Good timing! I recently had an AHA moment on exactly this subject the other day. I was debating hanging up some display cubes (you know, the tacky walmart ones) which I've owned for at least a decade. I recently decided that I will hang them in a *hopefully* creative way and see if I like it. The worst that could happen...I've wasted a half hour and a few nails. Why haven't I done this ages ago!
Good advice! Go for it!

Very good timing! I need to make a rug purchase a I've been indecisive.

We just decided to take a big risk in moving my home office out of our sun room/media room in the bottom-level of our townhome and up into the main living space in a what used to be a nearly unused reading nook. Started this weekend by doing a wall mounted desk and shelving above/around it. I'm glad to have made the switch, but every re-arranging, scrapping, adding decision feels like another part of this giant risk in this (to me) big endeavor. Hoping the final outcome will be great.

I've mostly learned from my mistakes, sometimes costly then over a period of time those costly ones gave me a new perspective and/or challenge.
My favorite posts is when I come on APT and think, brilliant why didn't I think of that. One of my biggest challenges on here is trying to find old posts to reference or store for future reference.
I've done a lot of my growing from this website.

Thanks

I've seen those cubes look amazing above a toilet for extra storage.. and since i'm a sucker for pictures http://pinterest.com/pin/265642077991682501/

The mistake i made really had me laughing, painting my sons bedroom closet door kind of wild/idea from pinterest, looked great till i had my husband hang it and i painted the inside of the door... not the outside! so.. now it stays open! oops.

I just bought some LED "Christmas" lights for my antique mall booth and spent a good couple of hours putting them up, stringing them in amongst the high ceiling rafters, hoping to attract more attention to my wares. When all finished I stepped back and thought, meh. Not what I was hoping for, but at least I only paid half price for the lights and maybe buyers will remember the lame twinkle lights when they come back.

Thank you for this post. My January Cure project (day 5 assignment) is to hang a print project on my living room wall. My Day 6 assignment was to select a different piece of art to hang on my walls.

I am DEATHLY afraid of putting stuff on my walls. What if I get it wrong? What if there are too many nail holes? Do I have to repaint the entire wall?

These 2 projects hopefully will help me get more stuff on my walls the rest of 2013.

And, it's OK if I get it "wrong."

Our walls have tons of holes. We move things all the time. Usually, most of the holes get covered by other things. The ones that don't, well--we don't notice them. Hang away. (I usually start on the low end with hanging, so that if I decide it needs to be higher, I'm covering up the mistake hole with the piece of art.)

I just went ahead and ordered some shelving that I had been hesitating about buying.

Something my mother always told me about nail holes when you're in a pinch? A little bit of white toothpaste (assuming your wall is white/close to it)...and this is coming from an architect no less :)

Back when I was married my then wife and I decided it would be nice to paint a room a deep burgundy. The primer for it was repulsive. The entire room looked like it had been coated in Pepto Bismol. Handy since the appearance made me sick to my stomach...

Painting the burgundy over the primer proved this disaster was early in the making. It looked awful and the paint, after three coats, still appeared uneven (possibly due to the immense power of the visually terrorizing primer).

I learned that I should probably take the money I believe a project will cost and multiply it by 3, and the time I believe it will take and multiply that by 10. In other words, have patience with the process and with myself. It's not easy, but it's a goal. Things like hanging pictures, painting a wall, replacing a faucet - they can all be undone. But in the meantime, if you have the money and time, why not try it?

I had an interior designer tell me I shouldn't put tile with a blue motif in a green painted room. She scolded me saying, "Blue and green should never be seen." But I called BS. I didn't get the tile I wanted (remember, I WAS married), but I got blue glass shades for the lights over the kitchen island. It looked awesome. And the proof here on Apartment Therapy is the posts of that very combination of green and blue - there was a kitchen that really stands out.

Maybe there IS no wrong when it comes to design. Trends come and go. Styles are sometimes quite defined but sometimes they're not. One persons clash of disasters is another person's "eclectic". Tastes are different. It should be fun and our own expression.

Maybe Someday-

Totally! "blue and green should never be seen" cracks me up - it can be a beautiful combination

I think we need to do a post on decorating "truisms" that might not really be so true :)

Everyone says "it's only nail holes", but I spent literally one year, stripping old paint off my walls, and painstakingly fixed cracks, holes, and other stuff in my plaster walls. Every hole-making decision has been difficult.

