Q.

A. Marie Claire, thanks so much for writing in. We have been observing that the decorating distinction between a fine boutique hotel -- featuring all the amenities of home -- and fine home design -- featuring suites of furniture and boutique hotel amenities -- is becoming quite blurred. We hope that changes.

Call us old fashioned, but we're of the school that says that unless you want to decorate to look like the Presidential or the Royal Suites at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, you should avoid having your home decor sing the Boutique Hotel Blues. Let's let some photographs do the talking, shall we? Here are some scenes from both suites at the Waldorf:

Contrast these pictures with photos from contemporary boutique hotels:

Did you notice the difference? At the Waldorf, designers chose eclectic arrangements, and each piece of furniture had a distinct contribution towards making not only the room function well, but for the entire design scheme to jump with joy. The boutique hotel photos showed matching and well-coordinated furnishings and accessories that robbed the rooms of any character or uniqueness. There is also a trend to design boutique hotel rooms with mid-century coolness, right down to the Jonathan Adler knockoff vases, and it's become so prevalent that Boutique Cool has morphed into Boutique Sterile.

Waldorf = Beauty & Personality

Boutique Hotel = Matchy-Match & Mass-Produced Look

Hospitality decorating, even in a wonderful boutique hotel, usually errs on making the same kind of furniture suites for multiple rooms, with the same kind of coordinating accessories and bedding. It's fine if you're traveling on business and you only have to stay in that environment for a day or a week, but it would be sheer boredom if you had to call this environment your home.

We recommend mixing up your design choices. Choose some inexpensive furniture and accessories, like a bookshelf from Target, a club chair from Crate & Barrel, the Horizons Studio buffet from Ethan Allen, and funky accessories from Urban Outfitters. Or go crazy at local auction houses and flea markets and get true "finds" that ooze quirkiness and warmth. Then go shopping for some antique and used furniture pieces that add patina and beauty to your rooms. We recommend spending more than you think you can afford to get a few very special things that will immediately become a room's focal point and conversation starter. Coordinate wall colors and coverings, window treatments, and accessories like rugs and pillows with your mix of items so they all come together as a whole.

And what if you had a few one-of-a-kind items for each of your rooms? New Yorker Pamela Bell's muslin upholstered sofa and wing-back chair got a revved-up look (see below) when she invited her child's entire class over to graffitti-it-up and embellish it with colors, autographs, drawings, and sayings. You won't find these furniture items in a hotel, but it's this kind of uniqueness and energy that makes a home something personal.

Diversify your design choices, listen to your decorator's good advice, and work with her or his vision to create a unique space that reflects you and your family's tastes and personalities. And know that you don't want to live in a hotel room when you can more comfortably and sanely have your own unique-looking home. Good luck!

Photo credits: About.com, Shoreham Hotel, Blue Ant Studio, Professional Travel Guide, NYTimes.com

A. For a more comprehensive response to you, Stephan, and for the many other feng-shui curious out there, we invited our Design2Share feng shui expert DeAnna Radaj, of Bante Design and 3E Products, to give us a special Feng Shui for Guys primer on the subject. Take it away, DeAnna!

Fung . . . feng . . . schmuck . . . what? I’ve been asked what feng shui is by many men. I've been met with their quizzical stares, raised eyebrows, and a WHATEVER roll of the eyes when conducting an introductory class or arriving at a client’s home. Husbands and other male significant others who haven’t been to one of my workshops or read a feng shui book or even heard the term are often mystified by their partner's new passion for "creating a positive energy flow throughout their space."

When men look at me -- the Feng Shui Lady -- like I’m crazy, I quickly describe my credentials as a designer, name drop some clients or projects I’ve worked on, and go on to explain the "what's and how's" of the feng shui changes that I will be making in their office, media room, or bedroom. If the guys don’t have to move a lot of furniture, buy new furniture, or tear down a wall, I’m usually good to go in their eyes! 

But while the realm of the home and its design and furniture purchases are usually up to women, men quickly learn that they can benefit as much, if not more from utilizing feng shui principles. These principles include:

• De-cluttering
• Proper space planning
• Color scheme analysis
• Accessorizing

When considering design from a man’s perspective, let’s focus on the home or business office, den, garage (yes, you can feng shui a garage), basement, game room (or "man cave"), or even a boat!

To begin, here's a quick review of feng shui from my book Designing the Life of Your Dreams from the Outside In:

1. Feng shui is a Chinese tradition that focuses on living in harmony with your environment, whether it's at home, work, or school.
2. Feng shui is how you interact with your surroundings, which can be done through your furniture arrangements, color schemes, accessories, and collections choices. These choices can either block or improve your energy (chi).
3. When the energy in your space flows freely, life is fabulous, things get finished on time, and you feel happy and eager to learn new things about yourself. However, when your energy is blocked, you feel overwhelmed, unhappy, and drained.
4. Literally translated, feng shui means "wind and water." Feng shui was actually started as a way to identify or select auspicious (ideal/positive) grave sites in China over 5,000 years ago. It was thought that the better the position of the grave site, the better the fortunes of the remaining family members.
5. There are three schools of feng shui: the Form School (the oldest), the Compass School (the one most people think of when thinking of feng shui; it uses a compass called a lo-pan), and the Black Hat Sect School or Bagua School. I have been schooled in the third discipline, and that is the one I will be discussing.

