Designers: Common errors materialize again and again

Designers see a litany of mistakes from the hapless do-it-yourself contingency. Here are some of the most common:

1. Your pictures are too high.

“You go to art galleries and things are at eye level, and then you go in people’s homes and you’re like, what are you doing there? I can’t see it! I’m not 7 feet tall,” says Lee Anne Henry with Fayetteville’s White Line Designs.

“The top third should be right around eye height. A lot of people put the center of whatever they’re hanging at eye height, and it should really be a little bit lower,” Meridith Hamilton Ranouil with MLH Designs in Little Rock says.

2. And they’re probably too small.

“People will put small pictures on a big wall,” Julie Fryauf with Julie Wait Designs in Rogers says. “If you do have smaller pictures, you want to group them tightly together to make a bigger impact.”

3. You have too much stuff.

“People think they need to fill every inch of space. I walk into a home, and it’s just filled with stuff, and a lot of it is not meaningful. I always say, out of these 20 things, does anything mean anything to you? Usually a client only grabs one thing,” Henry says.

4. Trend lightly.

“I see a lot of rooms that people have loved and are wanting to update because they feel dated, even if they are relatively new. A lot of that is because they’re trying so hard to make one specific trend prevalent. So if it’s a certain print that’s in fashion, maybe get one pillow instead of two chairs,” Joshua Plumlee with Little Rock’s Cobblestone & Vine says.