Design Diagnosis Knowing Your Own Decorating Style Can Prevent Costly Mistakes

The instructions sound simple: Forget about budget and practicality. Just follow your fantasies. Leaf through a few decorating magazines and tear out nine pictures of rooms you adore.

You may have heard this advice about tearing out examples of interiors you like before. Shucks, chances are good that you have files full of dream interiors.

But now we’re going to ask you to go back to those magazines and clip out the pictures of rooms you don’t like. Then attach a note to your “yeses” and “nos.” Write a comment on each that describes what you like or dislike about them. Go with your gut. Don’t think too hard.

Just react.

You may have an overall feeling, such as the “yes” room feels “friendly” or it is “filled with light.” Or it may be more specific, disliking the room because of the wall color or the style of the sofa.

On the surface, this exercise from Diane Love’s new book, “Yes/No Design” (Rizzoli, $35), is designed to help you discover and define your personal taste. But it also reveals something far more telling.

Love’s exercises are like a Rorschach ink blot test for decorating. Not only do your choices reveal preferences in style, color and fabric, they also expose psychological needs that many of us may have suppressed.

“It is definitely psychological,” Love said in a telephone interview from her New York City apartment. “Our taste is drawn from all of our life experiences - where we grew up, where we went to school, what our grandparents’ house looked like, where we have traveled and where we were educated.”

But, unfortunately, not all of us have the courage to express those tastes. Maybe it’s a mother or a mate that tears down our self-confidence. Or perhaps we have always deferred to someone we consider an “expert.”

“I feel the best home for you to live in is a reflection of your taste,” she said. “It should be the most nurturing, comforting environment. Nobody can create that but you. You have to understand what your taste is so don’t get taken over by the latest trend or fashion.”

Many of us aren’t confident, she said, because our culture tells us we need an expert, such as a designer or a design magazine, to help us navigate this complicated world. We feel decorating on our own is frightening.

“Design is expensive and the stakes are costly,” Love said. “If a woman goes out and buys the wrong dress, she can hide it in the closet or give it away. You can’t do that with a sofa or a large piece of furniture.”

In writing her book, Love decided to teach others how to cultivate style by breaking down and analyzing what she does naturally.

Her definition of style began in her childhood when her mother, Ethel Stewart, exposed her to art and decoration. But even more important, she said her mother encouraged her to cultivate her own taste. When Love was about 10, her mother took her on trips to select wallpaper and fabric. She was encouraged to think when her mom asked her questions like: Which one do you like and why? Why don’t you like that?

Love’s ability to analyze her likes and dislikes was further cultivated when she became a painter. Painters, she said, have to understand which elements are working and which aren’t so they learn to analyze color, shapes and balance.

The book is an offshoot of the questionnaire she developed for customers of the namesake store on Madison Avenue she once owned.

People would come into the store and say they needed a flower arrangement for the dining room or the front hall, but when she asked them to describe the space, they were stymied.

“People would tell me that they wanted a flower arrangement that looked like you just went out and picked the flowers,” Love said. That just wasn’t enough information, so she devised a questionnaire to help customers be more precise.

Love, who closed her store about 12 years ago to paint, said she has been thinking about the book project for a long time.

“I didn’t want to write a book about my taste,” she said. “I wanted to make people understand their own taste.”

Knowing your own taste is important because it can protect you from getting sucked into decorating with the latest trends or fashion that promoters brainwash us into thinking we need.

“If the latest trend happens to be a reflection of your taste, that’s fine,” she said. “What if it isn’t? What if everyone is showing blue and white and you see in your `no’ choices that six of are blue and white. I don’t care how popular it is if it’s not for you.”

Her 144-page book guides you through seven exercises to help define your taste in everything from furniture selection to color palette and decorative objects. It also provides 11 methods to help you present what you like, from picking your focal point to working with mirrors.

“There are no right or wrong answers,” Love said. “It is all about your instinctive reaction. If something doesn’t move you, pass it by.

“You have nothing at stake with the photographs you select. This is not your mother’s home or your best friend’s home. You don’t have to analyze if it’s practical or if you can afford it. Just do it as impulsively as possible.”

Some final advice: Once you have finished decorating, don’t worry if your friend or neighbor doesn’t appreciate your effort.

“I think it’s a question of confidence,” Love said. “If you are confident, you don’t care what anyone else thinks. When people are defensive, they aren’t confident. As you do more of the exercises in the book, you will become more confident.

“It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. They don’t live there. Of course, not everyone else will like it. They don’t have the same life experiences. How could they? And it’s really not important.”

This sidebar appeared with the story:

Love’s tips for decorating in your own style

Sun-Sentinel, South Florida

One of Diane Love’s favorite sayings is: Nothing is really neutral. The artist and author isn’t talking about paint. She’s talking about emotional impact.

A room furnished with nothing but a table and a chair, she says, makes as much of a statement as a room that’s all dolled up with wallpaper and rugs.

Here are six of Love’s suggestions for decorating in your own style:

Don’t be in a hurry. When you move into a new home, don’t automatically assemble your furniture in the same way. Start with placing the basics - a table and a chair for eating and a bed for sleeping. Gradually assemble the rest of your furnishings as you live in the new environment. You will soon see what to add and what to delete.

Don’t be limited by labels. The standard labels of living room, dining room and bedroom can be misleading. Use the rooms for how you really live. For example, your “living room” could transform into a game room.

Make a good first impression. Your entry or foyer establishes what you want to say about your home. Decorate it distinctively. Don’t use it as a dumping ground for clothing, toys and equipment.

Be true to your taste throughout your home. Even though the rooms are separate, they should appear as if they link together. The colors don’t have to be alike, but they should appear to express the same attitude. This will happen if you are true to your taste.

Throw out the rules. Some people apply decorating formulas arbitrarily without getting a sense of the individual space. Use the rooms in a magazine as inspiration. Don’t try to duplicate them. Your rooms may be very different in size, shape and exposure from those in the magazine.

Take time to decorate the rooms guests never see. Many people focus their decorating efforts on the rooms guests see, such as the living room, and ignore the places where they spend a lot of time, such as the bedroom. The bedroom, laundry room or work room should also be comfortable because you spend a lot of time there.