Interior Decoration Quotes

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

She could have been an interior decorator, a good one, too, if it wasn’t for the pressing demands of so on and so forth.

Some friends of theirs had rented their house for several months to an interior decorator. When they returned, they discovered that their entire library had been reorganized by color and size. Shortly thereafter, the decorator met with a fatal automobile accident. I confess that when this story was told, everyone around the dinner table concurred that justice had been served.

Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service

Interior decorating is a rock-hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.

There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple careers: I've been a teacher. A chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I’ve been a painter. A personal shopper. An accountant and a banker. I’ve been a beautician. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. A movie reviewer. A nurse. A psychologist. A negotiator. An I have a Ph. D in How to Pretend Like You Don’t Mind.

I wondered how television worked. I thought about how an interior decorator decided on colors and styles. I wondered, when babies tarted learning how to walk, if they didn't know that that couldn't walk.

Reading for me, was like breathing. It was probably akin to masturbation for my brain. Getting off on the fantasy within the pages of a good novel felt necessary to my survival. If I wasn't asleep, knitting, or working, I was reading. This was for several reasons, all of them focused around the infititely superior and enviable lives of fictional heroines to real-life people. Take romans for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. They orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses. These clean, well-satisfied, perm-minty-breathed women have fulfilling careers as florists, bakery owners, hair stylists or some other kind of adorable small business where they decorate all day. If they do have a boss, he's a cool guy (or gal) who's invested in the woman's love life. Or, he's a super hot billionaire trying to get in her pants. My boss cares about two things: Am I on time ? Are all my patients alive and well at the end of my shift? And the mend in the romance novels are too good to be true; but I love it, and I love them. Enter stage right the independently wealthy venture capitalist suffering from the ennui of perfection until a plucky interior decorator enters stage left and shakes up his life and his heart with perky catch phrases and a cute nose that wrinkles when she sneezes. I suck at decorating. The walls of my apartment are bare. I am allergic to most store-bought flowers. If I owned a bakery, I'd be broke and weigh seven hundred pounds, because I love cake.

Look. Folks. It's simple. If you have poor taste in decorating, don't go nuts in the entryway. Wait until your guests are inside before you spring something unusual on them.

Your Home should tell the story of who you are, and be a Collection of what you Love.

Interior decoration is not just one's artistic efforts, but it is that which your home (even if it is just a room) is. If you are 'decorating' with clothes draped on every chair, with scratched and broken furniture- it is still your interior decoration! Your home expresses you to other people, and they cannot see or feel your daydreams of what you expect to make in that misty future, when all the circumstances are what you think they must be before you will find it worthwhile to start. You have started, whether you recognize that fact or not! We foolish mortals sometimes live through years not realizing how short life is, and that TODAY is your life.

Reluctantly, he knew that he despised his fellow residents for the way in which they fit so willingly into their appointed slots in the apartment buildings, for their overdeveloped sense of responsibility and lack of flamboyance. Above all, he looked down on them for their good taste. The building was a monument to good taste, to the well-designed kitchen, to sophisticated utencils and fabrics, to elegant and never ostentatious furnishings. In short, to that whole aesthetic sensibility which these well-educated, professional people had inherited from all the schools of industrial design, all the award-winning schemes of interior decoration institutionalized by the last quarter of the century. Royal detested this orthodoxy of the intelligent. Visiting his neighbors’ apartments, he would find himself physically repelled by the contours of an award-winning coffee pot, but the well-modulated color schemes, by the good taste and intelligence that, Midas-like, had transformed everything in these apartments into an ideal marriage of function and design. In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture, and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape.

People made no sense to her. Men, with whom she had everything in common, did not want her around. Women, with whom she had nothing in common, smiled too much, laughed too loud, and mostly reminded her of small dogs, their lives lost in interior decorating and other people's outfits. There had never been a place for a person like her.

Apart from the peace and emptiness of the landscape, there is a special smell about winter in Provence which is accentuated by the wind and the clean, dry air. Walking in the hills, I was often able to smell a house before I could see it, because of the scent of woodsmoke coming from an invisible chimney. It is one of the most primitive smells in life, and consequently extinct in most cities, where fire regulations and interior decorators have combined to turn fireplaces into blocked-up holes or self-consciously lit "architectural features." The fireplace in Provence is still used - to cook on, to sit around, to warm the toes, and to please the eye - and fires are laid in the early morning and fed throughout the day with scrub oak from the Luberon or beech from the foothills of Mont Ventoux. Coming home with the dogs as dusk fell, I always stopped to look from the top of the valley at the long zigzag of smoke ribbons drifting up from the farms that are scattered along the Bonnieux road. It was a sight that made me think of warm kitchens and well-seasoned stews, and it never failed to make me ravenous.

