Resuscitate Your Drabby Room: Is Your Room Flatlining?

When you walk into a room, it tells a story.

It tells a story through the furnishing you had chosen, the color palette you had spent days to pick, and the accessories and personal items that you placed in it. Most people probably don't realize it, but the placement of your objects can make or break your room. Your furniture placement can decide how the conversations are being conducted at your dinner parties, the traffic pattern in your daily lives and the energy flow of your home. Brilliant accessory placements can determine conversational interests, kind reminders of your love & passion the first thing you wake up and what's welcoming you to a comfort zone when you kick off your boring work shoes from a day of office drama.

Now you have placed everything just perfect, but is your room flatlining? Flatlining your room will make your room looks... flat. Literally. There are no "peaks & valley" to keeps visual interests for the room.

For example, this is the room from tonight's Top Design, which the guest judge commented on as boring because it's flat. Symmtry is great, but it can get boring at times and also too safe and too formula-ish. The most visually interesting object is the orange ball paintings above the couch. Why? Because the orange balls jump up and down, unlike rest of the furniture that forms 1 flat line because of its similiar heights. To make it more visually interesting, I personally would use accessories of different heights such as a standing lamp or a standing tree to draw attention to the height of the room. The room below is still very simple, but because of the different heights, "peaks & valleys," it makes it more visually interesting.

 (Similarily in staging, you want to make sure there is a strong visual interest in the room -- usually the focal point of the room, such as fireplace, the view, etc. and the other smaller visual interests are the supporting actors/actresses in the show that help to highlight your feature. But stick with just ONE, you don't want to confuse buyers' eyes and make them feel the room is too messy.)

What makes Matt's room stand out from others is his unusual furniture placement which is visually interesting. It's not a formulaic way of couch here, accent chair here and here and bam it's done. It's time to think more outside of the box!