Tips from Joan Kohn's It's Your Bed and Bath

Here’s a collection of tips and observations adapted from Joan Kohn’s It’s Your Bed and Bath that I thought you might enjoy:

1. All beautiful designs start with your eyes closed.  That's why we call them design dreams, and they all begin with a very specific vision that is all your own.  Some design visions will be born from a moment's inspiration.  Others occur effortlessly and naturally over time or make themselves known only after a battle of fits and starts.  But at its core, every design vision is born from something simple inside you that responds to something simple from the world: a color, a touch, a scent, a feeling, a memory – that essential connection that resonates within you, and somehow expresses who you are.

Adapted from Chapter 1, Vision

2. Line, color, texture, mass, harmony, contrast, balance, restraint – when handled adeptly, the elements of bed and bath design work together seamlessly, often without calling direct attention to themselves, creating that sense of rightness we all seek.

Chapter 2, The Elements of Bed and Bath Design

3. It’s important to painstakingly analyze your existing rooms before you make changes.  The relationship you have with your bedrooms and baths is personal and private.  You are the only one who knows all the important questions that must be answered before you finalize your design plans.  A careful examination of your rooms and everything in them will help ensure that your new rooms will work beautifully for you.

Adapted from Chapter 3, Assessing Your Existing Bed and Bath

4. Whether you live in a cottage or a castle, reaching your design goals requires patience.  Hold on to your vision, realizing it in phases if necessary, and selecting just one perfect piece at a time rather than assembling a roomful of compromises.  Learn to savor the quiet promise of an empty corner.  

Remember that spending less money on your bed and bath doesn't mean spending less creativity or enthusiasm.  The search for economies and affordable solutions can often lead you to a wholly new and exciting design vision.

From Chapter 4, Budgeting Your Resources

5. One of the best things about design is the joy of the search.  Collecting new ideas turns you into an explorer on an adventure without risk or limitation.  You never have to pay for them, dust them, or find a place to display them until you decide they're absolutely right for you.  Besides, having a good idea and then letting it go can be as exhilarating – and far more liberating – than possessing it.

Adapted from Chapter 5, Collecting Ideas

6. In a word, choosing your style is…sensational.  Use all of your senses – your eyes and ears, your nose, your fingertips, the side of your arm, your back, your legs, and that little toe, if necessary – to ensure that the look, feel, sound, and scent of your new design is just right.  When your body agrees with your mind, you know that you've found your style.

From Chapter 6, Choosing Your Style

7. Even do-it-yourselfers never really work alone.  One of the most exciting aspects of interviewing home owners, architects, and designers for my TV shows and books is hearing their enthusiastic stories about the team process itself.  While we've all heard the occasional design horror story, what I hear most often are extraordinary tales of the joys of collaboration.  When the team is right, each individual contributes his or her unique talents and perspective toward a common goal.  The result is not only a beautiful room, but wonderful shared memories as well.

Adapted from Chapter 7, Your Design Team

8. Sometimes choosing less gives you more.  In the seclusion of our private spaces – our bedrooms and baths – decisions about whether or not to install phones, message centers, TVs, computers, and other accouterments of daily life will have a considerable impact upon how we feel each day – and at night as well.  Perhaps the best choice is to leave these modern functions to the other rooms in which we live our hectic, over-scheduled, and wonderful lives, preserving our bedrooms and bathrooms for the true luxury of repose.

Adapted from Chapter 8, Function

9. When contemplating the marriage of architecture and design, I like to think of the architectural shell of a room as having a life of its own, separate and distinct from the bedroom, bath, or powder room that it will hold.  If the six elevations – four walls, a floor, and a ceiling – are right, then you may proceed with confidence as you make all the design decisions ahead.

You may build soaring ceilings, narrow tunnels that open theatrically into larger spaces, or a sheltering series of cozy alcoves.  You may wind a staircase or carve a niche.  The forms you create may be austere or highly ornamented.  Whatever your style, the architectural shell you design will be the most enduring of all the elements of your new bed and bath.  It will protect all your other plans and dreams with its all-enabling power.

Adapted from Chapter 9, Raw Space

10. Floor plans are far more than just road maps, and because the eye is readily drawn to vivacious colors, patterns, textures, and forms, floor plans often go unnoticed.  That's probably because the better they work, the less obtrusive they are in supporting the life and design of your rooms.  Therefore, as you collect new ideas, pay careful and deliberate attention to the layout of your favorite rooms.  For just under the lovely surfaces, you're sure to discover an intelligence and logic that accounts for much of the beauty you see and feel.

Adapted from Chapter 10, Floor Plan

11. To renovate or innovate, that is the question.  Your style may be an idiosyncratic mix or authentically historical.  But while personal styles and circumstances vary widely, one thing holds true in every successful bed and bath design: Your style is ultimately about your understanding of who you are and how you want to live.  Good design begins with self-knowledge and confidence, and is graced with your own brand of beauty.

Adapted from Chapter 11, Style

12. To answer the question most people ask: My favorite room is any room that holds the life-spirit of the people who live in it. These rooms have a heartbeat that we sense the moment we enter them, even if no one is there. Somehow our bedrooms and baths—these mute and inanimate constructions—reflect our lives. They have the power to make us relive the past, and to help us prepare for the future.

It seems that as we design, we ignite a spark of life in the walls and all the objects with which we choose to surround ourselves. From the blankets in which we wrap our newborn babies and the basins in which we bathe them, to the rooms we design so many years later to welcome our grandchildren for weekend visits, there is life in everything. And design is a beautiful way to capture and hold onto all of it.

Adapted from Chapter 12, It’s My Bed & Bath!

Do you have any ideas for me? Please share on the Contact Joan page.