Each one has a single thing wrong with it. The rest of the room behaves: the sofa is a fine sofa, the colors get along, nobody chose a bad lamp. What is wrong is a measurement, off by enough to see and not by enough to name, which is exactly the kind of wrong that lives in a room for years without anybody putting a finger on it.
That is the whole point of doing this. A style mistake announces itself. A measurement mistake just makes the room feel slightly unfinished, and you redecorate around it instead of fixing it.
So look at the photograph first. Decide what you would move. Then open the answer and find out whether you were looking at the right thing.
One fault eachThere is exactly one thing wrong per room. Everything you talk yourself out of was probably fine.
The prompt aims youIt tells you which way to look. It never tells you what you are looking for.
The answer has a numberEvery answer ends at a numbered rule, with a link to where that number came from.
JavaScript is off, so there is nothing to press. Every answer is already open under its photograph.
0 of 6 answers open
01 · Living room
What is wrong in this living room?
Where to lookDown. At the floor, and at what is standing on what.
The rug is floating.
Nothing is standing on it but the coffee table. The front legs of the sofa are on bare boards, both armchairs are well clear of it, and at each end the rug stops short of the sofa it is meant to sit in front of. A rug that touches no furniture does not pull a room together. It cuts a hole in the middle of the floor and sits in it, and the room reads smaller than it is.
The number · n01
A rug goes at least as wide as the sofa, better 6 to 12 in wider on each side, with the front legs of the seating standing on it.
The picture sits close above the back of the sofa, not adrift above it.
The coffee table is a reach from the seat, not a walk.
There is room to get around the whole arrangement without turning sideways.
02 · Walls
What is wrong on this wall?
Where to lookThe wall above the sofa. Not the sofa.
The picture is hung too high.
There is a band of blank wall between the top of the sofa and the bottom of the frame wide enough to hang a second picture in. Art over furniture is meant to read as one block with the furniture. Up there the frame has let go of the sofa and is floating on its own, and your eye has to make two stops instead of one. While we are here: that frame is also narrow for the sofa underneath it. Same rule, failing twice.
The number · n10
Art over furniture hangs 6 to 8 in above it, and runs two thirds to three quarters of its width.
On a bare wall the starting point would be the center of the picture at 57 to 60 in from the floor, which is n09. Over a sofa the furniture wins and the center goes lower, because you look at it sitting down. Here the picture misses both, in the same direction: too high.
What this room gets right
The rug runs under the front legs of the seating and out past it.
The coffee table is close enough to put a cup on without standing up.
03 · Windows
What is wrong at this window?
Where to lookThe window. All of it, rod included.
There is not enough curtain.
Two narrow strips of fabric hang either side of the glass with no gather in them at all. Look along either panel: it goes from shadow to light in one smooth sweep, with not a single fold in it. Put the two together and they barely make the width of the window they are supposed to be able to close over. That is a pair of flat sheets pinned to a wall. The rod, this time, is innocent: it is mounted above the trim and it carries well past the frame on both sides, which is what you want it to do.
The number · n13
The panels have to add up to two to two and a half times the width of the window. Fullness is the whole job. Flat panels look like bedsheets.
If you went for the rod instead, that rule is n12: as close to the ceiling as the bracket allows, never less than 4 to 6 in above the frame, brackets 4 to 10 in past the frame on each side. Worth knowing, and not the fault here.
What this room gets right
The hems reach the floor instead of stopping short of it.
The rod runs past the trim on both sides, so the daylight is not being blocked by the fabric.
04 · Living room
What is wrong in this room?
Where to lookBetween the sofa and the table. At the empty part.
The coffee table is out of reach.
You would have to stand up to put a cup down. There is a whole field of rug between the seat and the table, and past a certain gap the two stop being a group and turn into two pieces of furniture sharing a floor. A coffee table exists for the person sitting down. If they cannot reach it sitting down it is a plant stand, and the sofa is left with nowhere to put anything.
The number · n04
14 to 18 in from the front of the sofa to the coffee table. Close enough to reach a glass without standing, far enough to get past without a bruised shin.
The rug is big enough to hold the whole arrangement, sofa and table both.
The picture over the sideboard sits close above it.
Nothing here is fighting for the walkway. There is only the one gap, and it is in the wrong place.
05 · Dining room
What is wrong in this dining room?
Where to lookUp. Then back down at the table.
The pendant never came down.
It is tight against the plaster with no cord showing. From a chair it lights the ceiling and the top of your head, and the table is left to whatever the window sends it. Hung up there it is a ceiling light wearing a better shade, which is the one thing a pendant is bought not to be. A pendant has to come down far enough to make a pool of light on the table and still leave two people able to see each other across it.
The number · n18
The bottom of the pendant sits 30 to 36 in above the table, and the shade runs half to two thirds of the table width. Light on the food, not in the eyes.
The pendant is centered over the table. Height is its only problem.
The chairs stand on the rug rather than half on and half off it.
The picture over the sideboard sits close above it.
06 · Bedroom
What is wrong beside this bed?
Where to lookBoth sides of the bed. Compare them.
The right nightstand is too tall.
Its top has climbed nearly to the top of the headboard, well above the mattress. Reaching a glass of water from lying down means reaching up and over, which is how glasses of water end up on floors. The one on the left is the control: a top your hand finds without your head leaving the pillow. The two do not match each other, and that is not the mistake. There is no rule on this site about nightstands matching.
The number · n20
The top of the nightstand sits level with the mattress, give or take 2 in. That is the height your hand goes to in the dark.
The lamp went up with the chest, which is the second thing you pay for. A bedside lamp wants the bottom of its shade at chin height when you are sitting up reading, and that is n21.
What this room gets right
The picture over the headboard sits close above it.
The rug carries on past the side of the bed and past its foot.
The left nightstand is exactly where it should be, which is what makes the right one so easy to see once you know.
You lived with worse than any of these and never said a word.
What you were actually doing
Six rooms, and not one of them a matter of taste
Nobody in these photographs made a style decision you could argue with. The sofas are fine sofas. The pictures are pictures. What went wrong in all six was a distance or a height, and every one of them is the kind of thing a person walks past every day for a year without ever quite naming it.
That is why the numbers are worth carrying around. You cannot hold a decorating philosophy in your head at eight in the morning in a furniture store, but you can hold six numbers. And once you know what a rug is supposed to touch, and how far a table sits from a knee, you stop looking at rooms and start reading them, which is either a gift or a mild curse depending on the evening.
There are thirty of these. Six of them just cost you six photographs.
