Are you tackling a tricky room layout? Struggling to find the perfect color palette? Wondering how to blend your style with your space? Our in-house interior design expert, Jaclyn Bohn, is here to help!
Through renovating, furnishing, and decorating two of her own houses, Jaclyn has been able to utilize what she’s learned from her experiences to help others not only settle into their homes, but love spending time in them as well.
Submit your design questions here, and let us guide you toward your dream space.
From Storage Solutions to Embracing Old House Charm: Your Biggest Design Questions, Answered
Our in-house design expert Jaclyn Bohn answers readers’ top design questions to help them transform their spaces.
I have a beautiful great room with tall ceilings and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace made of brick. The acoustics are loud and hard on the ears of my veteran spouse. How can I incorporate acoustic tiles or dampening into the room that looks nice to help the echoes and loud sounds? Our house is more farmhouse than it is modern. – Julie T., Concord, NH
Hi Julie! To start, please tell your spouse thank you for their service. Your great room sounds beautiful, but I completely understand the issue you’re facing. Tall ceilings are gorgeous, but they do not do us any favors when it comes to containing an echo. I have a couple of ideas here. First is a little trick that was shared with me when I purchased my home and is something restaurants do to keep the noise from traveling table to table. You can buy adhesive acoustic sounds panels like these and attach them to the bottom of furniture pieces like tables, chairs, or couches. Next, you can purchase a soundproof rug pad, which absorbs ambient noise, to go under your area rug. If you are looking to add some texture to your wall space, you can create a slatted wood accent wall using acoustic wood panels or hang large acoustic wall art. It’s a pretty innovative concept, when you think about how you now can buy oversized art that is attached to a sound-absorbing panel.
Hi! I would love some creative storage ideas for my 6-year-old son’s treasures. We’re talking rocks, gemstones and tons of shells. We have a few organizing bins from the container store, but wall shelving could be cool. – Alisa S., Chappaqua, NY
Thank you, Alisa, for this question! Your son’s treasure collection sounds amazing and all things that should absolutely be displayed and incorporated into the décor. For a more modern style, I like using acrylic wall pockets for kids’ bedroom or playroom toy display. I’ve used these before in client’s homes for Legos or toy cars, but I think adding rocks, gemstones, and shells into these would make them look like wall art. You can also incorporate them into a gallery wall. Another option would be floating display shelves with acrylic apothecary jars. Stay away from glass jars because I imagine your son will want to take them off of the shelves, but acrylic will give the same appearance. On that same note, make sure the shelves are hung low enough that he can reach them! If you hang a couple of shelves, you can use the lower ones for the jars and then the higher ones for decorative playroom accents that he doesn’t necessarily ever need to grab.
What elements would reflect the charm of its age in my 1903 rural farmhouse? – Pam, Kempton
Hi Pam! Without knowing what your house looks like exactly, but assuming it features a blend of Victorian and Colonial influences, I would lean into the existing elements while modifying the space to work for your current needs. Some of the most popular characteristics of early 1900 farmhouses are wide front porches, high ceilings, spacious rooms, exposed woodwork, and crown molding. If your house has any of these, embrace them! These are the elements that people are paying to add into their houses right now, and lucky you, you get to have the true originals. I have owned a 1930s colonial and now own a 1990s colonial farmhouse. In both houses, while I may have updated the floor stain, wall color, and kitchen style to modernize them, I kept the core elements in both homes that were true to that time. I didn’t touch any of the trim or crown molding or even the general layout to keep the homes true to their original architecture. I feel grateful to have inlays in the floors, rosettes in all of the door frames, and dentil molding through the house. I know I would have regretted it down the line if I didn’t embrace these details.
I have really high walls in [my] living room. We have a large mounted TV over the fireplace, but the space above looks bare. What would you recommend putting above a TV? – Katrina, Vista
Hi Katrina. This is a challenge! In this situation, I would suggest creating an “accent wall” behind the TV, from the top of the fireplace all the way up to the ceiling. This should be the width of the fireplace and can be done using wood slats, large format stone or tile, or painted shiplap. Doing this will help create a visual backdrop in the room and break up all of the extra wall space above the TV.