You’ve chosen a sofa and carpet, settled on a coffee and side tables and figured out how to handle the windows. You’ve plied the mind-boggling array of lighting options and landed on an arrangement that works.
Once you’ve done all that, though, the job’s not done. Finish off the look by injecting your space with objects and art that reflect your passions and pleasures.
The best rooms offer a visual narrative about the people who live in them, through paintings, photos, books and cherished accessories. Accumulate pieces over time and enjoy the process of hunting them down.
To that end, Gilt Home asked Bunny Williams, the goddess of giving rooms soul, to give us a few guidelines for adding the all-important personal touches to a space. In her words:
Scale trumps quantity. One beautiful sculptural object has more impact than lots of tiny ones.
Like begets like. If you collect china and silver pieces, and bronzes and colored glass, group them together by type — pairing like with like — for greater impact.
Group pieces by color. Color is an excellent unifying theme. Items unrelated by material, subject, shape, or period will always look striking if you arrange them by their hue.
Highlight opposites. Explore mixing different shapes and finishes. I often try to arrange a group of unrelated pieces in interesting ways. A lovely piece of porcelain, for example, plays up the beauty of a primitive carved figure. The reverse is true, too. A burnished pewter plate propped up behind a Chinese porcelain figure can make an eye-pleasing display.
Collect what you love. Of course, I collect bunnies. I am inevitably drawn to them, especially those that have character rather than cutesiness. If you adore a particular animal and want to start a collection, look for forms that are sculptural, with interesting finishes, and that are different from one another.
Give order to groups. I always arrange like things with a careful sense of design. I typically take a few basic steps to make a collection read as singular thing of beauty. Always set large pieces in the back. If you’re working with pairs, balance them with a single large piece. Arrange, then rearrange — it’s the fun part of working with a collection.
Cultivate tablescapes. It’s so much fun to arrange beloved pieces in an interesting way. Creating little narratives is one of my favorite parts of decorating. Group objects that have a connection to one another but that also contrast in some way. For example, my “Twitter” bunny is shiny and sculptural and would look great sitting on a coffee table on top of a large book, paired with a tall glass hurricane and a leafy green plant.
Avoid clutter. A tabletop has to have at least enough empty space to hold a glass or cup. Resist covering every surface!
Corral collections. Freestanding bookcases make excellent open display cases as do glass-front cabinets — and they help prevent overload on surfaces (such as coffee tables) that do double duty around the house.
(Photo by Tim Clinch)
