home design ideas

Find a great antique mirror for your powder room. The slight mottling of vintage glass seems to make those tiny lines and wrinkles miraculously disappear. And when people know they look great, they have more fun.

Art doesnt have to be a huge investment. Cut out 20 pages from a favorite book. Buy 20 inexpensive frames and place them side by side in rows on a wall. Repetition is powerful.

Wallpaper your front entry with a bold paper. It creates a strong first impression and makes it seem like you have done a total makeover.

Paint your living room doors Chinese red with a high gloss finish, and slipcover the sofa in red and white mattress ticking. The result will be young and vibrant.

Create your own kitchen island. Buy one of those stainless steel wire mesh trolleys by Metro shelving and get a big slab of stone, or butcher block to put on top.

Slipcover a sculptural chair in gauze. Youll see the form in shadow. Very intriguing.

Use fewer pieces of art, but bigger in scale. These could even be oversize posters.

Send that dowdy wooden table you inherited from Aunt Sadie to Maaco and ask them to do a high gloss spray automobile finish in a great color, say BMW Racing Green 1994.

Make tableskirts for your end tables in some offbeat color, with a contrasting flange at the bottom. If your tables are round, put a square piece of plywood on top before you start. Square just feels more contemporary.

Paint all the terra cotta pots on your balcony or terrace with a polyurethane stain in high gloss black or brown. Theyll look like Chinese porcelain by the time youre finished.