I thought maybe Against Nature would be a book about someone who viewed things the way I did—someone trying to live a life unmarred by laziness, cowardice, and conformity. I was wrong; it was more a book about interior decoration. In his free moments from plumbing the subrational depths of upholstery, the main character devoted himself to the preparation of all-black meals, to hanging out with a jewel-encrusted tortoise, and thinking thoughts like, “All is syphilis.” How was that an aesthetic life?

Think of renovating a house like operating the federal government. You start with a budget and the revenue to finance it. Then the special interests keep adding items to the list; you have to end the war between the interior decorator and the electrician, so you pump in more money to buy peace; and by the time you’re done, you’re $16 trillion in debt and having to borrow money from the Chinese.

Her name can’t really be Myrtle Combat, can it?” “Of course not,” Erica replied. “Her real name is Prudence Buttercup, but that made her sound more like an interior decorator than an assassin. So she changed it. Lots of female assassins have pseudonyms: Dinah Mite, Barb Dwyer, Kay Ottic.

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple and even simultaneous careers: I've been a chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I've been a painter. A furniture restorer. A personal shopper. A veterinarian's assistant and sometimes the veterinarian. I've been an accountant, a banker and on occasion, a broker. I've been a beautician. A map. A psychic. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The T.V. Guide. A movie reviewer. An angel. God. A nurse and a nursemaid. A psychiatrist and psychologist. Evangelist. For a long time I have felt like I inadvertently got my master's in How To Take Care of Everybody Except Yourself and then a Ph.D. in How to Pretend Like You Don't Mind. But I do mind.

Here again the Japanese method of interior decoration differs from that of the Occident, where we see objects arrayed symmetrically on mantelpieces and elsewhere. In Western houses we are often confronted with what appears to us useless reiteration. We find it trying to talk to a man while his full-length portrait stares at us from behind his back. We wonder which is real, he of the picture or he who talks, and feel a curious conviction that one of them must be fraud.

I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.

The typical American female is sure that she has genius as a couturière, as an interior decorator, as a gourmet cook, and, always, as a courtesan. Usually she is wrong on four counts. But don’t try to tell her so.” He had added, “Unless you can catch one not over twelve and segregate her, especially from her mother—and even that may be too late.

The ideals of Teaism have since the sixteenth century influenced our architecture to such degree that the ordinary Japanese interior of the present day, on account of the extreme simplicity and chasteness of its scheme of decoration, appears to foreigners almost barren.

Of all the books I own, this is the only one I've read twice. It's also the only one I've read once. All my other books are used as decoration, like props to impress visitors.

Books aren't for decoration, they are to improve the design of one's interior.

People get rid of plenty when they move--sometimes they're changing not just places but personalities.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

be sure you don’t stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration

INTERIOR Her mind lives in a quiet room, A narrow room, and tall, With pretty lamps to quench the gloom And mottoes on the wall. There all the things are waxen neat And set in decorous lines; And there are posies, round and sweet, And little, straightened vines. Her mind lives tidily, apart From cold and noise and pain, And bolts the door against her heart, Out wailing in the rain.

Sadly kitchens often fall into the decorative trap of defaulting to basics: plain white units, tiled splash-back behind the sink or hob and possibly a large jolly-coloured standalone fridge-freezer as the one note of individuality.

Shirley doesn’t play fair, you see. What she wants is what a woman should want, always has and always will—big diamond engagement ring, house in a good neighborhood, furniture, children, well-made clothes, furs—but she’ll never say so. Because in our time those things are supposed to be stuffy and dull. She knows that. She reads novels. So, half believing what she says, she’ll tell you the hell with that domestic dullness, never for her. She’s going to paint, that’s what—or be a social worker, or a psychiatrist, or an interior decorator, or an actress, always an actress if she’s got any real looks—but the idea is she’s going to be somebody. Not just a wife. Perish the thought! She’s Lady Brett Ashley, with witty devil-may-care whimsey and shocking looseness all over the place.

Colter was so particular about the colors she used in decorating that she sometimes mixed her own. For the interior of Bright Angel Lodge she made a special shade of blue, and she was so insistent that the painters mix the shade exactly as she wanted it that they dubbed it "Mary Jane Blue.

