In order to make your room look its finest, you must get to know its worst and best qualities.

We girls are experts at playing up our good features and camouflaging our weaker or less desirable areas; for example, if you have great legs, then you know that you should wear shorter hem lines and show off those great gams! Show off your best assets and downplay, minimize, and disguise areas that are less than your best features. Our rooms are no different; we need to identify a room's best and worst features.

The bones or the architectural features of the room (unless we want to jump into a much more expensive scenario- affectionately called renovations) are details that we are generally stuck with the location of windows, doors, ceiling heights and wall layouts. After identifying all the positives and negatives of the space, we can then plan a décor that will highlight the good bones and downplay or camouflage the lesser qualities of the room.

Get the Room Naked

• Clear out the room! I know it's a lot of work... but everything worth having comes with a price.
• Remove all the furniture.
• Take down the window coverings.
• Roll up the area carpets.

Basically, get the room naked. If you can't take everything out, try to remove all that you can. Clearing out all distractions will ensure that you can get a good look at the room's bones.

Best Assets (& Things you want to Disguise)

Make a list. Start with the floor and work your way up to the ceiling. Ask yourself:

• Does the room have great moldings?
• Does the room have a beautiful view?
• Is the window large enough and is it centered on the wall?
• Are there enough windows?
• How about the fireplace, or any built INS? Are they attractive and balanced?
• Next, peek at the ceilings. Are they too high? Too low? Are they decorative?
• Is there a great light fixture hung from the ceiling? Lighting is one area that we need to take a thorough look at. Are there enough lights ceiling, wall and valance lighting, how about plug ins?

We need to analyze the room, right down to the bones. Make notes of any registers that may need to be disguised. For example:

• A ceiling that is too low or too high.
• Poor flooring.
• A window that is situated off centre.

Also, note the proportion of a space. Classic architecture is defined in thirds. If an area is out of balance we will need to make a plan to visually increase or decrease its apparent proportion. Be confident that all the room's weaknesses can be corrected or disguised during the decorating process; we simply need to plan for it.

Checking out the bones of a room is the first step to designing great spaces. Too often, this all-important step is over looked and we plunge straight into the decorating process. Without a plan to build upon, all the great features that a room already has may be under-utilized and a negative may become accentuated. Successful rooms have had their bones analyzed. It's like dressing a friend without noting her body type and all her assets. No one wins and we perform a great disservice to the space. Invest the time and make the effort to get to know your room's bones before you plunge into your styling project. Good bones are essential for lasting beauty.

Need a local, pre-screened expert to help you work with your homes "good bones"? Find them on casaGURU.

Emer Schlosser
		About the author:
		Always a fan of words in various glorious forms – novels, dialogue, lyrics, etc – Emer translated her passion into a writing career in 2005. She has since supplied gossip on celebrities to Canadian Press, interviewed individuals from the arts for Inside Entertainment, expressed her fondness for food for Cheese Boutique’s blog, & co-founded, edited and contributed to iheartthemusic.com. At the moment she’s taking the mystery out of Green Living and providing some great tips on Home Renovation, Decorating & Design and Curb Appeal to the members of casaGURU.com. casaGURU, “the homeowner’s home online”, is a free web community that connects homeowners and local house experts.
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