Savvy Designers know two key ingredients to making any space beautiful:  Layering and Texture

I learned a valuable lesson when participating in a Design Competition a number of years ago.  Our concept was this:  you had 59 minutes to decorate an empty  Soho Loft.   Five Talented , Hungry Teams competed and Jamie Drake and Bunny Williams were among the selected panel of Celebrity Judges.  We were  provided with the same selection of furniture, lighting and accessories.  In the immortal words of Tim Gunn:  “Make it Work”.

We didn’t place First.  Why?  Our landscape didn’t Layer.

Layering.  It means be conscious of how and where you place the items in your room.  A truly successful ‘landscape’ will have purposefully arranged items from small to high as you transition through the space.  It’s so pleasing to the eye.

Height Matters.  Here is a Jamie Drake Design.  Plant your eye front and center on the ottoman.  Then visually ‘walk’ through the space.  Notice everything steps up half scale as you ‘enter’ the living room.

From ottoman, to round side table, to height of sette which is balanced by offsetting arm chairs to flowers, to sofa back, to matching end tables to lamps to the focal point:  artwork.  It’s not by chance.  It’s planned.

…oh, and legs don’t fight with one another – they match.  Attention to detail.

What speaks to Texture?  Check out   

This chic Boutique Hotel captivated my imagination because it blends urban-loft with the local Warwick, Rhode Island region all wrapped in an industrially nuanced nautical package.  Quite conceptually cool.

NYLO has fun with Texture … blending sleek with tufted and polished with corded.

The rooms are small. So every piece of furniture is purposefully sourced, crafted and positioned.  All must fulfill two prime edicts:  form and functionality.

My favorite piece in our room was the quirky side table.  I genuinely fell in love with this piece.   It screams Eero Saarinen.   It’s so simple yet texturally astute … happily  reinventing itself  with a slide of the hand.

Kick it up in height and it revamps to a bar:

• So how does this translate to your Home? 
• Learn to Layer and have Fun with Texture.
• Don’t position everything at the same height
• Be conscious of subtleties in scale
• Pair stainless with mohair; poured concrete with cork
• Most importantly, remember to always have a piece of your personality in your space. After all, it is your space. This can be reflected in Art or that Lalique vase or a quirky side table.

Layering and Texture – two key components to help you Make it Work.