Vintage Decor, Room by Room

The problem is that all your light is on the ceiling

Almost every modern living room is lit from above, which is why rooms that look fine in daylight feel like a waiting area after dark. The fix is light at sitting height. One lamp in the corner, one on a side table, both with warm bulbs, and the overheads off entirely after six. You will notice the difference the first evening.

Put the corner lamp diagonally opposite wherever people actually sit. Light coming from across a room is flattering. Light directly overhead is not.

Stop centering the thing above the sofa

A single piece hung dead center above a sofa is the most common arrangement and the least interesting one. Hang it off-center and let a lamp or a plant balance the other side. Or lean a large piece on the floor behind an armchair instead of hanging anything at all.

If you do hang art above a sofa, go lower than feels right. Most people hang eight inches too high. The gap between the sofa back and the bottom of the frame should be about the width of your hand.

The counter is going to collect things whether you plan for it or not

Every kitchen has one stretch of counter that accumulates keys, mail, sunglasses and whatever came out of a pocket. Fighting it never works. Put a tray there instead. A hammered brass platter or a painted tole tray turns the pile into a contained pile, and a contained pile reads as deliberate.

This is the single most useful thing vintage does in a kitchen, and it costs about as much as lunch.

Open shelves need one empty one

If you have open shelving, the instinct is to fill every inch. Leave one shelf noticeably emptier than the rest. It gives your eye somewhere to rest and makes the full shelves look chosen rather than crammed.

Put the glass on whichever shelf gets the most daylight. That is the only placement rule in a kitchen that really matters.

Set the table with plates that do not match

Six plates that share a loose theme, all floral or all blue and white, from different decades and different makers. It looks more considered than a matching set and it is far cheaper, often a few dollars a plate. It also gives people something to talk about before anyone has said anything interesting.

The dresser top is the only real surface in the room, so treat it like one

A bedroom has a bed, which you cannot decorate, and usually one dresser. That dresser top is doing all the work. A small tray, a dish for rings, a lamp, one piece of art leaned at the back. Everything else goes in a drawer.

The test is whether you can put your hand down flat somewhere. If you cannot, it is too full.

Lean the mirror, do not hang it

A large mirror leaned against a bedroom wall adds light and space and reads as relaxed in a way a hung mirror never does. It is also the easiest thing in the world to move when you change your mind, which you will.

Go larger than feels sensible. A mirror that seems slightly too big is almost always the right one.

Give the keys a home or the whole surface becomes the drop zone

Entryways fail for one reason. There is nowhere obvious to put down what is in your hands, so everything lands wherever there is room. One small brass dish or a shallow bowl by the door fixes it permanently.

Beyond that, an entryway needs one good thing and nothing else. A small mirror at eye height, or a solid side table with a drawer. Resist adding a second.

The room everybody forgets, and the easiest one to fix

Bathrooms are usually the most plastic room in a house. Shampoo bottles, a plastic cup, a plastic tray. Swapping three of those for old glass, brass and ceramic changes the room in an afternoon for very little money.

A small ceramic dish for soap. A glass tumbler instead of a plastic one. A brass hook or a little framed piece on the one wall nobody thought to use. Guests notice bathrooms more than any other room, which is unfair but true.

A desk you like sitting at is mostly a materials problem

Most desks are covered in plastic and cable. You cannot remove the laptop, but you can change everything around it. A wooden organizer, a brass dish for clips and keys, a heavy pair of bookends, a lamp that is not the overhead.

Old books earn their place here twice over, once for reading and once for stacking. A short stack under a lamp raises it to a better height and looks better than a lamp on a bare desk.

Odd numbers, varied heights, and one gap

Three things, or five, rather than two or four. Two objects of similar size look like they are waiting for a third. Vary the heights properly, not slightly. And leave one visible gap in every grouping, because the gap is what makes the rest look deliberate.

Group toward one end of a mantle rather than centering everything. Symmetry is harder to get right than people think and it rarely looks like anyone lives there.