Decorating: where to start?

Where to start?
Although that’s a daunting question for many of my customers, it isn’t to me. I guess that's why I do this for a living.

Here's one place to start: I have clients tear out a few pages from magazines. Then we go through them, what I often find is that people can’t put a label to what they like because they’re not familiar with the vocabulary of interior design. I can very quickly look through their pages and say: “Oh, tell me what you like about this picture,” and when they start talking about it, then were able to develop a vocabulary about the things that they like.

It’s also a really interesting exercise because I recently had a customer who showed me a whole bunch of pictures that had orange and black and high contrast in them, and she felt that those were very relaxing. That was relaxing, that was soothing to her. Most of my customers would call “soothing” more of a Zen palate –- light grays, tans, light blues, light greens. But for her, something that was dramatic was relaxing. That's why it’s a helpful exercise to create a common vocabulary together.