The bagua is a key part of the discipline I've been taught for practicing feng shui. Bagua is a Chinese word that translates as "an 8-sided figure" or octagon shape. In feng shui, the bagua is divided into segments, like a pie, with a separate center piece, giving you nine areas in all. Think of a tic-tac-toe board within a stop-sign shape. These nine areas have historically been assigned names, colors, shapes, and an element that corresponds to a specific life area. The bagua board can be used to plan spaces, accessorize, and pick the color scheme of a home, room, desk, classroom, lunchroom, bed, or garden. The nine life areas of the bagua are:

1. Career/Life Path
2. Knowledge/Spirituality
3. Family
4. Wealth/Abundance
5. Success/Fame/Luck
6. Relationships
7. Creativity/Kids
8. Helpful People/Travel
9. Health/Well-Being

When I use the bagua board in working with a personal space, I line up the bottom row of the octagon shape -- covering the Knowledge/Spirituality, Career/Life Path, and Helpful People/Travel areas -- with the entryway wall of the room, garden, or space. Indoors, you draw the floor plan of your room or a bird’s-eye view, including the doorway and windows, and then plot or draw the corresponding life areas from the bagua around the perimeter of the room.

Here's an easy way to visualize this process: Stand in the entryway of your room and look INTO the space to get the right perspective on how we lay out rooms according to feng shui principles. If the door or entryway is in the LEFT corner as you're looking into the room, you enter the room from the Knowledge/Spirituality area. If you enter the room from the CENTER of the entryway wall, you enter from the Career/Life Path area. Or if you enter the room from the RIGHT corner, you enter the room from the Helpful People/Travel area.

This orientation of the bagua based on how you enter your space will help you in plotting out the rest of the space. A feng shui practitioner will superimpose the bagua and its nine different tic-tac-toe areas over your floor plan and see what “areas” need to be worked on or what areas you’d like to work on. Feng shui gives you a methodology to analyze furniture placement, accessories, and piles of clutter. Once you get the concept of the bagua and how to properly line up its grid of nine spaces, you can work on any space and be able to identify its nine different life areas.

When we have the bagua board plotted out on your floor plan, we can then "activate" these areas by using the element, color, shape, item, or direction that is associated with that particular life area. An example: pink hearts can be used in the Relationship area or a coin dish can be placed in the Wealth/Abundance section. Here's a handy guide to the areas:

Wealth/Abundance, Success/Fame, Relationships

Purple/Metallic, Red, Red/Pink/Peach

Water Element, Fire Element, Earth Element

Wavy Lines, Triangles, Squares

SE, S, SW

Family, Health/Well-Being, Creativity/Kids

Green, Yellow/Earth tones, White/Metallic

Wood Element, Earth Element, Metal Element

Rectangles, Squares, Circles

E, Center, W

Knowledge/Spirituality, Career/Life Path, Helpful People/Travel

Blue, Black, Gray

Earth Element, Water Element, Metal Element

Squares, Wavy Lines, Circles

NE, N, NW

This "grid" of life areas can be applied to any space -- anywhere and for anyone. So how can you use the bagua to help improve your life -- because that's what feng shui is all about, bottom line? Let’s apply feng shui principles to a home office and see how it can help. One of my clients is a busy doctor and his office reflects that: piles of paperwork and medical books everywhere. Although walking into the room causes me to hyperventilate because everything is a big mess, the good doctor states that he "knows where everything is." Does that sound familiar?

Once we superimposed the bagua on the floor plan of his house, we discovered that his office is in RELATIONSHIP area of the floor plan. It was easy to make the following feng shui calls:

1. The clutter and chaos in this area can have an impact on all romantic, business, and legal relationships.
2. The goal was not to turn his office into a shrine to his ROMANTIC relationship, but rather to create a space that was designed to facilitate work while reinforcing family relationships. According to feng shui principles, adding some pictures of the doctor and his wife is very appropriate.
3. The office was repainted in a red-orange color called Serape (a Sherwin Williams paint color) to accent the EARTH element. This was in contrast to the original white walls.
4. The accessories that decorated the office -- college diplomas, family pictures, and travel souvenirs -- are all staying, although I moved them to their appropriate areas in the space according to the bagua. For example, pictures of the doctor and his wife are being moved to the RELATIONSHIP area of the room, his children’s’ photos have been repositioned to the CREATIVITY/KIDS area, and those of his Mother to the FAMILY area of the office. The home office room is graced with a huge window that aligns with the FAMILY area; it has a wide sill that I used to display photos of all family members.