Finland is world-famous for its architects and decorators, who know how to produce beautiful effects in simple ways. On my first visit to Finland, I remember being invited into the living room of one of my host’s homes, and immediately thinking to myself, “This is the most beautiful room that I’ve ever seen!” On reflection, I then wondered why I found it so beautiful, because the room was a nearly-empty cubicle with just a few pieces of simple furniture. But the materials and form of the room, and those few pieces of furniture, were typically Finnish in their simplicity and beauty

No amount of fancy decor will make the slightest bit of difference to your ability to sleep soundly if you do not take heed of what you do before you get anywhere near your bedroom. Only once this has been addressed, can this room become one of your most powerful allies in pursuit of wellbeing, happiness and good health.

When John Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice repeatedly referred to outcomes that 'society' can 'arrange,' these euphemisms finessed aside the plain fact that only government has the power to override millions of people's mutually agreed transactions terms. Interior decorators arrange. Governments compel. It is not a subtle distinctions.

A brick could be used to decorate the interior of your anus. Here, bend over and let me demonstrate. 


I am one of the small group of people who go to Halloween stores not for temporary plastic decorations but for actual interior design ideas.

Thus all good architecture and good decoration (which, it must never be forgotten, is only interior architecture) must be based on rhythm and logic.

Don’t design your lifestyle for comfort, design it for passion. Don’t design it for functionality, design it for sensuality.

Every design choice we make has a sensual effect on us.

When I was little, I didn’t understand that you could change a few sounds in a name or a phrase and have it mean something entirely different. When I told teachers my name was Benna and they said, “Donna who?” I would say, “Donna Gilbert.” I thought close was good enough, that sloppiness was generally built into the language. I thought Bing Crosby and Bill Crosby were the same person. That Buddy Holly and Billie Holiday were the same person. That Leon Trotsky and Leo Tolstoy were the same person. It was a shock for me quite late in life to discover that Jean Cocteau and Jacques Cousteau were not even related. Meaning, if it existed at all, was unstable and could not survive the slightest reshuffling of letters. One gust of wind and Santa became Satan. A slip of the pen and pears turned into pearls. A little interior decorating and the world became her twold, an ungrammatical and unkind assessment of an aging aunt in a singles bar. Add a d to poor, you got droop. It was that way in biology, too. Add a chromosome, get a criminal. Subtract one, get an idiot or a chipmunk. That was the way with things.

During the first weekend Prince Charles showed Diana around Highgrove, the 353-acre Gloucestershire home he had bought in July--the same month he had started to woo her. As he took her on a guided tour of the eight-bedroomed mansion, the Prince asked her to organize the interior decoration. He liked her taste while she felt that it was a “most improper” suggestion as they were not even engaged.

Jeremy is an optimist. Maybe there's something good on TV. He settles down with the remote control on one of his father's pet couches: oversized and reupholstered in an orange-juice-colored corduroy that makes it appear as if the couch has just escaped from a maximum security prison for criminally insane furniture. This couch looks like it's hobby is devouring interior decorators. Jeremy's father is a horror writer, so no one should be surprised if some of the couches he reupholsters are hideous and eldritch.

To a Japanese, accustomed to simplicity of ornamentation and frequent change of decorative method, a Western interior permanently filled with a vast array of pictures, statuary, and bric-a-brac gives the impression of mere vulgar display of riches. It calls for a mighty wealth of appreciation to enjoy the constant sight of even a masterpiece, and limitless indeed must be the capacity for artistic feeling in those who can exist day after day in the midst of such confusion of color and form as is to be often seen in the homes of Europe and America.

The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. This is China. Horticulturalists around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form. And the temples, walk and touch them. This is China. Don't merely stare at these murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are the interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious new motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion. That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China's roads.

At different spots in the room stood the six resident geniuses to whose presence in the home Mr. Pett had such strong objections, and in addition to these she had collected so many more of a like breed from the environs of Washington Square that the air was clamorous with the hoarse cries of futurist painters, esoteric Buddhists, vers libre poets, interior decorators, and stage reformers, sifted in among the more conventional members of society who had come to listen to them. Men with new religions drank tea with women with new hats. Apostles of Free Love expounded their doctrines to persons who had been practising them for years without realising it. All over the room throats were being strained and minds broadened.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of those subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time.

