Text by Mary Forsell • Produced by Kathy Curotto

The pros can turn a room’s challenges into assets, making problems disappear, quite literally, into the woodwork. Here, we borrow stylists’ secrets for solving common decorating dilemmas
   The old rulebook said everything had to match. “But rooms today are more personality-driven than they were ten years ago,” says Leslie Harrington, founder of LH Color, a design research and consulting firm in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. “People are not so concerned with coordinating everything.”


   So feel free to mix it up and pull from different eras. Pair that antique settee with a modern table. Juxtapose heirloom crystal vases with flea market tins. Decorate a wall with salvaged screens instead of paintings.
  “It’s hard to go wrong if you fill your home with the things that are most beautiful to you— vintage and new combined,” Leslie says.

Rather than seeing a small space as a drawback, grab the chance to experiment freely with color and display offbeat, hand-selected objects.
   Just as museums rotate their collections, you can bring out only a few things at a time. One graphic felt circle cushion (on settee) by British artist Anne Kyyro Quinn has more impact than a dozen busier designs. Mexican artist Yuri Zatarain’s oversize Cubist vase (on coffee table) becomes a focal point, as does his ceramic “sketchbook ball” propped on the middle shelf of the étagère. Approach close quarters like a stage set where every detail counts.

(j) Purple and chocolate brown make a lively, intense backdrop for art. Settee and chair, Lee Industries. Wall paint, Benjamin Moore. Coffee table, étagère, Rothschild’s Antiques and Home Furnishings. Rug, Home Decorators. Drapery hardware, Kirsch. Drapes, Pottery Barn.

(k) Red roses add a splash of drama. (l) Reconstructed books by St. Louis artist MJ Goerke are sculpture for the wall. (m) Multifunctional pieces like this ottoman/end table by Lee Industries are key to maximizing tight space.

San Franciscan Kim Smith turned to collage after a career in investment banking. (n) Incorporating pages from an old botany book, her “Spiral” series traces life’s journeys. (o) Chinese architectural fragments echo the spiral motif. (p) Mixed media painting by Alicia LaChance, an artist based in Clayton, Missouri, adds symbolic mystique,  LaChance spent many years living abroad, absorbing global influences. Vase, The Phillips Collection.

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