Let the Decorating Begin!

Six tips to get you started on outfitting your first home

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Resist the urge to match.
The biggest decorating fallacy that retail stores love to perpetuate is that everything has to match. They would love you to buy everything in sets, but don’t do it! A few pieces with the same styling are fine, but any more than that and your home has the lifeless, generic look of a furniture showroom. Make sure your own personal style shows through, which most likely is not bland, beige and boring.

Top priority should be proportion, scale and balance of your furniture and accessories within each room. Don’t shove five pieces of oversized lounge furniture into a 15x15 den that has a modest eight-foot ceiling. It will look ridiculously like a clown car. Conversely, putting only a low buffet and a delicate, round dining table for four into a 20x30 room with a soaring 12-foot ceiling will look equally as awkward and unsatisfying.