Home Decorating For Dummies
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For a room to feel balanced and well designed, you need a strong architectural focal point. Knowing how to use architectural focal points isn’t hard. The trick is to assess the architectural characteristics of your room and to know how you want it to be used. Without a focal point, rooms feel disorganized and messy.

If your room has an architectural structure that naturally draw the eye, it is often best to build your furniture around it. You can try to create a focal point away from a built-in architectural point, but you'll have to work twice as hard to draw attention away from it.

Fireplaces are natural focal points. Big enough to be architecturally impressive, fireplaces are a source of warmth and comfort. Fires are also visually interesting in themselves, and when you add mantel decorations, they easily attract the most attention. Drawing seating around the fireplace plays up the fireplace and designates it as the star of the room.

Large picture windows also serve as natural architectural focal points. Beautiful moldings and trims make them even more interesting. And if you have a gorgeous view, the window really shines. If the window is very large, try to balance it with a large furniture piece, such as the sofa, in a position opposite the window.

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Katharine Kaye McMillan, former senior editor of a New York City-based national magazine, is a writer whose work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers. She is a contributing writer to internationally circulated Florida Design Magazine. She is the co-author of several books on decorating and design, including Sun Country Style, which is the basis for licensed signature collections of furniture and accessories by three leading American manufacturers and importers. A graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, she holds a masters degree in psychology and is a doctoral student in psychology at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida.

Patricia Hart McMillan is a nationally known interior designer, whose interior design work for private clients, designer showcases, and corporations has appeared in publications worldwide, including the New York Times and USA Today. Known as a trend spotter and for clearly articulated views on design, she is quoted frequently and extensively in both trade and consumer publications. She a ppears on TV and talk radio. A prolific writer, she is coauthor and author of seven books on interior design and decoration, with Sun Country Style signature collections of furniture based on two books. She has taught decorating courses at several colleges and conducted numerous seminars across the U.S. She is decorating editor for Christian Woman Magazine and reports on design trends for The Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune newspaper based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She has been editor-in-chief of two publications and was head of a New York City-based public relations firm representing some of the most prestigious names in home furnishing and building products. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with a minor in art history (with an emphasis in architecture), from the State University of New York (New Paltz). She was awarded a certificate from The New York School of Interior Design.

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