Interior Design with
Julia Luttrell
Scaling down your space
As an interior designer, every time
someone asks me what my own home looks like, I am reminded of that old
adage “the cobblers’ children have no shoes.” You’d be surprised how
many designers, notorious for their natural ability to easily perfect a
clients’ home, seem perversely unable to make solid decisions about
their own.
Rather than the typical workaday home expected of any other
businesswoman, it is a commonly held assumption that every interior
designer must surely live in showroom perfect surroundings. And indeed,
in the days of my less secure youth, I myself have succumbed to the
temptation to overdress my space to suit this expected image.
I once set a designer friend of mine loose in my own home and gave him
carte blanche to do whatever he liked with it, with the single
stipulation that he could not go near my sanctuary, my bedroom.
As a result my home became an exquisitely stunning showpiece…and I wound
up living in the bedroom! Every time I stepped out of that room, I
suddenly felt instantly transported into my workplace. I lived in a
design showroom and could never go home.
And yes, I’ve gone to the opposite extreme as well, stripping my home
down to a Zen-like simplicity, more conducive to the minimalist
sensibility of a Buddhist nun, than the requirements of a working
designer.
Thankfully, these first-hand early design experiments have since
fine-lined my professional design training and reinforced my current
ability to blend a balance of finery and function, when scaling down any
space, to suit real-life circumstances.
Whether you’re a student moving into your first home away from home, or
an empty-nester selling the family home to move into a condo, change is
never easy, moving is often a nightmare and scaling down to a smaller
space only adds to the pressure.
Many people are not aware however, of how an interior designer can help
alleviate the stress. For the cost of a good haircut, a designer can
inventory your existing pieces and help you to decide what keep, what to
refurbish, what to sell or give away, and best of all, provide you with
floor plans for your new home.
Let’s face it, the hardest part of downsizing is the necessary purging
of years of packrat possessions. Knowing ahead of time what is going,
and where it is going to go, will allow you to confidently dispense with
the rest without regret.
Designers organize space for a living, love a challenge and the key to
scaling down a space is all in the planning. A professional can open the
door to elements of multi-function that may not have otherwise occurred
to you and make maximum use of your downsized space. So, before your
next move, consider calling a designer as your first move. It’s fun,
affordable, and the smooth serenity of your move into your scaled down
space is bound to astound you.
