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Review: Take A Pause For The Cause!

Lesson 6 from: Refind: The 1 Day Home Interior Design Makeover Course

Jonathan Rosen

Review: Take A Pause For The Cause!

Lesson 6 from: Refind: The 1 Day Home Interior Design Makeover Course

Jonathan Rosen

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Lesson Info

6. Review: Take A Pause For The Cause!

<b>This is a literal halftime moment. Evaluate what you&#8217;ve put into place. How does it feel?</b>

Lesson Info

Review: Take A Pause For The Cause!

Just as we did at the beginning of the process, let's return to the entrance or threshold of the room and take in the big picture. The physical act of stepping back, shifts you into a neutral gear. You're not acting, you're observing, we're putting our lab coats back on and clinically assessing the current condition of the room. Here are a few questions to ask yourself. How does the room feel? Does it have good flow? One way to determine this is to walk through the room and assess the traffic patterns if you have easy access to all of the furniture and can walk through the room without causing yourself bodily harm? Chances are your flow is pretty good. What does the room look like? Is it balanced? Does one side of the room feel heavier than the other? What can be done to create better balance and a more even distribution of weight? If the room feels lopsided? Ask yourself why my go to is Symmetry. Symmetry creates balance. Floating one lone chair is an advanced maneuver but having a pa...

ir of identical chairs facing each other on either side of a sofa or sitting side by side automatically promotes balance. There's magic in pairs, use them to create balance. Are there noticeable gaps in the arrangement? If so what pieces could be used to fill in the space? The first order of business is to identify what's missing. The solution is to search for that piece elsewhere in your house. Sometimes I need an odd chair or an extra mirror and I shop the client's home to find what's missing. Very often you have the thing you most need right down the hall or in the room next door. Is there too much of something? If so what can be eliminated? Editing is a critical part of the decorating process. It's just as important to remove what isn't necessary as it is to add. What is, I love a full room, but that's very different from an overcrowded room. The eye needs to wander and too much visual information creates confusion. You're the arbiter of how much feels like enough or too much. If your sensibility is more maximal than minimal, that's a bigger balancing act, but it's attainable. Does the room feel inviting and conducive to hanging out? Is the arrangement pleasing to the eye. I like to create beautiful tableau from wherever you're sitting. I refer to them as pretty pictures in order to get into this mindset. Imagine that you're photographing small areas of the room, little mental snapshots of isolated areas. You could literally use your phone to do this. Ask yourself do these images create a moment or are they not quite ready for their close up, sit in different areas of the room and look directly in front of you. Is there a beautiful piece of art on the wall? Is there a pleasing vignette or arrangement enhancing and refining these vistas will add so much depth and interest to the finished product is the mood you're trying to convey. Coming across. First and foremost, it's essential to identify what your intent is. Do you want restrained and elegant? Do you want exciting and energetic? Do you want minimal and modern? Do you want maximal fullness? There are so many different moods that a room can convey, but it's really up to you to decide what mood you're after. Survey the room to see if the tone you're seeking is in alignment with what you want. If you want your room to feel restrained and elegant, more often than not, that's a function of editing. Chanel said elegance is refusal. In other words, less is more so, examine your room to determine whether something can be removed, sometimes just removing one thing can achieve the restraint you're after. If however, you're going for exciting and energetic that typically speaks to the palate and play of pattern. What is your color scheme? Do you have colorful artwork that supports your scheme? A few bold gestures can go a long way in creating drama, but don't forget about balance. If you create too strong a moment on one side of the room, it may pull focus. So be careful to spread the color and pattern around the room evenly. A minimal and mono room can often be the most challenging of all. Because by definition, there's very little in the room and very often what's there is in a more monochromatic scheme in a minimal room. It's really all about the surfaces, textures and finishes. So attention needs to be paid to quality to achieve the best result. It's important to pay extra attention to the big surfaces. Ie your infrastructure, almost anything will look beautiful in a beautiful box, but a lot of modern furniture in an underprepared room will only point out its flaws if maximal is what you're after the most important thing to establish are your foundational pieces. Once you have a great furniture plan in place, you can start to add layers, salon style, artwork, collections of accessories, extra textiles on the furniture and walls, et cetera. This is a precarious balancing act. So be vigilant about not creating chaos while trying to create excitement, keep stepping back and looking too much wrong spot. Not necessary. You're the chef, it's up to you to select the ingredients that will create the most satisfying result. Experiment with adding and subtracting. This is not an exact science. You'll need to keep playing, adjusting, fiddling and fine tuning in order to discover what is and isn't working and how you can improve that.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

oLo_refindWorkbook1.10.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Isabel Wilson
 

Love this course! Jonathan makes it sound simple, which makes me want to get going with a living room makeover! Thank you!

Student Work

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