Coffee Table Tips:

Style
Stop looking for "a look". There should be no look to your home, only a style that reflects you. Many people falsely believe that decorating is a matter of finding some sort of theme for their belongings. This doesn't work. Stop trying to make your home something its not. Work with what you have, let the space speak for itself and tell you what it needs. Forcing a space to conform completely to your vision will only come off as fake.

"Done" is not the goal
Your home will never be done. Homes are supposed to move and evolve with the inhabitants; tastes change, needs change, and a home will never be able to be everything you need it to be forever. Work towards a home that expresses who you are now, and how you want to live. Problems arise when everything comes from a single source, whether is be from a mail-order catalogue or a trendy designer showroom. One stop shopping for the home is an absolutely terrible idea. To make your home what you want it to be, its going to take work.

What's personal is more important than what's cool.
Take in what you love, what moves you, what you are passionate about. Forget what you think you should have. Forget trends. Forget what the magazines told you was hip. Make it personal. Your home should be a working portrait of you. Know who you are to a T, and the rest will fall into place accordingly. Stop trying to impress. Impress yourself.

Truly great design is what you would carry out of the house if it were burning down.
Do you love what you have? Often the most innovative designs are the result of a lack of funds, a big mistake, or a need for more time. Mix things; not everything has to be ultra-expensive, or ultra-fantastic. Sometimes the most compelling interiors are a healthy mix of contrasts: the pricey with the cheap, the ugly with the beautiful.

Small spaces
In a prosperous economy, people like to live large. Everything seems to take on larger proportions. Homes and furnishings have grown as well. As homes are sprawling, furniture is being proportionately scaled to complement these new large spaces. Some retailers are even making a speciality of carrying furnishings sized to scale for the magnificent homes that are being built today. That is all well and good, but you've just moved to a tiny apartment. What's out there for you? Until the trend turns around to smaller furnishings, the best idea is to play to the strengths of your apartment and its size.

Eliminate furniture except for the essentials. Keep clutter to a minimum. The more room you have to move around the more spacious your apartment will feel. If you don't have enough storage, use walls and the backs of doors to hang hats, scarves, and throws. Decorative hooks are an apartment dweller's best friend and can be used to hang pots and pans. Shelves can really maximise space and add to the ambience of your apartment.

What is left must bear scrutiny. When you have pared a room down to its essential elements, whatever is left must be able to withstand the spotlight. A small antique table with an interesting shape and polished patina can take on new importance. A colour backdrop on a wall or a piece of fabric used as a throw can draw the eye where you want it to go. If in doubt, throw it out. From a minimalist background, the wrong choice will blare at you like a foghorn.

Draw your home to scale, marking the locations of power outlets, phone lines, windows, doors, fireplaces, and bar areas. Before making a major purchase such as a bed or a sofa, ask to measure the piece and cut out a little paper duplicate to place in your drawing. If it overwhelms the drawing, the real thing will overwhelm the room. Be sure to leave room for other pieces that you may want to add later, such as nightstands, end tables, plant stands.

Scale down where you can. If you don't have room for a table for four, buy a cafe table instead. You can seat four friends at a 42- inch round table, instead of a 48-inch tabletop - you'll just have to leave off the salad and butter plates. Instead of buying the couch, purchase the love seat. Buy furniture that serves two purposes. Can the dining table also serve as a workstation? Can the bed be folded into the wall or into a sofa? Can you play chess on the end table?

Look at spaces in a new way. Look at every nook and cranny. Is there room for a desk in that corner by the stairs? Can that sloping ceiling accommodate a bookcase underneath? Go for untraditional arrangements if they will work better in your space. You don't have to have an end table at each end of the couch, and an ottoman can easily serve as a coffee table with a tray placed on top.

If small isn't for you, then less may be more. You can add drama to a room by having large-scale furniture, but fewer pieces. One large sofa can offer as much comfort as a bed and a sprawling coffee table in front can offer more table-top storage for books, magazines, drinks, and appetisers than several smaller scaled down end tables would.
 

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