Dana’s Living/Dining Room

What Ava Living designer Pangaea - has to say about member Dana Taylor’s room.

 Needs Improvement    Nice Start    Good    Almost There    Fantastic   

Hi Dana,

Thank you for your patience in waiting for your room review. At last, I have had some time this evening to take a careful look at the photos you posted. Your free room review is intended to give you feedback on what is -- or what is not -- working in your room as it is now. I'll be rating your room based on the five design principles above. I always tell people not to be discouraged over any of the "one star" ratings. You already sensed that some things did not gel and this will help you understand the "why" and hopefully get you on your way to improving things.

Balance - There are room elements that are pulling the room out of balance. One example is the large clock and small plate on either side of your dining room French doors. They don't balance visually. Also the heavy furniture against the wall is not balanced well by the window which has less visual weight than the furniture on the opposite wall. Putting up drapery panels on either side of the window would add visual weight and help balance the dining room.

Emphasis - I gave you two stars here because you've begun to create emphasis with your accent walls. One problem though is that the accent wall to the left of the fireplace is pulling the focus away from the fireplace. I would extend the blue paint to the wall above the fireplace. (More about the fireplace wall under "Proportion & Scale". Also, to create emphasis in a room, you need to have some open space where the eye can rest. To achieve this, you'll need to remove as many extraneous pieces of furniture and tiny accessories as you can. A few large pieces always work better than lots of small items. I would remove those baskets by the dining room doors, and the extra black chair by the piano ... hide the TV trays in a closet, and hide the plastic trash can. Finding a place for all your books will help too. At the moment, they are dominating the room. If you truly love to have so many books in the room, one thing you might consider is having built-in book shelves installed.

Rhythm - You can create rhythm with color. Thank you for posting the close-up of the chair. I think you should use this as your "inspiration piece for your color palette. I would suggest using the oranges & yellows & rust colors as accent colors. They will look great in combination with both your dark and light blues. Although it does look like there's a little bit of green in the fabric, I don't think it's a good direction to go with all the dark blue in the room. So I think you should reupholster the green stripe side chairs. Choose either yellow or orange that goes with the print chair. Also repeat these colors in your accent pillows and in art for the walls, candles or vases. It will help if you repeat a color in at least 3 places in the room. It helps your eye move from place to place in the room. I don't think I would go with brown on the dining chairs. I think those brighter colors of orange or yellow found in the print chair would be a better color near the dark blue wall.

Harmony & Unity - Keeping your color palette unified throughout the room will go a long way toward providing a feeling that the room has really come together.

Proportion & Scale - This seems to be the most common problem people have in their rooms. One place you did really well is the tapestry above the sideboard and the candles & holders sitting on the sideboard. They are nice and big and are the appropriate scale for the furniture and wall.

Proportion and scale being out of whack is what is causing the difficulty above the fireplace. The accessories are just not big enough to appropriately fill the space. If you decide to go with b&w family photos here, be sure to keep a cohesive look through all of the picture frames. They don't all have to be exactly the same, but if you paint the wall above the fireplace dark blue, then I would suggest that you use only black or white picture frames -- or maybe all silver frames. Really create a strong grouping that covers at least 2/3 of the wall space. There are a number of pieces of art on the wall throughout the rooms that are too small for their spots. They detract from the focal points of the room. All the tiny objects on top of your piano and on top of the chest in the dining room are under-scaled as is the framed artwork above the piano. Just a few large pieces will always look better than lots of little things grouped together.

Okay, I probably went into more detail than I'm supposed to on the free room review, but you were so nice to wait all week! I think the best way that I could move forward to help you pull the room together is with my Designer Top 7 service which is $119. I can go into detail on lighting ideas, accessories, fabrics, suggestions for photo layout above the fireplace or other ideas. I hope you've found the ideas and suggestions I've given you so far to be helpful and inspiring. I would love to help you really make the room look great!

Thank you!
Pangaea