Has this happened to you?

A decorator walks in to your living room, hands and arms flailing, and says, "Oh, my, this really HAS to go. I've got the perfect piece for here. Trust me. You'll LOVE it!"

If your decorator says you need to get rid of what you already own, we think you need to get rid of your decorator!

We know from our experience that most people today have good taste. For the most part, your house is filled with lots of well designed items. The reason you're unhappy with a room or rooms, is not because you have bad taste, or because you own the wrong things. It's because you don't have the skill to make them work.

It's ok not to have the skill, most people don't. And almost nobody is born with it. Skill is what a good designer develops over the years. It's the skill to see the value in what you already own and to know where it should go with respect to the architectural features of your home.

But skill alone is not enough. You must have a design plan. And that plan can only be based on cataloging what you already own, seeing the architectural features of your house, and knowing your likes, dislikes, and reactions to color, contast, texture, scale and feel.