It Starts Before You Shop
Most people approach a room the wrong way. They find a sofa they love, buy it, and then try to build everything else around it. That approach leads to spaces that feel disjointed — rooms full of beautiful individual pieces that never quite speak to each other.
Layering is different. It starts with a feeling, not a piece of furniture. Before I select a single item for a client, I spend time asking: how should this room feel at 7am? At 10pm? On a Sunday morning when no one is rushing anywhere?
The Foundation Layer
Every well-layered room begins with what I call the foundation layer — the large, anchoring elements that set the tone. This is your sofa, your rug, your primary light source. These pieces do not need to be the most exciting things in the room. In fact, the quieter they are, the more room they give everything else to breathe.
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The Mid Layer: Where Personality Lives
This is where the room starts to feel like someone actually lives in it. Side tables, accent chairs, throw pillows, plants. These are the pieces that hold the stories — the vintage find from a weekend market, the chair you reupholstered in a fabric that made no logical sense but felt completely right.
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The Top Layer: The Finishing Details
Art. Objects. Books. Candles. The things you place on a surface, not because a stylist told you to, but because they mean something. This layer is the hardest to teach because it is the most personal — and it is also the most forgiving. You can rearrange it, swap it out, and evolve it over time without touching anything structural.
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The Rule I Always Come Back To
When a room feels off and I cannot immediately identify why, I look at the layering. Nine times out of ten, one of three things is missing: warmth in the textiles, variation in the heights of objects, or something organic — a plant, a stone, a piece of wood that has not been perfectly finished.
The goal is never perfection. The goal is a room that feels like it has been lived in thoughtfully over time, even if it was designed in four weeks.