The interior looked like I expected. Two rooms--a main one and a tiny bedroom. Dusty stuffed fish and moth-eaten elk heads on bare walls. A wood plank floor that seemed as if it hadn’t been swept in years. Cobwebs decorating the ceiling. Furniture that would have been rejected by Goodwill. Mouse droppings everywhere. A few dark furry bat forms hung from the upper eaves. In the city, the place would have been condemned as a public health hazard. Here, it was just a typical hunting shack.

Setting sail from Tidore, his next port of call was the island of Celebes, where he found himself royally entertained by the King of Butung.... This island unknown to the English but Middleton (Captain David Middleton) enjoyed his stay here and found the King a curious fellow who was only to keen to entertain his guests with banquets and sweetmeats. Some meals were novel affairs; the ship's purser found himself eating in a room whose interior decor consisted entirely of rotting human heads, dangling from the ceiling.

His house was certainly peculiar, and since this was the first thing that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to know what it was like. It was like this: It was inside out. Actually inside out, to the extent that they had had to park on the carpet. All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which was decorated in a tasteful interior-designed pink, were bookshelves, also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semicircular tops which stand in such a way as to suggest that someone just dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures which were clearly designed to soothe. Where it got really odd was the roof. It folded back on itself like something that M. C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative’s purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up. Confusing. The sign above the front door said “Come Outside,” and so, nervously, they had. Inside, of course, was where the Outside was. Rough brickwork, nicely done pointing, guttering in good repair, a garden path, a couple of small trees, some rooms leading off. And the inner walls stretched down, folded curiously, and opened at the end as if, by an optical illusion which would have had M. C. Escher frowning and wondering how it was done, to enclose the Pacific Ocean itself. “Hello,” said John Watson, Wonko the Sane. Good, they thought to themselves, “hello” is something we can cope with. “Hello,” they said, and all, surprisingly, was smiles.

Vanity is by far my favorite of all sins, and the camera lens is the ultimate vanity mirror. The camera captures all moods and nuances; immortalizes the soft and silky continuum that is humanity. Those still life moments seem so fluid, so representative of continuity. They are a single moment captured, yet an eternity expressed. All your youth; all your ages, captured and expressed in a single click. Of all the indulgences, vanity is certainly my favorite which we should otherwise resist, but are inexplicably captivated by and addicted. What other animal would spend so much time pouting and preening for its reflection? Only humanity would participate in such self-adoration. You would think we have the most colorful feathers or softest of manes. Rather, we are a naked biped that feels incomplete without some decorative element, accessory, or embellishment of the self. We are intoxicated by the image of the body, no different than we are seduced by fine wines, foods, or mind altering elements. We devour the skin, and peel away clothes as if they were the skin of some tropical fruit, covering a colorful and juicy interior. We hunt for bodily pleasures, and collect them as prizes; show them off in social situations as if our companions were some sort of extended adornment to ourselves. We are revealed in our sensuality. To touch beneath the surface; to connect beyond facades, that unattainable discourse between individuals is put tentatively within reach in intimacy. To capture those moments is to capture the essence of what makes us human, and what ultimately sets us above and aside from the rest of nature. Capturing humanity in its most extravagant expressions is intoxicating. Vanity is by far my favorite sin, and it is an endless tale as infinite as humanity. Every person is but a stitch in a giant tapestry.

Marie Antoinette would have loved this place!" Piper Donovan stood agape, her green eyes opened wide, as she took in the magical space. Crystal chandeliers, dripping with glittering prisms, hung from the mirrored ceiling. Gilded moldings crowned the pale pink walls. Gleaming glass cases displayed vibrant fruit tarts, puffy éclairs, and powdered beignets. Exquisitely decorated cakes of all flavors and sizes rested on pedestals alongside trays of pastel meringues and luscious napoleons. Cupcakes, cookies, croissants, and cream-filled pastries dusted with sugar or drizzled with chocolate beckoned from the shelves. "It's unbelievable," she whispered. "I feel like I've walked into a jewel box---one made of confectioners' sugar but a jewel box nonetheless.

Decorated in exotic tones of saffron, gold, ruby, and cinnamon with accent walls representing the natural movement of wind and fire, and a cascading waterfall layered with beautiful landscaped artificial rocks and tiny plastic animals, the restaurant was the embodiment of her late brother's dream to re-create "India" in the heart of San Francisco. The familiar scents- cinnamon, pungent turmeric, and smoky cumin- brought back memories of evenings spent stirring dal, chopping onions, and rolling roti in the bustling kitchen of her parents' first restaurant in Sunnyvale under the watchful army of chefs who followed the recipes developed by her parents. What had seemed fun as a child, and an imposition as a teenager, now filled her with a warm sense of nostalgia, although she would have liked just one moment of her mother's time.