Although we're still working on the clutter and office reorganization, the whole energy in the room is different. The pictures were rearranged before the doctor came home, so I was curious as to his reaction. When he walked into his office, he immediately realized the difference in the photo placement. He was so pleased that he took it upon himself to move the rest of the photos, and removed more clutter from the windowsill so even more family photos could be displayed!

Gentlemen, here are some general feng shui guidelines for your home or office:

  Purge all items that you don’t LOVE, USE, or NEED.

  Use the bagua board as your guide in placing your accessories and choosing colors.

  Take into account the function of the space and make sure the accessories are appropriate.

An "out of the box" feng shui project began when a client asked if I could “feng shui their boat." Always up for a challenge, I said "Of course!" Unlike working on the office, there were specific goals to be met. They included: being more organized; winning some big fishing tournaments; and encouraging more family togetherness, as this is a second marriage and a blended family. After doing some research (and there wasn’t much that I found on boats), it was determined that the bow or pointy front part of the boat should face DOWN or towards the Career area of the bagua board. So if you're going to feng shui any size or type of boat, this is how you should orient the boat’s floor plan with the bagua. The Career area then is "where the journey starts" and shows you "where you are going." This is perfect, as this area corresponds to the Water Element.

(NOTE: Not all areas of the bagua board are discussed in this example. I’ve only highlighted specific nautical examples and areas that my client requested, but you can use the bagua board as your guide to personalize any boat.)

The Knowledge area of the boat was the perfect place for a conch shell filled with sand to represent the Earth Element and in nautical terms "the time element which is associated with old age and wisdom." A small globe/map would also be ideal here, as it also represents the earth and "wisdom that has been accumulated through the ages." This is also an ideal area to store binoculars, as they are symbolic of the "union of the two eyes for perfect extended vision." A crystal hanging here would also be ideal, as it also represents the Earth Element and creates a positive energy movement.

A picture of the blended family, happy and smiling, in a wood and/or green frame to make the most of everything that activates the Family area should be placed on the wall or in a bookcase in this area. Photos of happy and smiling family members with the boat's owner in the pictures literally represent a happy family.

This is a key feng shui point, guys! What you surround yourself with and focus your attention on, comes into your life. Therefore, decorate your home, office, and other spaces by putting your ATTENTION on your INTENTION. If you want better relationships with your family, look around and see happy family photos on display. Do you have these photos out and on display? Who is pictured in the photos? Do you all look happy? Take this opportunity to remedy the situation if you don't have the right things on display. In addition, anything related to knots and the tying of knots can be placed here, as knots are representative of the Wood Element.

The Success/Fame area of my client's boat, typically where the motor is located on speed or motor boats, is activated by Fire Element, the color red and anything that moves (i.e. the motor/rudder). A red ribbon or string placed on a table can help "activate" this area. Ideally, you also need something that represents the Wood Element to "mitigate" between the Water and the Fire Elements of this area. If you don’t have anything to represent the Wood Element, instead of a red ribbon, use green. In my client’s case, I had them take pictures of themselves with fish they had caught in past tournaments along with family photos taken on boating trips. These pictures were then hung in the cabin and in the living quarters of the lower level.

The Creativity/Kids area of the boat corresponds with metal, the color white/gray and the shape of a circle. Keep all metal fixtures bright and shiny and in good working order. A wind chime with a ship’s wheel with 8 points, painted in blue would be excellent here. If you can’t find that specific chime, any nautical theme item would work. I like wind chimes because they can stir up positive energy and disperse any negativity.

Using figurines or pictures of "helpful people" can activate the Helpful People/Travel area. The ideal object to be placed here is the Mazu goddess of the sea! The Goddess Mazu appears in government papers, court documents, and seafaring logbooks. She is worshipped by many in China and other countries with over 100 million devotees worldwide. She was deemed the Goddess of the Sea for her benevolence in assisting those in seafaring mishaps. Many people believe that when one is facing great difficulty, one can call her by the name "Mazu" and she will immediately come to the rescue. A barometer also can be placed in this area as this indicates the pressure and likely sea conditions so that a sea journey can be planned in advance and with care. Depending on the size of the boat, you can also place photos of places you’ve already sailed to or would like to sail to (again, the Travel aspect).

In general for good boat feng shui:

• Keep all metal fixtures/accessories bright and shiny
• Keep all storage areas clean and free of clutter 

Boats and home offices are just two examples where feng shui can help play a part in benefiting your personal space. Whether you're trying to de-clutter an office to find files and increase efficiency, redesign a den or media room for big Game Day parties, or feng shui a boat to win a big fishing tournament, using basic feng shui principles can help. Upon seeing and feeling the results of using these principles on their spaces, many of my male "converts" now won't let their wives/girlfriends move or buy anything without "DeAnna’s permission," and they now talk about feng shui without rolling their eyes, wholeheartedly joining in the process!

