I was at globeandmail.com the other day, looking at some of the fine comments on The West Coast Way. After my recent column about three sofas I dislike, a Winnipegger named H.K. left an exasperated response. "Art critics and designers alike are free to pander their personal opinions as accepted fact," he complained. "However, they forget that there is no 'wrong' when it comes to personal taste."
Surely, views about interior design are many. But no "wrong" when it comes to personal taste? H.K. is making the point that, because everyone has his own opinion, there can be no wrong ones. This is the argument from the Matrix films, and it rests on the suspicion that the external world is a hallucination, not an actual, tangible object. And if each of us - the argument runs - is sealed in a hermetic world of perception, who can ever say a word about anyone else's opinion? After all, can you be sure it's actually a newspaper you're holding right now? This could all be a dream.
It could be, but it isn't. Thankfully, most people feel that, even where objective, verifiable truths are impossible to pin down, faith in the realness of the world is required. Anything could go, but not anything does. Taste, like morality, means drawing a line somewhere.
Okay, out of philosophy and back to interior design. The way I approach the question of taste is in its broader meaning - the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing.
Who can say what causes a certain arrangement of architecture, furniture and accessories to ignite in a fresh and meaningful way, when the same arrangement, slightly altered, is, yes, "wrong." This is a high mystery. And while there is no satisfactory explanation of good design sense, there are a few features of design that no designer can ignore and hope to prosper.
Here are three to which I give careful consideration on every job.
SCALE
Ignoring rules of proportion is one of the greatest errors people make in the design of their homes. In any house, there needs to be a balancing of size and space. Those who don't believe me should put their lawn furniture in their living room. You don't need to know how to articulate why it's wrong, but the furniture is out of joint with the architecture - you feel it immediately.
Room scale obeys the same compositional principles as the visual arts. Three big ones for you to consider are size (the dimensions of shapes in relation to each other), perspective (the expression of foreground and background), and space (the area consumed by positive and negative objects).
With a full understanding of scale, you can then create drama by exaggerating the size of a sofa, say, or stillness by bringing the pieces into a more ideal alignment.
CONTEXT
The easiest analogy for context is dressing for a party. There are many types of parties, and many ways to dress yourself. And although wearing inappropriate clothing to a party can, on occasion, be a scintillating way to make a statement, most of the time it'll just make you feel uncomfortable and out of place.
So it is with your interior space. The most forceful establisher of context is the architecture, but there are four other contributors I never discount: the colour of a room, the finishes in it, the landscape in which the home sits, and the light - both natural and artificial. Taking full measure of these, it's easier to understand what kind of "party" your home is, and whether the occasion calls for scandalous or conservative attire.
CONTRAST
This isn't just the sharpening or dulling of colours in relation to each other, it's the effect produced by opposing materials and form, too. Contrast is an excellent way to create a dynamic experience of a space, and judicious use of this powerful tool depends on a designer understanding what she's tinkering with.
There is no overarching rule to follow, only a few obvious ideas. If you're looking for a quieter, more peaceful room, you'll want to keep the contrast dialled down. Choose forms and materials that do not clash, and render them in muted colours. This is an excellent way to ground a room that you want to be calming - a bedroom, say.
If you want a room that quickens your pulse, dial up the contrast of colours, forms and finishes. Choose a sofa in bright red, beside a patterned green ottoman. This is the visual equivalent of turning both the bass and treble up to "10" - and it won't surprise you that nightclubs tend to be high-contrast rooms.
Following those few hints is no guarantee that you'll make good design decisions, but ignoring them is a shortcut to something truly horrendous.
Is it true that designers truck in their opinions? Of course we do. We don't commune with the Platonic ideals of furniture and design in some rarefied place inaccessible to laypeople.
The argument is not about whether opinion is involved; it's whether the opinion is worth anything. If you get yourself a good interior designer, his opinion is steeped in knowledge of the craft, its history, the materials he's working with, and the needs of the client, all balanced against financial and architectural limitations.
There's a lot more involved than simply "I [don't]like it."
Kelly Deck is the director of Kelly Deck Design, based in Vancouver, and the host of Take it Outside on HGTV.
Kelly Deck