I DIDN’T START OUT AS A BOOK LOVER,” admits Phillip Lim. “Initially, it was more about pragmatism: seeking knowledge having to do with research on work, on my interiors, building a home, even a word I wanted to understand more. But what I love about books is, once you start, you get to go deeper and deeper and deeper into a subject, and from there you go to another book, and another book, and soon after, you have a wall of books. And then you have two walls of books. And then—” The designer indicates the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that serve as the focal point of his loft apartment. “Books are how I learn,” Lim continues, “but I’m not nostalgic. I hate to look back; books inform you, but then they also become decoration. That may sound horrible to a true book lover, but I feel I honor them by making these objects part of my aesthetic world.” PHILLIP LIM

She took me through the parlors and the kitchen, and I marveled at the beautiful ceiling molding, the wooden banisters up to the second floor, the crystalline chandelier in the dining room. The furniture was tasteful and sparse, plastic over the fainting couches and coffee tables and wingback chairs, so that as they stood in stasis they wouldn't collect dust. The second floor was just as gorgeous, the rooms all themed in different flowers. The yellow daffodil room was my favorite. The wall with the headboard had an entire mural of huge daffodils blooming across it. Junie's handiwork, I was sure. Just like the mural on the side of Frank's Auto Shop, and the logo for the Grumpy Possum, and even Gail's bar scene. She showed me all the different rooms, each with a different flower theme and a different focal color--- lavender and coral and sage. The pink ones--- roses--- matched Junie's pastel hair.

Anxious to bring both the year and New Year’s Day into line with the West, Peter decreed in December 1699 that the next new year would begin on January 1 and that the coming year would be numbered 1700. In his decree, the Tsar stated frankly that the change was made in order to conform to Western practice.* But to blunt the argument of those who said that God could not have made the earth in the depth of winter, Peter invited them “to view the map of the globe, and, in a pleasant temper, gave them to understand that Russia was not all the world and that what was winter with them was, at the same time, always summer in those places beyond the equator.” To celebrate the change and impress the new day on the Muscovites, Peter ordered special New Year’s services held in all the churches on January 1. Further, he instructed that festive evergreen branches be used to decorate the doorposts in interiors of houses, and he commanded that all citizens of Moscow should “display their happiness by loudly congratulating

The walls behind the counter had deep floor-to-ceiling shelves for vases and jam jars and scented candles, and there was an old wrought-iron revolving stand for cards. But most of the space in the long, narrow shop was taken up with flowers and plants. Today there were fifty-two kinds of cut blooms, from the tiny cobalt-blue violets that were smaller than Lara's little fingernail to a purple-and-green-frilled brassica that was bigger than her head. The flowers were set out in gleaming metal buckets and containers of every shape and size. They were lined up on the floor three deep and stacked on the tall three-tier stand in the middle of the shop. The plants, huge leafy ferns and tiny fleshy succulents, lemon trees and jasmine bushes and freckled orchids, were displayed on floating shelves that were built at various heights all the way up to the ceiling. Lara had spent weeks getting the lighting right. There were a few soft spotlights above the flower displays, and an antique crystal chandelier hung low above the counter. There were strings of fairy lights and dozens of jewel-colored tea lights and tall, slender lanterns dotted between the buckets. When they were lit, they cast star and crescent moon shapes along the walls and the shop resembled the courtyard of a Moroccan riad- a tiny walled garden right in the middle of the city.

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.” —Benjamin

I read somewhere that “the hall is the gateway between the home and the outer world,” and if that is so, it’s vital that it should not be a bottleneck.

The work surface between the sink and the oven should be between 32 and 47 inches (80 and 120 cm) wide.

A sofa should not take up more than two-thirds of the wall it sits against. Anything more than that and the room will feel overfurnished.

A coffee table should not be more than two-thirds the length of the sofa.

Assuming the sofa is of standard height, a good height for the coffee table is 16 inches (40 cm). There should be about 12 to 16 inches (30 to 40 cm) between the edge of the sofa and the table, so that sitting down is not a problem, but the table has to be close enough to allow a newspaper or coffee cup to be put down without the need to stand up or stretch too far.