Photo credits: Fortunate Blessings, Picasa Web, Fast Feng Shui, Vista Villas, The Petri Project, Taiwan Veterans, WSFS

A. Many thanks for the jpg. It was well done and very helpful. Here are some comments we can make about your bedroom, and we are relying on the practical feng shui advice and principles we learned during a tour and classes in China in the 1990s. There are many good books and websites you can turn to for further help, including Clear Engelbert's Bedroom Feng Shui (see cover below).

1. Your choice of furniture is good. Square and rectangular shapes in furniture belong in bedrooms. Avoid circles.

2. The head of your bed should be backed up by a wall, and never a window or a mirrored wall. Don't have anything above your bed, like a skylight, a beam, a hanging lamp, mirrors, or a plant.

3. Try not to place your bed under a slanting or lower portion of the ceiling. It will "oppress you," according to feng shui observations.

4. The most fortunate spot in the room, with your entry door being at the NW corner, is right where your closet or bathroom is -- precisely the area of the closet or bathroom behind the door when it opens. (We couldn't tell if that bump-out room in your drawing was a walk-in closet or a bathroom.) So that's a shame that such an auspicious place is not somewhere in your bedroom.

BUT the next most fortunate area in your bedroom is in the NE corner, directly opposite the door.

5. Try putting your nightstand in that NE corner with a lamp on it (rectangular shade if possible). Your bed should be with your head against the East wall and you're exactly facing the door.

Please note: That puts you in the luckiest area of your bedroom, but it also puts you in the direct path of your door. That may not give you the most restful sleep since the energy or qi flows into your room through that main passage door. You might want to have a little study area in the fortunate NE corner and have a small desk facing the door with the chair against the East wall. This would energize your home business and studies. Or you could set up a shrine or meditation area there and it will be very auspicious.

It's fortunate that a bed isn't like a toilet, as our resident design expert Irwin Weiner ASID puts it -- you can move your bed around and experiment, but you're stuck with your toilet being hooked up to your plumbing! Your most restful sleeping spot will probably be with the head of the bed against the partial wall in your bedroom, against the closet or bathroom in your drawing (that would be placing the head of the bed on the West edge of your room, facing East.

That is a neutral space in the room according to feng shui layouts based on main doors in the NW corner. It's not lucky or semi-lucky, but the areas in the middle of the East wall, the SE corner, and the SW corner are unlucky areas according the the siting principles of feng shui, so we wouldn't want you to sleep there. Use those areas for storage, dressers, bookshelves, etc. Don't sleep, study, read, or meditate in those unfortunate areas.

We think feng shui should not dictate how you should live your life or lay out your furniture. You won't have dire consequences if you make an unfortunate furniture placement. But you might sleep restlessly or not feel wonderful, and these are conditions you can experiment with. Here are our recommendations:

Step One: Try placing your bed facing the door in the NE corner for one week.

Step Two: Then try moving it to the West wall, just out of sight of the door when you walk into your bedroom, for one week.

Step Three: Compare the two weeks and your sleep experiences during those two weeks. You might want to keep a sleep diary or journal and record your dreams, overall sleeping experiences, and how you feel upon waking up and during the day. Which week gave you the more relaxing and healthy sleep? Which week gave you days that felt better, more productive, and perhaps even luckier?

Step Four: Place your bed where you had the best experiences!

And here are some other recommendations about bedrooms we learned on our China tour and classroom experience:

Try not to add a TV to your bedroom, as it's usually not a good thing for sleep. If you do have one, hopefully you can have it in a cabinet that you can close up with doors before you sleep.

We're not a huge fan of your bed style, by the way! Beds should be above the floor at least one hand's length, but not higher than two feet. It's good to have air circulating around the bed and mattress. But we do like the fact that you don't have round posts, canopies, or overly-done decorations with your bed. That's very good according to feng shui principles.

Keep your colors subtle and neutral in the bedroom to keep sleep relaxing and quiet. Add inspiring, beautiful artwork or posters.

This is your wonderful, personal retreat, and we hope these tips help you have a wonderful life and a healthy evening sleep!

  Do you have a question for the Design2Share decorating team? Write to us at info@design2share.com.

Q.

You obviously feel comfortable in the space, and we feel strongly that you should put a lot of effort in getting it to function well for you and your family.

Unfortunately, owing to its size, there will need to be some compromising. In other words, you might not have as many dining chairs if the space were to be used solely as a dining area, or it might not be as comfortable for a huge crowd were to be used only for lounging. The following picture shows a very elegant small dining room area with a fireplace and a mix of chair that can be rearranged for lounging, conversation, reading, and dining.

Without seeing your floor plan and knowing more about how many people dine together regularly in the space, we recommend the following:

1. The dining table should be a round table with extensions. That will allow you to flex up or down for different numbers of diners. Here are some round dining table resources:

Avetex Furniture has a variety of round and oval contemporary dining tables with extensions (see photo above). You can choose the finish to blend in best with your decor: cherry, wenge, or natural.

