Proper arrangement can take ordinary clutter and organize it into wonderful still lifes that lend that designer look to a room. I call this proper arrangement "merchandising."
I worked in New York between theater seasons as a window dresser for department stores. My job was to move merchandise by making it scream "Buy me!" Many of the tricks I learned from merchandising department stores are tips that I later used on my television show.
Merchandising your home is the key to arranging your belongings into groupings that make sense and look fabulous, and there are several basic principles that you'll need to know. Here's where to start:
Nothing brings more interest to objects than varying their placement at different heights. A great example of using different levels for display is a buffet table at a quality hotel during Sunday brunch. The tables are arranged at about the four-foot-high level. The food and serving dishes are at various levels, with fresh produce and flowers tucked here and there. If the food were displayed on the table at one level, it wouldn’t look half as great and you probably wouldn’t want to shell out the twenty-five bucks it’s costing you.