20 to 24 inches (50 to 60 cm) is a reasonable space to leave for a passageway.

How high should you hang your pictures? American interior designers often say that “57 inches to the center” is the rule of thumb for hanging pictures.

Do you prefer light wood or dark wood? Do you like warm or cold metals (chrome, silver, pewter, brass, or copper)? Do you enjoy natural materials or powder-coated finishes?

Standing a table lamp on the TV console adds some coziness to the room, and setting a midlevel lamp close to the TV also helps to dull the sharp contrast between a very bright TV and a dark room.

Crumple hated the idea of being upstaged by an interior decorator again.  He had a box full of jelly donuts, enough coffee to wake up a hibernating bear, and was eager as a beaver to find the killer himself.

Lisa was “studying” to be a life coach, the trendy new career of choice for bored stay-at-home moms who may have once chosen to become interior decorators or handbag designers.

Small Changes, Big Impact: Décor Ideas for Your Home - The theory of small changes and their significant impact holds true when it comes to interior design Little things such as adding rugs, changing curtains, and decorating walls can bring functionality, comfort, and aesthetic beauty to your space.

[describing ‘nouvelle cuisine’] …’children’s portions put on a plate by an interior decorator’…

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I’ll recount all the interactions where I went from having an engaging conversation on craft with a man to hearing about his sexual dissatisfaction with his wife, who used to be passionate and is currently on fertility drugs. Suddenly, we’re talking about the way his college girlfriend left her boots on when she fucked and how marriage is “a lot of hard work.” What that translates to is: My wife doesn’t turn me on and you aren’t a model but you sure are young and probably some bold new sexual moves have emerged since the last time I was single in 1992 so let’s try it and then you can go back to being married to your work and I’ll go back to being married to an “eco-friendly interior decorator” and I’ll never watch any of your films again.

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Just as New York’s Armory Show synthesized modern art in 1913, the Paris show on decorative arts in 1925 synthesized another kind of modernity and influenced commercial and decorative art, popularizing it to the point where industrial designers became household names. Art Deco, like many movements in the design field, began as a movement in furniture and decorative arts, but its influence in one form or another extended beyond interiors and magazine covers and the figures of Erté, to the design of automobiles and even locomotives.

I flew home with Iran Air, which gave me six and a half hours to truly appreciate the impact of the international sanctions first hand. The scratchy seat fabric, cigarette-burned plastic washbasins and whiff of engine oil throughout the cabin reminded me of late seventies coach travel, which was probably the last time these planes had had a facelift. I tried to convince myself that Iran Air had prioritised the maintenance of engines and safety features over the interior decor but I wasn’t convinced, especially when the seatbelt refused to budge. The in-flight entertainment had certainly been spared an upgrade, consisting of one small television at the front of the plane showing repeat screenings of a gentle propaganda film featuring chador-clad women gazing at waterfalls and flowers with an appropriately tinkly soundtrack. The stewardesses’ outfits were suitably dreary too. Reflecting Iran Air’s status as the national carrier of the Islamic Republic, they were of course modest to the point of unflattering, with not a single glimpse of neck or hair visible beneath the military style cap and hijab. As we took off, I examined my fellow passengers. Nobody was praying and as soon as we were airborne, every female passenger removed her headscarf without ceremony.

If a fairy princess hired an interior decorator, that’s this room. And not the bad ass kind of fairy princess that lives in the forest and learned to fight with a bow and arrow at a young age. I’ve got nothing against the color pink except when every single surface is drenched in it and accompanied by frills.

As far back as I can remember, my father ran a prosperous interior decorating business, with many people working for him making drapes and lace curtains, as well as hanging wallpaper and doing upholstery. He did a good deal of contract work for wealthy and important people in the Dutch city of The Hague.

The wallpaper was an ugly, dirty dark red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This was her home! And she a born artist and interior decorator!

Who has ever heard of a maid and a conseurge making use of their afternoon break to ponder the cultural significance of interior decoration?

The next morning, I opened a red-painted door and saw a little room with bookshelves lining its whitewashed walls. In the center of the room sat a round lion-footed table, on which a fat old codex lay open; on the far wall, between a gap in the bookcases, a life-sized bas-relief of the Muse Clio stared at me, her scrolls clasped to her chest, her blind white eyes all-knowing. It was a library. At first I thought it was very small, but when I stepped inside I saw a doorway leading to another room of books, which itself opened on two more. It was a honeycomb of rooms, their walls covered in bookshelves, reliefs of the Muses peering from occasional alcoves.

