Personal Touches Add Style

Sometimes they are ever so subtle. You’ve become so used to them that you wouldn’t miss them - unless they were gone. And then you’d miss them plenty.

They are much like a well-worn, comfortable pair of slippers. Always there when you want them. Keepers.

If you look through your living space with a sharp eye, you’ll begin to spot them, I’ll wager. Little snips and pieces of decoration that, by themselves, do not translate to great design. But throw them into the mix, and you find that they provide the finishing touches, the little bows to personal taste that put your own personal print on a home.

I’ve just given my living space a little investigation and have come up with four decorating elements that whisper “me, me, me” from the living room to the kitchen to the bedroom to the bath. Here they are. They’ve worked for me.

Books. I’ve got hundreds of them - gifts, from garage sales, discount bookstores, our little book shelf here at the paper (seems we eventually get every book that’s published).

There’s a large, built-in entertainment center/library in my living room. Instead of alternating the books with framed photos, plants, collectibles, as designers say you should, I’ve opted to do the shelves in wall-to-wall books.

The look is substantial, colorful and comfortable. It’s become a focal point for the room.

Tins. I’ve got all sorts, especially those from Europe, which tend to have a warm, welcoming Old World feel reflecting a time when most everything from the kitchen was made from scratch. I use them to hold teas, rice, sugar, flour, pasta, coffee, packaged gravy mixes and to add spots of accent color against my kitchen’s blue-tile counters.

The colors on the tins don’t coordinate, but because they are all tins they work as a single decroating unit. Good hunting grounds for unusual tins are garage sales and thrift shops.

Fabrics. I pick up pieces of fabric at thrift stores, from remnant bins at fabric shops, anywhere I find them. With the frayed edges simply turned back, they make perfect table runners.

In the bedroom, I have one folded across the top of a narrow desk. It serves as a colorful island for a bank of books. I also use one on the piano in the living room as an anchor for a grouping of collectibles.

I’ve used lengths of fabric as runners for my dining table.

Candles. It’s not so much how they look, but what they can do, how you use them. Just the other night, I had a friend over to watch TV. Sounds pedestrian enough.

I put a fire in the fireplace, popped some popcorn, put it on the coffee table, then pulled up four candles in a silver candelabra. That popcorn could have been caviar.