Decor is traditionally defined as “the furnishing and decoration of a room”. But decor is more than what transforms a room from normal to unique, decor defines those who inhabit the space itself, who they are as a people, their beliefs, culture, and past. Decor tells a story without a need for words, a history conveyed through fabrics, colors, and patterns that are a language all their own.
Area Rugs Are An Easy Win
You could say that decor runs in my family – my father is a set designer, decorator, and prop maker in our hometown theatre community, and my grandmother before him loved to constantly redesign her household to fit her mercurial tastes, so in a sense, decor and decorating has always been a part of my life. I’ve grown up constantly eying aesthetics of wherever we go, noting what does and doesn’t work, and how I can merge such vastly different designs in my own world when I’m on the hunt for area rugs.
As a future member of the film and television world, decor is just as equally important as spoken dialogue, actors, and camera angles; set tells even more of a story than the characters themselves do. It gives context for the world these characters inhabit, their individual quirks, habits, hobbies, even future plot points crucial to the overall story. In essence, set decor is what transports audiences to the world of the characters they’re watching on screen – without such attention to detail, storytelling would not be not nearly as riveting. For example, one of the more recent movies I saw was “Thor: Ragnarok” and the coloring and decor of each scene is heavily reminiscent of the 1980s, and yet the designers were able to take such colors and patterns and mold them into a futuristic, alien decor, taking an aged concept and making it their own.
Decor has always been a big part of my life and that will not change going forward; if anything I hope to merge it even further and make a career out of decorating, telling stories in a non-traditional manner.
When done tastefully, it is something which is easy to take for granted. When tacky or nonexistent however, it takes on an unmistakable, nagging presence. It looms large over the room, the house, the coffee shop you mindlessly kill time in. I write, of course, about decor. During my undergrad, I lived with near countless other poor young adults as astronomical housing costs made it to where living with 6 other people was most certainly more preferable than never having free time due to having to work all of the waking hours of the day but having my own dingy little apartment to sleep in.
Sharing a living space with multiple other people is oftentimes a surefire way for decor which is at best eclectic but most likely nonsensical and all over the place. Conjure in your mind all of the most random posters, advertisements, sports memorabilia, art, pictures of all the various loved ones for each individual in order for each person to feel like they had an equal say in the living space, and you can see where it would be hard to present something coherent decor wise in that living situation. Now as an adult in a loving cohabitating relationship with that partner as my only roommate, it is easier to arrive at something aesthetically pleasing for our living space. Arranging the space in which you spend most of your downtime in a way that is visually appealing does wonders for feeling generally optimistic on one’s lot in life. Having just moved across the country to a barren apartment, decorating was a task which was daunting, yet exciting.
Being restrained by the reality of our finances, which are fairly bleak as grad school is expensive, made it to where no stone was left unturned when looking for killer deals. Sure we splurged a little, but come on, who doesn’t deserve to feel good about the place they spend a majority of their downtime in. Still, we had to look all over the internet, all over the stores in our area, scoured for free things left unwanted in our neighborhood. But in the end, our apartment is a place where we feel good about and that is nearly priceless.