Our driver was still inside, but he was very much dead. Blood and chunks of brain decorated the interior of the car, and when I nudged his lolling head back, a bullet wound decorated his forehead. The front windscreen of his car was totally smashed in and the hood totally crumpled.

Interior Design and Decoration Kaspar von Morgenlatte did an admirable job with your apartment, but the look is somewhat outdated and more than a little disturbing. (If I recall, the design concept was commissioned by your husband in the early 2000s to evoke the Miami Beach bachelor pad of a Bolivian drug cartel kingpin. This was done extremely successfully. I particularly admired the “chalk body outline” mother-of-pearl inlay on the ebony wood floor and the trompe l’oeil “bullet marks” on your master bedroom headboard, but I think that it would be inadvisable to host a children’s birthday party here, especially while those Lisa Yuskavage paintings are still hanging.)

Whitewash, a solution of lime and chalk mixed with other additives, was brushed on interior and exterior walls like paint. It took several days to set, forming a white surface that could be coloured with other substances; in some areas animal blood or vegetable dye was added to give exterior walls a pink colour. Whitewash was a cheap way of decorating rooms. More expensive options included textile hangings, wallpaper, painting and wainscoting. In 1817 William Holland was decorating parts of the vicarage at Over Stowey. His daughter’s bedroom had wallpaper, but he hired a painter for some of the woodwork, inside and out:

The décor was the perfect contrast to the club's existing dark wood walls and coffered ceilings. Cedric's team used accents of gold to tie in with the space, but lightened things up with oodles of ivory and blush flowers. They highlighted the massive arched window overlooking the twinkling lights of downtown by flanking it with two equally massive blooming dogwood trees. Where he found blooming dogwoods this time of year in Dallas was a mystery, but that was all part of his magic. Dining tables were draped in champagne-colored velvet linen, and atop every table was an ivory urn overflowing with blush antique garden roses. They reminded me of the roses that grew in our garden at home, which was certainly on purpose. Twinkling candles in glass sleeves covered every surface, and next to the bar stood a sparkling tower of champagne glasses.

Small Changes, Big Impact: Decor Ideas for Your Home - The theory of small changes and their significant impact holds true when it comes to interior design Little things such as adding rugs, changing curtains, and decorating walls can bring functionality, comfort, and aesthetic beauty to your space.

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Who has ever heard of a maid and a concierge making use of their afternoon break to ponder the cultural significance of interior decoration? You would be surprised by what ordinary little people come out with.

Not many Ruminarii warships had ever been captured intact by any enemy, and so for those the Ruminarii “invited” aboard their vessels, this was usually a one-way sight-seeing trip. For those who really want to know, Ruminarii Hammerheads have an extensive corridor network, the interior walls are heavily decorated, savagely militaristic and inevitably, close together. He strode down one. Lesser ranks seeing him, fell to the deck and groveled like their fingernails depended on it. There was a chorus of shrieks and whimpers as he passed. When he arrived on the bridge, everyone was face down on the deck, each endeavoring to grovel lower than the next. Nothing like discipline to keep the crew in its place.

You really think stopping here is a good idea?” Lex asked her uncle, eyeing the buffalo. A strange decoration for a small-town deli, to be sure, but then again Lex wasn’t really up to date on the interior design trends of small-town upstate New York. “Of course,” Uncle Mort said, counting out a stack of bills and placing them on the counter. “Don’t you think a cross-country run-for-our-lives road trip just screams ‘time for a picnic’?” “I would not have thought that, no.” “Well, that’s because you’re a total noob.” The girl reappeared behind the counter with two bagfuls of wrapped sandwiches. “That’ll be sixty-seven dollars and two cents,” she said, smiling sweetly at Uncle Mort. “Thanks,” he said, giving her a wink as he handed her the bills. “Keep the change, hon.” She giggled. Lex rolled her eyes. “Smooth move, Clooney,” Lex said as they exited the deli. “Do we need to pencil in some time for a sexy rendezvous? I think there’s a motel down the street that rents rooms by the hour.” “Pop quiz, hotshot: Let’s say someone shows up in this town and starts asking questions about a hooligan band of teenagers accompanied by two ghosts, an ancient woman, and a devastatingly attractive chaperone. Which one do you think that girl will be more likely to remember?” Lex grumbled. “The chaperone.” “You seem to have forgotten a couple of key adjectives there.” “Oh, I didn’t forget.” “Believe me, that girl won’t dream of ratting us out. Especially now that I’ve bestowed upon her the Wink of Trust.” Lex snorted. “The Wink of Trust?” “Has gotten me out of more trouble than you can imagine. I suggest you try it some time. Add it to your already overflowing arsenal of charm.

