Creating serenity in the home

Transforming your home into a peaceful, serene place starts with observance. Choose one room at a time. Trying to change your entire home at once will overwhelm you and defeat the purpose of creating a peaceful environment.

Look at the room as a whole. What is it that you like about it, and what is emotionally jarring? Keep a notebook and write down your observations and feelings. Write a list of words that would best define what you would like this room to be: comfortable, spacious, warm, social, fun, relaxing, neat? Ask yourself, how would I like to feel when I walk into this room? How would I like others to feel? Is privacy important, or should the room be family-friendly?

Use words to describe the room. Is the room too cluttered? Is the color scheme pleasant? Are the furnishings comfortable? All of these things can be changed with a new color scheme, moving or eliminating furnishings and accessories, and adding new items.

A home needs refreshing every few years; it should change, grow and evolve along with its inhabitants. While doing an inventory of the room, decide which items you would like to get rid of. Many times we get so used to things in a room: the chair with the broken seat, the lamp that doesn’t work, the frayed carpet or a framed print that has been on the wall forever—we don’t even notice them anymore. Yet living with worn or broken items can create a sense of discomfort and stress that we are unaware of.

Thinking about changing a room may seem overwhelming and expensive. Keep it simple; start by thinking of three things you can do to change your room. For example: Get rid of or repair broken furnishings and accessories. Paint the room a new color. Start simply by buying a new accessory such as a framed print, a rug or throw pillows.

Get visual. It is difficult for even the most seasonal designer to visualize in their head how a room will look. Take a tip from interior designers: create a design board. Start by purchasing a 20-inch-by-30-inch foamcore board and a box of push pins. The idea is to be able to move things around and easily add or subtract samples and photos. Begin by taking photos of the furnishings and accessories in the room that you want to keep. Then go online and look for ideas that inspire you; print out color photos of rooms, furnishings and color schemes that you find visually pleasing. Choose the photos you like the most and attach them to the board, along with color swatches and paint chips.

Looking at the entire board will make it easier to decide which items you want to remove from the room and which items to keep or add to the room. This visual tool will also help you choose a color scheme. Aside from photos of rooms and furnishings, you can find your ideal color scheme by looking at photos of nature. You might be drawn to the colors of the desert, the beach or the mountains.

Try this: choose a photo of a landscape that makes you feel relaxed and serene. Take the photo to the paint store and pull out the colors that you see in the photo. When you get home, edit the colors to what you would like in your room. For example, if it is a beach scene you might choose sand-colored walls, a blue rug (beach pattern or plain), a light blue ceiling and furnishings of coral, green, driftwood—and accents of colors found in seashells.

Creating a design board is a great way to share ideas with other family members. Including other family members in your plans will also inspire others to help you with decorating tasks such as decluttering, moving furniture and painting.

One of the most important rules in creating a peaceful home is to surround yourself with things you love. I once had a client ask me to stop by and see her new apartment; she wanted some suggestions on furniture placement. When I entered her living room she turned to me and said “I hate this rug.”

I responded by saying “Why is it in your home?”

She went on to say that her aunt had recently died and her cousin wanted her to have the rug as a family heirloom. I suggested that she tell her cousin that she appreciated the gift but she had just moved into a new home and the rug didn’t work with the new space.

Following my advice, she asked her cousin if anyone else in the family would be interested in taking the rug. A few days later her cousin called and said that another relative would love to have it. Later that week we went shopping for a new rug. The next time I stopped by we went into the living room and this time, she beamed at me and said, “I love this rug and I love how the room looks.”