A writer recently asked me for the number one decorating mistake that makes a home feel cheap, for a piece that ultimately ran on Martha Stewart. I did not have to think about it, I’ve watched it happen again and again over the years. Furnishing an entire room, or home, at once or from a single retailer. It’s a completely understandable mistake in design, and the one that can really derail a project.
Steven Gambrel is a master in layering interior design in a way that feels like a considered collection of the most interesting person in the world. No two projects alike and almost impossible to replicate make for a truly unique experience, a space worth living in
Why it’s so tempting
Buying a room all at once is efficient. The decisions are made for you. Everything “goes.” The space looks finished almost immediately, which, when you’re moving in or finally addressing a room that’s been nagging at you, feels like relief. That eventually short lived relief is also the trap.
A room built from one collection can look cohesive. It can also read flat. Without tension between old and new, without pieces that arrived at different moments for different reasons, you lose the layers that make a home feel expensive: contrast, patina, and point of view. What’s left is coordination.
On the left is a catalog page in Serena and Lily on the right, a room by interior designer Tamsin Johnson. One feels like a showroom the other brimming with personality, texture and depth. One looks good on the page, the other is meant for living.
What’s actually missing
The homes that stay with me, the ones I remember after I leave, almost never come together in a single trip to a single source. They reveal themselves.
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