up the pathway to the front door.  She’d called and left him a message, letting him know that she was coming, and that she’d leave the documents with the housekeeper if he wasn’t there.  Ringing the doorbell, she couldn’t stop the blush that stole up her cheeks as she remembered the last time she’d been here.  Had it really been only two days ago?  It seemed like a lot longer.  Did he still have those stockings?  Surely he’d tossed them out by now.  And no, she hadn’t dared to purchase another pair.  Not after the last debacle.  When the door opened, she was bracing herself to face Hunter once again.  Her plan was to congratulate him, just as she would any other client, hand him the champagne and the closing documents, and then leave as quickly as possible.  Just as she would all of her other clients.  They were all trying to unpack, overwhelmed with the process but excited about their new purchase.  She very seriously doubted if anything overwhelmed Hunter, but she was going to go through her routine anyway.  All of her clients deserved the same treatment, and she shouldn’t slack off with Hunter simply because…well, because he could make her feel things that… “Goodness, come in out of the heat, my dear!” the housekeeper urged, waving Kara into the cool interior.  “Mr. West is out back in the pool, but he said he was expecting you and that you’d know the way.  If he needs anything at all,” she said, as she hefted a purse onto her shoulder that Kara suspected could substitute for a suitcase, “just tell him to give me a ring.” Kara opened her mouth to stop the woman as the two of them exchanged places, the housekeeper moving to the outside even as Kara was nudged inside.  Kara went so far as to lift her hand, trying to indicate that she wanted to say something, but the efficient woman bustled out of the house, closing the front door in the process.  Kara stared at the closed door for several long moments, wondering how that had just happened.  Her plan had been simple.  Just hand over the bottle and documents, convey her congratulations and head back.  What had just happened?  Kara turned around.  It felt strange to be standing here, alone, in Hunter’s house.  She’d been here two days ago, but the house hadn’t been his.  The man now owned the house, all the furniture, and the acres of land and waterfront.  It felt much more intimate now for some reason.  Looking around, she wished that she could just leave the documents on the kitchen counter or the rough, wooden coffee table that looked perfect next to the white sofas.  Everything felt and looked clean and comfortable, exactly as she would have decorated this area.  The pops of green were vibrant and exhilarating, a perfect accompaniment to the fresh, white furniture.  With a sigh, she turned away from the alluring great room décor and searched out the man of the moment.  As she stepped past the sofas, she saw him.  In the pool.  Without any clothes on! Oh goodness, she thought with a strangled breath.  It took her several moments to realize that she needed to inhale, her breath caught in her throat as she watched the man’s bare skin, and all the muscles, and…well, all of him!  Okay, so he wasn’t naked, he was wearing a bathing suit but his broad, muscular back and those arms…they were even more ridged with muscles than she’d thought.  He was spectacular!  Never in her wildest imaginings had she pictured him that buff, but there

Let us mention an additional source of difficulty: the dissociation between exterior worship and interior prayer introduced into the Catholic way of thinking. In the West, when the liturgy had become the business of clerics, celebrated in a learned tongue unknown to the people, preachers developed private devotions and exercises. Then worship was seen as an external manifestation, a duty rendered to God and requiring care for the appearances, such as baroque music, processions, decorations, but not demanding too great a personal investment. Religious education stressed the individual relation to God, to such a point that during solemn liturgical celebrations one could see priests individually reciting their breviary, while seated side by side in the sanctuary, and the faithful silently praying the rosary as their confessors had advised! In catechisms, worship was included in the chapter on moral obligations; it was regarded as the social form of the virtue of religion, that is, the fulfillment of the duties we have toward God.

I walked in and glanced around. Hotspots first, by instinct and long habit: seats facing the entrance, partially concealed corners, ambush positions. I detected no problems. I moved inside. The interior was vast, and decorated like a Hollywood prop warehouse. Everywhere there were antiques and curios: iron cash registers, a red British telephone booth, a cluster of parasols, busts and statues, shelves of colored bottles and jugs. Even the tables and chairs looked vintage. Had it been less capacious, it would have felt cluttered. The ceilings were high and of bare wood, the walls stone and alabaster.

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