Why Your Home Should Be Beautiful

I’ve christened my interior design blog, “Interior Beauty,” because I believe that every home should be beautiful.  I think it’s safe to say that most people want their home to be beautiful.

Charlotte Moss

Home really is where the heart is.  Home is where we relax after a hard day at work, where we laugh and kid around, where we gather and connect with our family and friends, where we celebrate and commiserate, where we hang out in our comfy clothes, where we are free to just be ourselves.  To quote Dorothy, there’s no place like home.  Your home should be beautiful because it’s your haven from the world.  Your home should be your sanctuary.

Susan Zises Green

“Beauty is not skin deep” applies to homes too.  (I promise, no more clichés!)  I define a beautiful home as one that pleases the souls of the people who live there.  It’s a feeling of comfort, of feeling in tune with your surroundings.  Psychology says that your surroundings reflect your inner mind, and conversely, your surroundings affect you too.

It’s like the facial feedback theory, aka “smile to feel happy” phenomenon.  When you smile, you signal your brain to make physiological changes that actually make you feel happier.  And if you frown, you’ll make yourself feel grumpy too.  To read more on how facial expressions affect mood, click here: http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/emiliya-zhivotovskaya/200809271036

This photo of a smiling dog made me smile!

How can you not smile back?

Just looking at smiling faces won’t make you feel happier, you have to actually smile yourself.  Try copying the expressions in the  Smiling Face Film by Yoko Ono and see how you feel.

It’s the same with our surroundings.  Being in a room that you’re in tune with makes you feel comfortable and happy.

If you don’t quite believe that your surroundings affect you, pay attention to how you feel the next time you enter a home you admire.  Even entering a home décor store can delight your senses.  In fact, looking at photos of beautiful homes can elicit the same feeling of admiring delight. Can you picture yourself relaxing in this family room?

Lynn Morgan

Now picture yourself in this room, would you feel relaxed?

it's clear this family room isn't for family, it's for the TV

A disclaimer: I don’t know anyone whose house looks like this  But hopefully it illustrates my point that your surroundings do affect how you feel.  If it’s too painful to imagine yourself living in this room, then imagine yourself in one of your own rooms.  Our homes are always a work in progress, so you probably have something in your home that is irksome.  Perhaps you can’t quite get comfortable to read because the lamp doesn’t throw enough light, or your dining chair keeps getting caught on the undersized rug beneath it, or you have to turn sideways to wend your way to your side of the bed.  Comfort is a big part of being beautiful, at least for a home!

Not so much for shoes though, as Suri Cruise has discovered at a tender age…

Don't you wish you had someone to carry you when your high heels hurt?

And walking in these 12” high booties that resemble animal hooves  just cannot be comfortable.  I hope models have insurance to cover hazardous shoe duty.

high heel shoes, er, hooves. Inspired by evolution, designed by Alexander McQueen

Which just goes to show that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder (sorry, couldn’t resist!)  Although I can’t imagine anyone calling those shoes beautiful.

Fortunately, fashion for the home is usually much more practical (although in a later post I’ll show some designs that aren’t) so we don’t have to sacrifice comfort for beauty in the home.  In my definition, interior beauty must be comfortable because we don’t just look at our homes, we live in them.

Remember, your inner mind is reflected in your home.  And your surroundings affect you and your family.  Now that’s a good reason to beautify your home, don’t you think?

Photos of beautiful interiors from House Beautiful

Is a Beautiful Home only for the Wealthy?

Leafing through House Beautiful, Veranda, Traditional Home, Elle Decor, and other shelter magazines is a feast for the eyes.   Room after room more beautiful than the last, stunning architecture, fabulous finishes, and all furnished with gorgeous furniture, rugs, and original art.  The April 2010 issue of House Beautiful features a home steeped in romance and history, the kind of place you want to escape to when in your head you’re pleading, “Stop the world, I want to get off!”  Maybe it is an illusion that life was simpler back then.  It’s an appealing fantasy though, but I couldn’t live without my Apples – and I don’t mean the fruit.  But I wouldn’t mind fooling my brain into thinking I was living a simpler life, would you?

Eleanor Cummings

This is actually a new home in Texas magically transformed into a Tuscan farmhouse by designer Eleanor Cummings who used reclaimed wood, stone, and brick from Houston antiquities dealer Chateau Domingue.  This home is seriously mellow.  If this were my home, I’d feel like I’d gone to heaven.  I was born under the astrological sign of Taurus which is an earth sign, so I consider it my birthright to love earthy, rustic interiors!

Can’t you just imagine lounging in this bath without a care in the world?  The way photographer Eric Piasecki used the light really captures the ambiance of this home.  Just looking at these photos relaxes me and makes me go, “ahhhh.”  A virtual rustic spa experience!

