A small room does not need less decoration. It needs decoration that is not competing with the furniture for floor space, which is a different problem and an easier one to solve.
Go Up, and Go to the Thresholds
Doorways, the tops of bookcases and the wall above a radiator are all surfaces nobody is using in December. A tall standing figure beside a door reads as generous where the same figure in the middle of a room reads as an obstacle, and anything at the top of a shelf is seen from every seat.
One Big Thing Beats Nine Small Ones
Small rooms punish clutter and reward commitment. A single seventy-centimetre gnome by the front door, or one properly dressed tabletop fir, does more than nine scattered ornaments – and it leaves the surfaces you actually use still usable.
Borrow the Window
- A tabletop tree in the window decorates the room and the street at once.
- Glass and mirrored ornaments do most of their work on borrowed light.
- Nothing on the sill you have to move to open it, or it will be moved and not put back.
