The Newly Wedded Apartment - Eliminating Differences in Decor |
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 Give each other some space.
You must get rid of some things (see next tip), but each of you is likely to have at least something you simply can't part with. Confine his "Scarface" and "Reservoir Dogs" posters to one room and your cobalt glass collection to another. Kept apart, the collections make their respective rooms look chic.
Visitors to my last home, in North Carolina, found an obscenely large collection of "Simpsons" memorabilia in one room. Meanwhile, my paintings and vintage photographs stuck to their side of the house.
Put his movie posters in thick black frames and paint the walls behind them tomato red. Sprinkle in some silver framed photos. That adds up to a retro-styled movie room. This is also a great place to stash the television, which one half often bemoans as an eyesore and the other considers a beautiful piece of sculpture.
Know when to say goodbye.
When the casa is really more of a casita, use the same rule you'd apply to accessorizing your outfits: Don't overload. Be willing to edit for the overall health of the relationship -- oops, I mean room design.
You probably don't really need to save every issue of In Style printed since 1993, and he doesn't need to put his hard-earned collection of empty Stoli bottles anywhere but into the recycling bin.
Eliminating the clutter lets you focus on dealing with what's really important to both of you.
Cover up.
Nothing improves offending furniture or trinkets like not being able to actually see them.
Slipcovers are lifesavers when your beloved refuses to part with the tweed couch handed down from his parents that he first made out on. Ditto when you can't concede that lavender floral prints have no place in the home of a male hipster. Find a color and/or pattern that suits both of you (check out www.surefit.net for some ideas) and let the cover-up begin.
Stash piles of gender-oriented possessions in snazzy boxes or starched linen bags from stores. Nobody needs to know that the sleek metal shoe boxes stacked in the corner cradle his collection of shot glasses from Hooters.
Take a romantic trip to Switzerland.
A neutral color palette can save relationships faster than Dr. Phil.
Sure, a brown leather chair would look heinous if paired with the aforementioned brown tweed couches, but imagine how Calvin Klein Home it will look on a creme carpet under framed black-and-white photographs, next to those same couches, now slip-covered in a lovely bisque.
Take a deep breath and remember why you decided to share one roof in the first place.
Before I packed my bags and left the Big Apple, my sister and her sweetie had picked a wall color. Somewhere in between "Touch of Lemon" and "White," they remembered why they were getting married over a swatch of "Creme Brulee."
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