A young couple once asked Mario Villa for some advice about how to start furnishing their first home. They were concerned that they didn`t have enough money to reflect the style they`d like.
Villa`s advice: Fake it.
”My approach is not to get rid of everything and start from scratch,”
Villa says. ”It`s a big mistake to impose your taste and style on someone.” Instead, it`s a matter of integrating, trading up and sometimes creating illusions.
Here are 10 ways Villa does it:
– Buy one fabulous piece and figure out a way to disguise the less-than-ideal furnishings around it. For example, Villa recommended to that young couple draping an inexpensive round table with white canvas to team with two of his bronze chairs. While a ”horrible hand-me-down sofa” may have detracted from an elegant French chair, he suggested that they cover it with fancy red damask.
– Give each room an identity. ”Every room of the house should reflect something different, have its own personality. Then when you go from one room to another, you`ll feel like you`re in a different place.”
– Don`t be afraid to break rules. ”People get confused when they see all those books on style-English Country style, French style, farm style. You don`t have to get trapped in any one style.”
– Don`t be limited by traditional room uses. ”If you`ve always wanted a library and you don`t have the space, make a library-dining room. The mood will be booksy yet functional, and it will fulfill a dream.”
– Give your rooms a mood. ”Mood really can be controlled with lighting-lots of candles and low-voltage lighting.”
– Don`t be intimidated by color. ”And please! Don`t think everything has to match-a room will end up like a hotel lobby. If you want to use color but don`t know where to start, look at paintings you really admire. Good paintings always have a good sense of color. From there you can get a wonderful palette.”
– Learn about scale. ”Scale is very important, and most people screw it up. It`s tricky. One way to start is to look at an empty room and try to bring in all the elements, a sofa, a chair, a table. Make a mental note of the weight of all the furnishings, balancing as you do. Study sculpture, for a sense of proportion. Look at well-designed public spaces. Look at books about the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, and you`ll see that everything was done in the context of a square or circle, geometry. It`s all a matter of developing your eye.”
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– Buy quality. ”Don`t get stuck with something that will end up at the Salvation Army.”
– Less is more. ”Two good chairs are better than six lousy ones.”