A comfortable home is the goal of every designer

Editor's note: Joseph Pubillones is taking some time off. The following column was originally published in 2014.

A comfortable home environment will relax you the minute you step inside. Great designs should always place comfort as the ultimate commodity. Of course, it should also look good. But what good is that if your room's interior design is stressful.

Sometimes the design requires you to start all over again from scratch, but sometimes even poorly thought out projects can be given new life. Discerning what ails your room might be the hardest part of the game.

This is why I suggest doing a "psychological profile" of the room. Write down words that come to mind about your room: dark, clutter, incoherent, scrambled, empty, impersonal. These key words might give you a bit of insight as to what generally bothers you.

The next exercise should be a list that specifically addresses physical issues about your room: lack of comfortable seating, don't like wallpaper, paneling is too dark, dated decor, always dusty, worn furniture. The goal here is to identify specifics.

After this exercise, plan a step-by-step guide to try and fix all the things that are wrong. Getting started is half the battle.

Changing your backdrop is the most noticeable and significant change one can make. With a couple of gallons of paint and a weekend, you can change a room dramatically. Another relatively easy thing to swap out - rugs. A trip to your local home improvement shop can provide a varied selection of carpets to accommodate most pockets. Installation can take a couple of days and your room is off to a new start.

Accessories are also easy to change out. Try a new color combination. If your room is brimming with browns and beiges, then introduce a chartreuse green color in pillows and accessories and add some live plants to accentuate the green. You will feel a new energy in that room. Discover endless, and sometimes unexpected, combinations of colors.

Furniture is the most visual component of a room. This can be pricey sometimes, but it needn't. If your sofa is looking tired, try dropping a slipcover over it. The slipcover can be bought off the shelf, or made custom. I know someone who uses inexpensive painter's drop cloth from the home improvements store on upholstered pieces for a fresh, shabby chic look. A trendy technique is to paint your existing furniture and upholstered goods with chalk paint. This is an inexpensive and alternative to buying new fabrics and reupholstering.

Finally, rearranging the artwork will change the look of any room and make a lasting impression without spending much money.

• Joseph Pubillones is the owner of Joseph Pubillones Interiors, an award-winning interior design firm based in Palm Beach, Florida.

© 2019, Creators Syndicate