Creating the “Wow” Factor
What distinguishes a really great, “wow” room from a bland, forgettable, “just okay” room is it's personality. Great rooms have a well-balanced combination of the standards—couch, coffee table, chairs—and the unique, such as mementos, collectibles, treasures. To truly stand out, a room should be a collaboration of found pieces and thoughtful purchases and not just a show room display.
When thinking about furnishing your space, think outside the box. Shop around and explore your options and consider personality. It is easy enough to go to a show room, like the display and say " this is it!", but bring that display home and it is still just a display until you jazz it up and make it your own.
It is easier than ever to find unique, lovely items for your home at great prices if you take some time to look around. Stores such as Winners and Home Sense offer fabulous finds for fantastic deals, bringing magazine-worthy looks to you for a fraction of what they would cost at other specialty stores. Antique stores, flea markets and garage sales offer a fun and quirky array of knick-knacks which indubitably lend a new home that lived-in quality. Stores such as Ikea offer contemporary, well conceptualized items which can stretch your decorating dollar. Open any magazine and inevitably an Ikea purchase has been used to smarten up a fashionable room.
Personalizing is key—the ability to take the mass-produced and customize it to make it your own will give your rooms presence. This is what designers do best—they are able to take the commonplace and tweak it just so in order to customize it for your space and your style. Add moulding to an ordinary book case and, voilà, it is a custom piece which which will have visitors asking "where did you find that?" instead of thinking "oh, I saw that in the flyer the other day."
Stella Severin is a designer in Sherwood Park, Alberta, serving clients in the greater Edmonton area. Her passion for dynamic interiors was sparked by spending countless hours decorating, furnishing and re-arranging, her homemade Barbie houses when she was a young girl, a trait now passed down to her two wonderful daughters. She can be reached at
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