The true art in decorating any room, no matter what size, lies in how you direct the eye. Every interior designer is concerned with that one essential concept: how to gather and compose the elements in a room to control the visual flow and create alluring places for the viewer to focus. Without focus, rooms become an uncomfortable jumble of unrelated elements. Correctly composed, focal points combine to express the personality of the home, the decorator, and most importantly, the home owners and their families.

Every interior designer starts off with the same canvas – a bare room: walls, ceilings, floors, windows and doors. The palette they work with is the furniture, carpeting, drapery and wall coverings. One of the most natural, but all too often overlooked, opportunities for focusing attention is the picture frame. Choosing the right frame is so important, because it must work in concert with not only the art or picture within, but also with the wall covering, surrounding furniture and design elements, as well as the personality of the homeowners.

In many ways the challenges presented by the room itself dictate the direction that the interior design will take. Wall texture, height and width, stairwells, the type of ceiling and floor, and the style of furniture all contribute to the initial design concept. The final contributing factors in the design of the room are the lifestyle and expectations of the people who will be living, working and entertaining in the space within.

The challenge here was to enliven a bare, windowless wall that greeted visitors at the entryway to a home. A bright sofa and end table lamps were strategically placed to capture the attention of people as they entered. A large landscape was placed above the sofa giving the illusion of a picture window looking out onto an open plain. Narrow molding and matting were chosen to compliment the woods featured in the surrounding furniture and helped to complete the illusion of a window frame.

In this dining room, a wrap-around mural surrounded the rich, central cherry wood table and accessories. The nature of the wall painting prevented the establishment of a central focus using any additional artwork or wall hangings that would detract from the beauty of the mural itself. In this case, an ornate, empty frame that matched the colors and design of the furniture was chosen to create a point of interest above the chest of drawers which then became a central focal point of the dining room furniture.

Sherry Stein and Albert Janz of Henry Johnstone Design have been designing classic interiors for over a decade, and their designs have been featured in the Pasadena Showcase House and Los Angeles Design Home Tour. You can see their work at HenryJohnstoneCo.com.

Sherry Stein & Albert Janz
Henry Johnstone & Co.
Interior Decoration and Design
henryjohnstoneco.com