Berry Design is a UK firm that will make simple oak round and oval dining room tables to the specific dimensions of your living space. The above photo shows an ideal dining grouping in front of a fireplace, but note the larger chair against the wall -- we'll talk about that later!

Calligaris has their Atelier Round Dining Table in both light cherry and wenge wood finishes. The photo above shows their simple and elegant table with an extension added, to create a larger oval.

The photo above shows the elegant and green Knu Dining Table #1, made from Forest Stewardship Council certified wood and sporting 6 eco-friendly veneer options.

Baker Furniture has this elegant Noir Dining Table in their Laura Kirar Collection. We liked the above photo showing a more conversational arrangement at this dining table with an eclectic mix of chair and accessories to deephasize its use as a dining table when you would like to focus on reading, conversation, homework, playing a board game, or doing your taxes.

2. There should be two large chairs that you can use both for dining and lounging. Wing chairs are comfortable for both lounging and dining. The table should be placed against a wall, with the two chairs at the table, opposite each other, and a small bench under the table, opposite the wall. Here are some recommendations:

Philippe Starck's Prive Caprice dining chairs for Cassina are elegant in black or white nylon or leather (see above).

The Calligaris Wing Chair (above) is a simple seating solution that works well for both conversation and dinner groupings.

Hannes Wettstein's sensuous Ariane Chair (above) from Cassina is a practical solution for dining rooms. Its fabric or leather covers are removable for easy cleaning and its aluminum legs and steel frame are extra sturdy.

West Elm's economical Garvey Leather Dining Chairs (above) are upholstered in an easy to clean, stainproof chocolate leather for practical daily use.

The Nelson Bench (above) is in the style of the classic George Nelson Bench and it comes in three different sizes.

Offi's Upholstered Bench Box with a lovely wool cushion made us smile. What a fun and whimsical element to any dining room! Use the box portion to store reading material or whatever suits your fancy. And the wheels allow the piece to be moved around your room, wherever you need the seating.

You can't go wrong buying furniture at a good auction house or antique gallery. You will get your pieces from reputable sources and learn more about the history of a piece -- and you are recycling some great design. The above photo shows a Treadway/Toomey Galleries 1950s Steelcase style upholstered bench.

3. Decorate with chairs and a table that are relatively easy to move around in the room in case you’re having more guests. The weight of the chairs and/or the floor covering can impact this. If you have an even floor surface, which also applies to carpeting, you can purchase furniture gliders for installing underneath table and chair legs for easy furniture rearranging.

4. Upholstering inexpensive folding chairs with the same fabric as the large chairs works well when having more company. Don’t forget, that adding a desk chair or mixing and matching any other chairs around a table when company arrives is acceptable, too.

The above photo shows Tracy Porter's teriffic Returning Home folding chair with her Countryside Chair Cushion. Even a cushion done in the same fabric as what you might be using in the rest of the room can add a touch of elegance to your dining scene. The elegant black-and-white drapery fabric in the photo at the beginning of this entry was carried over into the chair upholstery, and that's a great decorating look.

Enjoy your beautiful dining room, Susan, and thanks for writing in to us!

  Do you have a question for the Design2Share decorating team? Write to us at info@design2share.com.

Q.

A. Donna, thank you for your question. If your son is spending good money to make the home purchase in the first place, this design glitch should not hold him back in any way. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.

We advise him to spend a bit more money to have a carpenter come in and add some sheetrock to the niche and make whatever sizing adjustment he needs to fit a new flatscreen.

There are certain types of televisions, like the LCD models for example, that feature speakers at the bottom of the TV rather than on either side. If your son goes with one of these sets, then it's not quite so horizontal a shape that you will need to fill in with your carpentry work. That tallness to the screen and speakers would help fill the existing niche space better. Just leave the back void and pack it forward with a piece of plywood and attach the TV to that.

Another good solution is to buy some broad casing material -- the wood molding that goes around a door -- and with some of this five- or six-inches-wide material, you can reshape that opening. It would cover the sheetrock on the left and right, but it would cover the void in the wall on the top and bottom of the new TV opening.

Then you would have your plasma or LCD screen showing within a picture frame.

One point to consider with plasma screens is that they usually don't have attached speakers. You will have other speakers in the room, and near the screen you will mount your Center Channel speaker. You can use a portion of the existing niche to mount the Center Channel speaker either above or below the plasma screen, filling in the rest of the niche/void as we've described above.

There are other creative options to using the existing niche to best advantage. Audio groups or sometimes millworkers can make the TV screen disappear behind a mechanized panel that slides along steel tracks and is operated by remote control. In a great article from This Old House, they describe a custom panel made for a homeowner with the monitor ventilated through a series of holes drilled into the wooden box that holds it, as well as through the door mechanism.

