-worn house, giving it new
life as they restored each room, resurrected the abandoned gardens, and
filled this weekend home with family and friends.
While many people want large living
spaces, few realize the large space decorating challenges such as high
ceilings, long hallways, and double-height rooms until they're face-to-face
with them. That large home may be an open Soho loft, a spacious suburban
mansion, or an echoing country estate -- but all these large residences
present decorating challenges often unanticipated by the homeowner.
Decorating a large space requires
more furniture than most people are used to having," Gould said. "For example,
few would think of putting two sofas in a living room, but a really big
room can take them and often needs them." Other decorating ploys include
using several area rugs in different sizes to create various sections for
different activities in a large space.
She advises looking at all that large
wall space as an opportunity to display art. It could be a single oversize
canvas or a group of smaller art objects placed together. "You can even
display your collection of antique iron tractor seats, or whatever."
To get decorating ideas for large
spaces, Gould suggests hanging out in hotel lobbies and visiting historic
mansions open to the public. Even if these large spaces are too formal
and you wouldn't want to copy them exactly, you can learn from their decorating
approaches.
If you want to bring a large room
with tall ceilings down a bit, make the ceiling look lower by putting up
a molding down a few feet from the top of the wall and painting the ceiling
a different color from the walls.
Discover the big home solution
* Bring comfort and intimacy to
any large room, from baths and hallways to kitchens and living rooms
* Conquer large spaces with professional
lighting ideas
* Map out rooms that flow perfectly
from one to another
* Make tall ceilings feel more in
scale
* Employ architectural solutions
to cozy up out-of-scale rooms
* Craft a furniture floor plan that
accommodates both small and large gatherings
* Arrange art to fill large expanses
of wall space
* Create a landscape that will make
a large house appear at home on a small lot
* Get designers' recommendations
on the best products and craftsmen
Big Home, Big Challenge: Decorating Large Spaces
by Kira Gould
Paperback: 192 pages |
