HOW TO Make Over Any Room

Add instant style and a personal touch to blank walls with paintings, books, keepsakes and more.

- MONIQUE VALERIS

Display books like art.

For the library in their Upstate New York farmhouse, Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason of AphroChic let their love of the written word and their passion for African Diaspora culture guide their colorful arrangement of books, peppered with sculptures and paintings they’ve collected. “We are lovers of books, so they are displayed so we can see and experience the covers as works of art as well,” Hays says.

Put paintings in unexpected places. 

“I wanted the bathtub to be a showstopping moment, and with the ceilings being so high, the wall called for an extra-large piece to be installed,” says designer Hattie Collins of Hattie Sparks Interiors. An abstract print by Mallory Page fit the bill, since it doesn’t compete with the botanical wallpaper from House of Hackney.

USE ART TO WARM UP A NEUTRAL ROOM.

Kitchens don’t have to feel sterile. Designer Natasha Habermann chose to “soften” the look of painter Grace B. Keogh’s kitchen with the painter’s own art. “I like to treat a kitchen more like a living space than solely a working/cooking space,” Habermann says. “The painting transforms the room’s overall tone into one that’s more visually striking.”

GO FRAMELESS. 

Enjoy the liberty of rotating photos regularly with a DIY collage made with a two-by-four, nails, string and clothespins. “It really added a lot of life and story to our living room,” says photographer Lumalia Armstrong of Celebrate Again.