Southfork is calling...

..and it wants it's furniture back. Somewhere along the line - perhaps in the 80's but also continuing right up until a few years back, Texans decided that yes, everything really should be bigger here. They marched into the furniture stores and snapped up every hulking leather couch available. Then they also bought the matching love seat, and if space allowed, the club chair too. Not to be deterred by the safety issues of sharp metal edges, they also decided to add in the massive wrought iron tables and oh, what the heck! Let's include that dark wood set of end tables and look honey! There's a matching dining set!

Now let me take a moment and say, if this is your look and your home allows the spaces necessary to make it work then more power to you. Dark leather and wrought iron can be classic in the right setting. If, however, you walk into your home every day and wish there was something light and bright to lead the way then let me help you lighten your load, er, home.

I was in the local consignment store the other day (a wonderful place to find accessories and art) and came across this which I titled "Couch Graveyard". The problem with all of that heavy furniture is that when the time comes for a change, homeowners don't want to necessarily get all new furnishings, nor is it affordable to do so. At best, they take those couches to consignment stores and at worst, you have to give them away (have you checked Craigslist recently?).

There is a middle ground here and it does require some items to leave but it doesn't mean starting from scratch and purchasing all new furnishings. The dark heavy furniture trend seemed to be accompanied by dark colours on walls, wrought iron stair balusters, lots of fringe and tassels and really large accessories. It would be easy to jump right to the conclusion that painting the walls white will just lighten everything up and many people go down to the store, peruse the whites, pick one out that seems bright and paint the entire house white. Then they wonder why the rooms seem to look a bit purplish or greenish. They start trying to find a throw rug to match the paint but when they add that rug with purple in it the couches start to look cheap. It goes on until they are surrounded by things they didn't want and here we are, right back to where we started.

This is why interior decorators and designers exist. There are a million shades of white in the world, along with thousands of rugs and let's not even get started on lamps. We, as designers, happen to actually be trained in the use of colour and we have taken lots of classes in things like furniture placement, lighting and so on. We are here to help you avoid costly mistakes and to make the best of the items you have but also to help you when the time comes to make changes.

Let's work together to avoid adding more couches to the graveyard. We can do this!