ASK MAD ABOUT THE HOUSE
Decorating dilemmas solved
Q How can I give a room wow factor?
A Expect the unexpected. Interior designers like to talk about a ‘considered’ scheme, which is basically just a posh way of saying that you have thought about how you are putting the room together and taken care of the details. But too much care over toning colours and matching elements can result in everything looking, well, a bit flat. There is such a thing as too much good taste – you can end up with something rather bland.
As Nancy Lancaster, the American heiress, who took over Colefax and Fowler and was regarded as having the finest taste of anyone in the world, said: ‘If every piece is perfect the room becomes a museum and lifeless.’
So, the key is to throw in something that teeters on the edge of what is regarded as bad taste, something unexpected that pulls the viewer up short and forces them to consider what they are looking at.
Try to add at least one thing in every room that upends the design a little. In my sitting room, I have a 6ft-tall floor lamp in the shape of a palm tree. The door to my son’s bedroom – visible from the front door – is covered in bookshelf wallpaper, which creates a trompe l’oeil effect.
But you don’t have to go to extremes. It may just be about adding a dash of colour that appears to clash but actually spices everything up. I call this the disrupter colour – a bright red chair in a blue and neutral room; a metallic gold lampshade in a space of soft, calming shades; or a dramatic black and white rug layered up with a vintage Persian one. Think of it as adding a squeeze of lemon to a dish. It tastes perfectly fine, but when you add it, the flavour takes off.
‘A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika,’ said Diana Vreeland, former editor of Vogue. ‘We all need a splash of bad taste – it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.’
You can achieve it with colour and also with style – a vintage chintz armchair in a space full of industrial-style furniture, a modernist vase in a room of antiques. It might even be as simple as painting the ceiling in a bold colour and leaving the walls pale so the drama only comes when you look up. Or perhaps you might add some wallpaper to the back of a glass-fronted cupboard.
Even a patterned sofa with plain cushions will make more of a statement than the traditional reverse. So, loosen the ties of good taste that bind you and set your decor free with something unexpected.