Those without a natural affinity for interior decorating or room design may face a situation where the big ticket items are fully in place, but the character of any given room is peculiarly absent. Like a performance by Chris O’Donnell or Mike Farrell. The words, gestures and facial expressions are plainly evident, yet any immediately recognizable depth remains hidden in a dark, endless void. If you don’t want your home or any room within it to be the interior decorating version of a bland actor, then you need to pump it up with some accessories to turn it into a Johnny Depp or Crispin Glover.
Lighting
Lighting is everything, really. Without light, everything is a dark and formless as a song by Journey. The illumination can transform your “Who’s Crying Now” into something substantially more filled with the character of a song off the “Sgt. Pepper” album. Lend drama to a room with overhead lighting where you can control the brightness with a dial knob. Instantly give a drab and boring room a sense of whimsy by investing in novelty lamps that do away with the potential to increase the deadening sense of boredom offered by standard overhead fixtures. The more outlandish, outrageous and over-the-top the lamps you can find, the better. If the lamp can’t double as a conversation piece, don’t even bother.
Photographs
A room that is just sitting there saying nothing about your personality or lifestyle or interests can be turned into a living episode of “Biography” in less than a few hours. Artful adornment of yours walls with photographs that tell the story of your life or give insight into your dreams and obsessions can make a room furnished the most impersonal of mass produced furniture shout out something very individualized about its owner. Photographs are also a very cheap way to give a room a sense of style and distinction that is purposely at odds with personalization. Track down some old magazines and flip through them to find photographs and advertisements that speak to you even if they say nothing about you. Formal decoration can be accomplished by framing individual images from a magazine or you could go the more avant-garde route by creating a mosaic effect of overlapping images that transform a blank wall into a highly populated mural.
Big and Weird
One of the easiest ways to enforce a sense of style and identity upon a room that is dedicated to resisting your attempts to make it say something is the introduction of something notable not only for being bigger than the rest of the décor, but quite obviously weirder. This is your chance to splurge on some object d’art that you like for reasons that are not immediately apparent. Have you ever been browsing in a store, especially one filled with offbeat items, and come across something that just seems to capture your attention for reasons you can’t express? Maybe it is a life-size statute of Buddha or maybe it’s a great big wall clock or an abstract painting or wagon wheel or an ornate iron gate or a creepy mannequin. Something that is big, that is completely at odds with anything else in the room and you love for reasons buried deeply within your subconscious is one of the most efficient and effective ways to give a boring room a sense of interior decorating personality.
