Listen up, guys -- I have a few hints for you. They come from a single woman who happens to like men and interior design, and is tired of feeling that it's necessary to forgo one for the other.
Here's a rundown of the four biggest errors you single guys make with your living spaces.
The dark leather sofa
Almost every bachelor I know has one.
I don't know what it is, but leather must be deeply encoded in your hunter-gatherer brain. Perhaps, way back in prehistory, it went something like this: You felled a sloth with a single arrow, clubbed it until it was dead, dragged the carcass back to the cave, skinned it, then stained it chocolate brown and upholstered everything in it, making sure always to tuft the ottomans and seat backs.
Leather is predictable. And in design, as in most things, predictable is boring. A guy's first mistake is letting a big sofa be the first thought -- followed closely by preparations for a big TV. The second mistake is that his process stops there. So often, the rest of the living room is a litter of junk-sale finds and hand-me-downs from Mom.
Unless you're shelling out for a high-end Italian sofa and decking the rest of the room in marble, steel and glass, do not buy a black leather couch. Go instead with something boxy and modern in mid-toned taupe or charcoal upholstery. Add a pinstripe for extra sex appeal.
The AV equipment
When you walk into a church, what's the first thing you see? A gigantic crucifix. It's the defining feature, the focus of the room, the direction to which everything tends.
A television is the same. Your space is an implicit statement of how you spend your time. What's the difference, say, between a living room where a sofa is aimed squarely at a 50-inch flat-screen, and one where a loveseat and three chairs are arrayed in a circle?
One guy is about conversation; the other -- is about Xbox, potato chips and action films. And it's no secret which guy is more attractive to women.
You don't need a CD collection and home theatre that's a shrine to gadgetry and technological advancement. Your AV equipment should defer to the context of the room. Remember discretion: while you may ooh and aah, no woman will be impressed by the domestic equivalent of a tricked-out Ford Escort with thundering subwoofers.
The crappy shelves
I know, I know, you spent all your money on a sofa and plasma TV, but you still needed a place to put your stuff. Did you, perchance, go to Ikea for the $25 pine shelves and a set of adjustable steel baker's racks?
The problem with cheap, utilitarian shelves is their indifference to mood. Your living room is a kind of commons, with individual components that are in constant conversation with each other.
If the television is the braying dimwit who can only talk, talk, talk, the junky shelves are the techie dork for whom everything is order and function, never substance or suavity. I say put him out in the storage room and let him organize your tools and tin cans.
The bad art
When I was in art school I had lots of long, impassioned discussions about What Art Is, but I won't bore you with those here. Let's just go through a few of the things that it's not.
Posters with a sun rising over mist-shrouded mountains, eagles wheeling in the foreground, and inscriptions about achieving. Finely rendered Robert Bateman prints of wolves with icy blue eyes. Flags. Signed hockey memorabilia. Silvery silhouettes of Corvettes or Ferraris. Anything Quentin Tarantino.
A bachelor I know has a living room defined by two cultural artifacts: a whittled plywood oar, which he's pinned to the wall with three green pushpins, and an enormous retro-orange sectional his mother gave him. I feel that, as a species, men should be aiming one notch higher.
Women know that men are in many ways coarse and unfixable: that's why we love you. We're not asking that you have great design sense -- only that you avoid letting your home become an exhibit of your indifference to context and beauty or a tribute to your adolescent enthusiasms.
Everything else, we can work out together.
-- Canwest News Service
