Most rooms that feel “off” aren’t suffering from bad furniture or wrong paint colors. They’re suffering from wrong proportions. Too much of one color, too little of another, competing accents pulling in three directions at once. The room isn’t ugly…

The rooms that stopped you cold — the ones in magazines, in restaurants, in other people’s houses — were not made by people with a gift. They were made by people who know a set of home decorating formulas and…