The FASTFRAME people have a nifty mechanical solution called VisionArt, and they are serious about hiding flatscreens. With their service, you can create a custom picture frame, select artwork (many are signed-by-the-artist limited editions), and use your TV remote control to turn your set on and off as you always do -- only your canvas-based artwork automatically rolls up and away for tube viewing and rolls back down to conceal your screen when you switch off.

In this photo, clever tri-fold shutters are used to close off and conceal the TV screen above a fireplace. This is a great non-mechanical stow-away solution.

Campbell & Strasser recently demonstrated to us a simple sliding mirrored panel that they created, easily slid up and down by hand, concealing a flatscreen over a fireplace. The mirror-encased-in-molding-and-mounted-on-a-vertical-sliding-panel solution was very clever, and their architectural woodworking is excellent.

Donna, many thanks for writing in to us at Design2Share. We hope your son proceeds with his home purchase -- and happy renovating!

  Watch our Design2Share Q&A video on the Value of a Fireplace to get more great ideas about decorating in and around your hearthside.

Photo Credits: ajc, eCoustics, This Old House

Q.

A. Dorothy, thank you for your question. Sometimes when we look around stores we often wonder how can we get unscented candles. Scented candles seem to be everywhere these days, and sometimes we yearn for a simple lit taper or columnar candle that delights the eye and leaves the nose alone. Most stores do carry unscented candles, fortunately, and 100 Candles is one of many good online resources for ordering.

But many people love fragrance. Look in your local grocery store and you will see an entire section of the household products aisle dedicated to home fragrance. There are sprays, plug-in scents, and now scented oil candles. Glade makes a line of such candles, and click on this Epinions link to read a consumer review of these Glade products. The consensus seems to be that these are more expensive than scented candles and do not last as long (only about 3 hours), but many of the fragrances are quite special.

Most stores that cater to home goods will carry some types of scented candles. Now is the perfect time to purchase them as many are on sale after the holidays. Start shopping now! We recommend these resources.

• Yankee Candle -- they have a huge selection, as well as the intriguing Scentstories fragrance disks
• Illuminations -- another group with a huge selection, and we like their handblown glass accessories
• Zionsville Candle -- we liked their natural soy candles and their Contemporary/Spa line looks fab
• Candlemart -- their Apple Jel Candle with Apple Topper looked like a real cutie to us
• HomeGoods -- their inventory is constantly changing; check their website for the nearest store
• Pottery Barn -- their Luminary Candlepots (see photo below) are wonderful
• Anthropologie -- we're mad about their Archipelago Monogram Candles and Aunt Sadie's Grass Candle
• Target -- we think their CandleTini line is a hoot, scented candles in martini glasses
• Candelicious -- their triple-scented candles apparently blast out the fragrance
• Kmart -- an upscale Scented Soy Jar Candles line boasts amazing names like "Be Loved" and "Joyful Soul" (see photo above)
• Wal-Mart -- we were very impressed with their scent-tastic line of Lauren Nichole Spa & Candle Gift Baskets

If you're feeling in a Do-It-Yourself mood, then there are many scented candlemaking kits available online or through hobby store retailers. Here are some resources to check out for DIY homemade candles.

• Love to Know has some how-to information on making scented candles; that's a good place to start
• Cierra Candles features candle and soap making supplies
• Zionsville Candle has candlemaking kits and supplies and a soy candle making video to see how it's done
• The Complete Candlemaker: Techniques, Projects & Inspiration is a Norma Coney book that can explain candlemaking A to Z for the true crafter (available from Michaels Stores)

Thank you for your question, Dorothy, and we hope you find the scented candles you're looking for. Some of these resources carry up to 60 different fragrances and many burn for 30 hours or more, so it might be hard to choose from so many intriguing scents and candle styles. But it's fun to have too many options!

A. Tami, many thanks for sending in your question! Here are a few suggestions for your luncheon.

Take the red, white, and blue colors from the French flag as the color scheme foundation. Use a combination of red and blue tablecloths as the base cloth for each luncheon table. On top of each base cloth, place a white paper cloth (available at any party store).

Decorate each paper cloth just with French words and phrases relating to the season, like Joyeux Noël, Pere Noel, Pre Fouettard. The school's students could do this as a class project, looking up words and phrases and using crayons or colored markers to write them in very ornate, decorative script. It would be stylish and meaningful to have the words touch one another with flowers and ornaments curling out of them to create the look of a fabric design.

In France, Christmas trees are sometimes decorated in the old way with red ribbons and real white wax candles. Pick up on these traditional themes at your table settings.

Tie a red ribbon lengthwise (top to bottom) around each person's folded paper or cloth napkin at each place setting. Slip-knot the ribbon at the bottom and and pull it taut, snipping the ends at an angle.

On some tables, group three or more white pillar candles (unscented, of course) in various heights in the center of each table surrounded by evergreen accents. Small boughs of evergreens can be tied with red ribbons. Add clusters of chestnuts around the evergreens, a tradition in the Burgundy region.

