Tips to elevate your decoration

Tips to Elevate Your Decoration

I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I have learnt over the years to give decorating schemes an elevated feeling. These might be small details, but they make a big difference.

• I always think a fireplace is incomplete with a mirror or artwork hung above it - there needs to be something to draw your eye and elongate the room upwards.
• A low chair rail can make your walls feel higher, and subsequently make the room feel bigger. Similarly, a lower-than-average doorway can make the entrance into a taller room feel even more grand and distinct, you enter into something magnificent that you weren't quite expecting.
• Books are an incredibly important accessory within any room, and I always think they look lovely styled in piles around a room.
• In my mind, a perfect house requires three things: books, a dog and an open fire.
• There are bookshops, such as Heywood Hill in Mayfair, that offer a service of curating collections of books from scratch and filling newly designed libraries.
• A room's character is built up through the pieces it is accessorised with, so flat surfaces are essential within a room, as they provide opportunities for decorative objects.
• Tablescaping involves artfully arranging groupings of objects into pleasing displays that make geometrical sense across flat surfaces. You can mix anything; it could be a pebble you've found on a walk next to an antique porcelain vase.
• I find square blocks of perspex to be very useful when tablescaping and styling flat surfaces to raise certain objects up.

Sourcebook

• Heywood Hill Bookshop