Personal Taste Trumps Conventional Decorating Ideas

Q: Is it OK to use all painted furniture in a room? We have inherited a couple of soft-blue painted pieces from my husband's European-born aunt, and now we would like to add more.

A: Usually, my knee-jerk reaction is a big yawn to anything that's all similar. But your bedroom is your private domain, your personal business. Close the door and live as you like, and never mind that the operative word for decorating today is eclectic, meaning a compatible combination of many styles, many colors, many materials.

If you're smitten with your European inheritance, count your blessings — and add to them, when you can.

Besides, you can always introduce different materials through different colors and accessories. For example, the pictured bedroom is all about painted furniture in the French Provincial idiom. No ersatz copes, these: they're the real thing. Made in France as they have been for several centuries by Grange (www.grange.fr), the 100-year-old company is known for its traditional craftsmanship and Gallic accent.

That's what gives this bedroom such, well, je ne sais quois. The carved and painted bed — it could easily be an antique rescued from obscurity somewhere in Provence — has a low profile that's deftly balanced by the dozen framed artworks on the wall above its head. Featuring natural materials — from the fields of Aix-en-Provence, one wants to imagine — the preserved weeds, seeds and flowers add gentle energy to the otherwise calm, gray-and-ivory painted setting.

Q: What should we do with a really small "living room"? We spend most of our time in the great room off the kitchen. The little room off the entry is really wasted space; it's too small even for a sofa.

A: Then forget the sofa — love seat, too. Designer Jackie Higgins (jackiehiggins.com) has a much better idea for tiny rooms. She advocates individual easy chairs, instead. Clustered around a center table, she believes that four chairs offer enough attractive seating without overcrowding the limited space.

Jackie says she hit on the idea of using separate chairs when a client's own teeny "formal" living room was about to be overwhelmed by a conventional sofa. The chairs are as flexible as they are comfortable, and they don't block the doorway in and out of the room.

Q: So, how are you celebrating Earth Day's 40th anniversary this year?

A: Planting trees and recycling is always good, but there may be a cleaner, fresher way to salute Mother Nature on April 22: Hang your wash out to dry.

That's right, forget the hot, linty, energy-sucking clothes dryer. Instead, string your stuff up in the fresh air and sunshine, as people have done for centuries.

Or used to do. Lucky you if you remember slipping between clean, line-dried sheets that smelled of sunshine and breezes. Fabric softeners just aren't the same.

No surprise, then, that today's back-to-basics movement includes a return to the eco-friendly backyard clothesline — if local laws allow. Many local governments and national homeowner's associations once banned outdoor clothes drying. What were they thinking?

Maybe Secure Line by Lehigh (www.jardenbrandedconsumables.com/the-lehigh-group.php) is the answer. Just in time for Earth Day, they've introduced a clothesline that's made of all-recycled material. Works indoors, too, the company says. Tell your local lawgivers.

Rose Bennett Gilbert is the co-author of "Manhattan Style" and six other books on interior design.