An alternative centerpiece suggestion is to use clear glass bowls and/or tall glass cylinders. Put one large or three smaller pillar candles in each one, surrounded by chestnuts or cranberries to hold them upright. Add small evergreen bough clusters tied up with red ribbons.

For a splurge, avoid evergreens and purchase miniature toy fir trees of different heights to group around the candle pillars.

Use Marzipan, typically employed for decorative purposes, dating to the Medieval Ages in France and other European countries. Purchase Marzipan treats (little fruits are fun along with the more traditional mushrooms) and radiate them out from the centerpieces to add a festive, colorful, appetizing touch to the tables.

If you're not plating the meal and bringing out served food to each diner, set up a buffet table for festive serve-yourself fun. Add sparkle with a larger, taller, more significant centerpiece than on the luncheon tables.

The French dishes brought by your school's parents can be displayed around the centerpiece, with diners serving themselves in a buffet line that flows around the table. Use a longer rectangular table or a larger round table to distinguish it from the luncheon tables.

Traditionally, ending a French Christmas meal with a Buche de Noel is always fun and appreciated. Epicurious has some recipes if one or two parents would like to tackle making something homemade; otherwise, a good bakery might have these available (you will probably need to order in advance).

You can get large Buche de Noels or smaller miniature ones, which would be quite charming and add to your table decor. Tartes, gateaux, and petit pains add to the French-themed holiday festivities.

We're sure your party will be a big hit. Good luck to you and that lucky head of school. Happy holidays to you and your family, Tami!

Photo credits: Moussey Moose, Folk Nation, Ephemeral Isle, Food Network

A. Bill, we have gotten this question so many times, we decided to create a Design2Share Q&A episode around it. Our Home Design Mistakes episode was so long, however, that some of the material was cut out of the final edit. We'd like to remedy that. Here is our countdown of what we consider to be design's greatest Sins of the House.

McMansions are the numero uno of terrible taste. They made our video list, but it deserves repeating:  If you start out with one of these, it's all downhill after that. It's so important to get houses right architecturally, from the very beginning. These eyesores should be nicknamed Big Uglies, and there's little you can do to design around these messes. 

The McMansion trend is very illogical. After the 1970s, with oil shortages, we reduced the size of the American automobile to make them more fuel efficient. But the size of our houses has kept growing and growing. 

To heat and cool a double-height entry foyer is a great extravagance, and a waste in this era of global warming. Our advice is to spend your money on better-quality details in a smaller home versus lower-quality details in a higher cubic-foot space. Quality trumps quantity, and if you're betting the farm on being a McSize queen, you're making the biggest initial design mistake of all. Period.

Stucco Quoins were design mistakes edited out of our video. On the outside corners of stucco houses, it's typical to see a Georgian style detail of what looks like stone blocks or bricks, usually alternating in sizes. Stone quoins are typically part of a Georgian design where the exterior is totally stone or brick, with the quoins integrated.

But there should never be quoins on a stucco house, and we see many of these on McMansions. Need we say more? Modern quoins merely represent stone, yet they're made of polystyrene. If you're going to build a home, strive for integrity in both your design and your building materials. There is nothing wrong with stucco, but quoins are traditionally not found on Mediterranean-style stucco houses.

And for the record, we think the fake wood quoins, painted to look like stone on many early American buildings are quaint. At least they're trying to fit in with Georgian design, not trying to meld two wildly disparate design styles for the sake of tarting things up.

Snap-On Window Grids make us want to eat glass. Window grids are technically called mullions and/or muntins. Traditional windows were usually divided into smaller window panes because of the high cost of glass and the absence of good technology to create large sheets of glass.

New windows should have true divided panes of glass. These are called lights. The lights should be individually separated by wood or metal framing.

Avoid using a fake plastic snap-on grid to hide the fact that you didn't want to spend the money on purchasing true divided window lights. It's better to scale down the size of your home and go for authenticity and quality in your detailing. On window grids, we are definitely snobs.

Fake Flooring made the final edits in our video, but we would like to expand on the points we made. Many fake building materials, like laminate floor covering, are oftentimes made from oil byproducts. While committing the sin of being fake and lacking integrity, you are also guilty of depleting valuable natural resources. This makes no sense. Real wood materials, if you purchase from either recycled antique flooring stock or from fast-growth or renewable-resource forests, are good green investments for your home. Likewise, explore those fantastic bamboo and cork flooring alternatives.

Stone we love, but this is not the greenest floor choice you can make, unless you dip into the many recycled antique resources available. Products like terrazzo are stone byproducts and gravel-like compositions, far greener for your home than newly-quarried stone.

Overlooked Ceilings are a pet hate of ours! Ceilings are the biggest stand-alone architectural element in any room, so why are they oftentimes ignored or botched up? Let's warn you of a few mistakes that turn ceilings into tragedies.