Photgrapher Eric Piasecki captures the light

This living room seems made for after dinner conversation.  Normally I am drawn toward bright, sunny rooms–after all, I moved to Florida for a reason–but this room has such a relaxed mood, I just want to sit by the fire and maybe even close my eyes and daydream.

Tuscan Farmhouse Living Room

As much as I love Tuscan farmhouses, to truly indulge my design aesthetics, I’d need a handful of houses to call home.  Maybe even two handsful.  My sun sign may be Taurus, but my moon and rising sign are both Leo, the fire sign of glamour.  So this entryway by Tobi Fairley just makes me go “ooooh!”

Tobi Fairley

Such a deceptively simple vignette:  large scale (Nina Campbell) patterned wallpaper, (Swank) Venetian glass lamps on a (Darnell) demilune commode by Amy Howard and the perfect mirror to add sophisticated sparkle.  What a beautiful composition, all the objects are in perfect scale and balance and the juxtaposition of varying shapes is a visual feast for the eyes.  And as in the living room below, I love how the warm and the cool blues play off each other.  Imagine this room with only the warm blues, it would not have as much energy.  And there’s just enough of the cool blue.

To me this living room says, invite some friends over for cocktails!

Tobi Fairley

Tobi’s living room was featured on the March 2010 cover of House Beautiful.

Tobi Fairley's Living Room on the cover

I got so enamoured with both these gorgeous interiors that I almost forgot the subject of this post!  Just shows how leafing through shelter magazines can be mesmerizing.

What I want to say is that you can have a home furnished with gorgeous custom furniture and draperies, exquisite antiques, Oriental rugs and custom finishes–and even after spending all that money, it still might not be beautiful.  Why?  Because a beautiful home is much more than the sum total of beautiful objects.

Yes, a Venetian plaster wall is more beautiful than paint.  And it’s true that just about anything high end is more beautiful than its lower priced cousins.  But there are a lot of lower cost alternatives that come close enough for those of us not blessed with a lush bank account.   Good thing, or I’d be so sad.

Of course, 99% of the rooms in the shelter magazines are beautiful.  Not everybody will like every room but to expect otherwise would be crazy.

Not everyone loves chocolate!

That would be like Baskin-Robbins saying, “We’ve decided only chocolate is delicious, so we’re eliminating the 30 other flavors.”

Architecture this unlovely can only be fixed by a wrecking ball. Bad feng shui too!

Charlotte Moss, Manhattan

It is always a good idea to at least consult with an interior designer (like me) and especially before buying big ticket items or having your house painted.  Better to invest a little in professional guidance than waste a lot of your time and money having your living room painted three times because you got the color wrong, or wasting your furniture budget on a sofa that doesn’t leave enough room for an end table, don’t you think?  Or even worse, spending your entire budget and ending up disappointed.

Charlotte Moss in Manhattan

The Inaugural Blog

Writing a blog/website is not unlike having a baby.  You start out with the fun part, conceiving the idea.

An idea being conceived?

Then it’s down to work, creating the bones of the blog, fleshing it out with words and photos, until finally it’s ready to be born.  And the process is not without its tears and gnashing of teeth!

Birthing is hard work!

After the birth, the pains of labor are forgotten as your idea comes alive!

Labor pains forgotten!

In fact, writing a blog/website is a lot like designing and decorating a room.  The very first thing you need to do to make a plan.  To paraphrase a quote I read recently, failing to plan results in a plan for failure.  That being said, the blog is not perfect but who said it has to be perfect?   I will learn as I go along.  Babies, of course, are perfect, but then, that’s God for ya!

You can subscribe to my blogposts by clicking this button which is the RSS feed at the bottom right of every page.  This will automatically send my blogposts to your mail box or wherever you want them to go.   I spell this out because when I first got into reading blogs, I had no idea how to subscribe!  Clicking this button will allow you to choose whether you want to receive blogpost updates by mail, through Google Reader, etc.

You can also visit my Facebook page and Twitter feeds by clicking the ‘F’ and ‘T’ buttons respectively.

Ask me your decorating questions!

No, this is not a button to click!  But if you have a decorating question you want to ask me, subscribe to my email newsletter of decorating tips.  Just enter your email address into the gold “Sign up for my Email Newsletter” box sprinkled through the website. Every month I’ll answer a decorating question.  If you want to ask a question but don’t want your name in the newsletter, just let me know and your name shall be withheld.  Email your question(s) to anne@annelubnerdesigns.com and if you remember, put “decorating tip question” in the subject line.

Now remember I warned you my blog isn’t perfect?  Well, my special report “The Top 3 Decorating Mistakes and How to Correct Them,” which you will receive when subscribing to my email newsletter is not quite ready.  Seems I need to figure out a few technical kinks.  But even if you subscribe now, I will send you the report once I get it up and running.

Welcome to my newborn blog/website, I hope that you will come back often to visit!

Anne