Picture Perfect

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them" 

Joseph Brodsky

I think we can all blame print media, television fast renovation shows, the Internet and our general love of a pretty picture for the emphasis on decorating and styling a house. I don't go shopping a lot, but when I do and I venture into one of those homemaker type big box stores I usually leave feeling almost ill over the sheer volume of decorative stuff that is being sold to people, quite obviously on a seasonal basis.


via @sophiepatersoninteriors instagram account


Don't even get me started on television shows like "The Block" that promote fast turnaround, unrealistic budgets, little thought to design and interiors slanted to the demands of the real estate market rather than real living.


 Good design is available at any price point if you search it out. But when you're frittering away $20, $50, $100 or so on some cheap cushions and a couple of brass knick knacks, it doesn't seem like a big deal, and maybe you'll end up with a pretty vignette to put on Instagram. 



Design is not decoration (decoration is the surface stuff). It's about getting the fundamentals right. I become very frustrated that often decorative schemes are lauded in many of the lower end home decoration magazines on the basis of how they look in the often very manipulated picture, and they may have fundamentally some very poor design underlying it all. At the heart of the way our very visual society values things we have a tendency to laud the designers and decorators and stylists that give a pretty picture. But a year after the pictures are published in a magazine the fabric that was chosen that is supposed to be for light duty domestic use and that has been placed in a heavy duty commercial environment has fallen apart and needs to be replaced… or the paint is peeling off the spray painted plastic animal collection quirkily placed on a bookshelf… or the books on the bookshelf used purely as decor where all the spines are turned to the back of the shelf so all you see are pages… these things all look great in a photographic image, but in reality frustrate and irritate.



It's long been a fascination of mine to analyse an interiors image to see what is likely always there and what has been created for the photo shoot. Some of those clues are contained in the text - pieces of furniture/ accessories/ art that are credited in a magazine are often borrowed for the shoot. Often these items are sourced from the big advertisers in the magazine, but certainly a lot of styling has gone on that bears no correlation between every day life and the perfect picture. Other things require a little more observation - chairs that block doors/stairs/ halls, or things obviously moved into position for a photo that would never be there otherwise - like the fully upholstered cross bench stool with attractive vignette styling including an oil painting in a shower alcove as pictured below.

I have always viewed interiors photos with a healthy dose of scepticism, much as you do a catalogue photo for a fashion label - the model is probably not having such a good time when she's laughing beachside in the middle of winter in a sundress. But it's become obvious to me that a lot of people are perhaps more susceptible to this sort of suggestive imagery as portraying and projecting their future perfect real life.

I once had a client for a project I worked on in Melbourne wanting to cancel the sofas we'd already ordered based on a photograph from an advertisement of a leather sofa she'd spied in a magazine. It was a close up photo of a young woman snuggled up on a leather sofa with a little girl next to her, both wrapped in a cashmere blanket and smiling blissfully and tenderly at one another. You could see a corner of the back seat cushion and a corner of the arm of the sofa and that was all. So I called the company (Natuzzi) to ask what the sofa was and to get a full image of it so that we could see what it actually looked like. It was ugly. I sent her an email with the image of the actual sofa, and she was horrified and said it was nothing like she expected it to be. She was happy to go ahead with the original sofas that were already half manufactured.

So what she'd actually been sold on was the image of the smiling mother and child on the sofa, and she was projecting that she'd like to live moments like that in her future. Essentially design and decoration is loaded with all the expectations of special moments we'd like to create, of the way we'd like to live our lives. Big warm family gatherings where everyone is happy and convivial (when in reality you don't get along with your family and Uncle Billy always is drunk), snuggling with the golden child on the sofa, cooking delicious meals from scratch in your enormous and very clean kitchen (when you more often buy takeaway). All these things are loaded into our psyche when viewing images of houses and inserting ourselves into fantasy pictures that many then try to create in their own homes. I've always said that the best thing you can do when starting the design process for anything is to be realistic and honest about how you live - if you don't cook, you're unlikely to start just because you have 2 wide ovens, an inbuilt deep fryer and steam oven.


Real design is about making your life easier - it's not about chairs that block doorways, spray painting something gold from Target for a decor accent or any of the other things that might end up looking good in a photo and being pinned 10,000 on Pinterest. Unfortunately the business of design and decoration and the relatively recent culture of shopping for home items on a seasonal basis has masked the underlying truth - that good design will make your life better, and that it doesn't matter how many throw rugs, coffee table books, turkish towels, diptyque candles and cushions you buy - if you don't fix the underlying problem you'll just be buying more and wondering why it doesn't work. The best house is the one that reflects its owner - not someone else's idea of what is good taste, current fashion or supposed personal interests and hobbies that they don't actually have. And perhaps this is why the images of perfection in magazines are a little like a souffle in reality - pretty but can fall flat in the end.