• Too many and very large recessed downlights in any ceiling look like giant bullet holes. It's a terrible look for any room.
• Americans tend to overlight rooms. There is nothing wrong with a room illuminated with areas of light rather than a complete and unrelenting, glaring wash of light pouring down from the ceiling.
• Other technologies installed in the ceiling, like stereo speakers and air-conditioning grills, should be small in scale, concealed whenever possible, and centered or aligned with central fixtures and above doors or windows. Too often this is sadly not the case, and ceilings get turned into a hodgepodge that befits a discount warehouse.

And beware the Tupperware Lid! Painting ceilings white, just because that's thought of as the norm, isn't necessarily the right choice when you paint a room. If you want to use white, mix a certain percentage of your wall color paint into the white to soften it -- usually between 10 and 50 percent.

Or choose a ceiling color as an accent, like a color from one of your room fabrics.

Another alternative is to paint the ceiling the same color as the walls, which creates the illusion of greater height in the room. Just avoid making your ceiling look like a Tupperware lid by having a bright white ceiling and strongly-colored walls.

Timid Decorating is a sin. Most people, particularly do-it-yourselfers, follow the path of least resistance and are far too shy in their design choices. They fall into a number of awful decorating traps. If you like bright colors, use bright colors. But if Aunt Gertrude left you a pink lamp in her will, that doesn't mean you have to have an all-pink room. And if your friend has a brown-and-beige living room color scheme, by all means don't think you are obligated to copy it in your home. Show your own taste and sense of self. Have the self-confidence to follow your own instincts about what is right for you and your home.

Theme Decorating split our expert panel. Designer Nicola Chernicoff thought it was hideous, like the overdone Victoriana or Country French room with a period-glaring telephone or TV popping up like a space ship amongst the faux-period furnishings. Designer Irwin Weiner felt interiors should reflect personality and style, and elements of themes are not necessarily terrible. Both agreed, however, that the danger in theme rooms is creating a look that is too staged and phony, like a movie set or a Walt Disney fantasy world.

How can you avoid most design mistakes? We always advise surrounding yourself with a few good design professionals: an architect, landscape architect, general contractor, craftspeople, and an interior designer. And if you have a strong sense of self when you build, renovate, redesign, or decorate, we think that's hard to beat. Don't be swayed by trends, friends, neighbors, or inherited furnishings. If you stay focused on quality and integrity in your building materials and finishes -- and if you've done your homework -- allow yourself to make some bold and conscious choices that will make your home liveable and a reflection of who you really are.

A. Mandy, you're not alone with this question. Many homeowners are looking for something new and different when it comes to flooring. There are the usual suspects, but our friends at the World Floor Covering Association have a great website that can help educate you about your different options.

The WFCA organization's website offers in-depth information about each category of flooring -- carpet, hardwood, laminate, outdoor flooring, green options (like teriffic bamboo, for instance), and others. You'll be able to learn about the pros and cons of each category. Check out the "Designer's Corner" area of the site and read what interior designers have to say about flooring, too. That might give you and your designer some brainstorms.

Here's something nifty, Mandy -- the WFCA's site has a tool you can use to view hundreds of types and colors of flooring in rooms that resemble your own. You can update these rooms right down to the color of the window coverings to mimic your home's look!

Here are some other tips and resources we would like to recommend:

• Kitchens and mudrooms need not have laminate or "expected" surfaces. If appropriate, we like the use of antique hardwood floors. They add warmth and lustre to any room. Salvaged wood floors and antique wood, along with reclaimed brick and stone and barn siding, is available from Longleaf Lumber at www.longleaflumber.com.
• Sylvan Brandt is another great resource at www.sylvanbrandt.com for old flooring, beams, and doors from 17th and 18th century barns and houses.
• Paris Ceramics is a great resource at www.parisceramics.com. They specialize in limestone and terra-cotta flooring reclaimed from private homes, churches, and public spaces in Europe. You can find some 17th century beauties, ancient Jerusalem limestone, and other one-of-a-kind floors. Be sure you are careful about how much material you will need for your job and check the quantities that are available.
• L'Antiquario at www.lantiquario.com specializes in flooring once found in castles, palaces, and church buildings and include their own certificates of authenticity.
• Check out Country Floors at www.countryfloors.com for a great collection of reproduction tiles in styles like delft, Portuguese, Moroccan, English, and Spanish. Their old-world techniques fashion gorgeous final products. They also offer reclaimed terra-cotta tiles.
• Artistic Tile features their Marmo Antico Lucido collection of antiqued stones, made to look 100s of years old (fabulous Italian reproductions). Go to www.artistictile.com to check them out.
• Carlisle Wide Plank Flooring is exquisite at www.wideplankflooring.com. Their antique wood floors and reproductions are lovely. (We have them in our living room; white oak, beveled edges, and wire-brushed to make them very interesting.)