I hesitated painting my bedroom black for such a long time. When I finally took the plunge (it's just paint for goodness sake), I actually loved it and wondered why the heck I didn't do it long ago. Brilliant article, I couldn't agree more. The more fearless, the more interesting the space.

anyone have experience with the adhesive picture hangers that you can peel and stick and just pull off if you want to move a photo or painting?

http://www.nextag.com/picture-hanger-adhesive/stores-html

Thanks Mshannahnv... ya, that looks good. Mine are unfortunately the ones that are 3 different sizes >.<
I'm planning to align the top edge and play with which size goes where. They're going to wrap an inside corner of a room, to create a spot for a jewelry tree

What do you do when your design decision is about buying a large piece such as a sofa? We have bought FOUR in the course of our 14 year marriage! It is time to buy what we love- but it is tricky due to the size of our house and the uncertainty of how long we will be here. That being said, life is too short to live with an uncomfortable couch that no one will sit on!

I use the 3M Command Strips for almost everything we hang. They are so much easier than sticking a hole in plaster walls. We still nail or screw heavier (or more precious) things, but my entire gallery wall of small-ish items are up with Command strips. The velcro ones and the low-profile ones are the best for hanging stuff -- some stores only have the big hooks, which are obviously not much help.

I've definitely fallen into that trap of overthinking design in my house. I think it's related to the transition from bouncing around in rentals every couple years to now living in a house I'll be in for a long time. That 'permanent' feeling and the freedom to paint really took a while to sink in, I now have a purple room so progress is being made. I have to sometimes force myself to stop trying to think 10 steps ahead and just buy the cool striped curtains in the clearance bin or the pretty Indian brass vase at the thrift shop, if they don't work so what!*

For me it was removing whatever strange fear was holding me back (wasting money, regretting the buy, hating it next week) and replacing it with "I'll Craigslist it if it doesn't work. It'll be OK." It's sort of nice to know I'm not the only one who did this.

*They worked :)

That "blue and green" thing I haven't heard since the early 1960's. Then it was considered "clashing", a thing we all worried about a lot! (Pink and red clash, too... lots of now common combinations were not considered appropriate, but I never understood WHY!)

3-M Command strips are excellent. Not cheap, but they work very well and don't damage anything. I have a heavy mother-or-pearl inlaid platter from Japan (probably!) on the wall. It came with holes in the rim on the back for a wire, but it tips way forward when hung. I added a 3-M Command velcro strip to the top of the rim and the wall. The wire holds up the plate, and the velcro keeps it straight. We are using them to hang some light weight signage at my Library, too, so we can change it later if we want without hassles.

But as for nail holes (in drywall, at least) you can get a little tube (sort of like toothpaste) of "spackle" in the paint department of stores like Home Depot. The kind I use has a little applicator sponge on the top. The goo squirts out thru a hole in the sponge, and you use the sponge tip to smooth off all the excess, filling the hole, but removing what's not needed. I always try to keep a small jar of touchup paint to patch after these repairs have dried. (When I was a renter, I'd ask the landlord for some, right when I signed the lease, which often was before they repainted between tenents. Most often I got it and the landlord was happy I'd be doing the minor touchups without bothering him. I always got permission to hang my art, too, so they knew holes were going to happen.)

No matter how hard I plan, I will still make mistakes. Whenever possible I Photoshop a mock up, get a paint/material sample, and ask about the return policy. That's sometimes why I post here on AT, hoping at least someone else can benefit from the pitfalls I've encountered.

I've definitely taken some bold design risks with my apartment. Some have turned out great (cork-tiled wall), others not so good (Kermit green should be limited to an accent color), but part of the fun of design is taking risks. At the end of the day, if you love what you've done, that's all that really matters. And if it doesn't work out, at least you tried. Also, make sure you hang on to the receipts and know a store's return policy.

It is never a mistake to put a swing in your living room. I want that!
The only real mistakes are those that cannot be easily reversed, like painting over beautiful wood with brown matte paint so that future generations will have to spend countless hours scraping it off. WHY?? Why would someone do that to beautiful wood?

Your example made me smile (in an ironic way). When we first moved into our current house, after expecting to find hardwood under the carpets, we found hideous faux-wood vinyl glued to the beautiful old fir floors with some hideous thick black adhesive. If you already have wood floors, why on earth would you cover it up with ugly, fake wood-effect vinyl tiles?? We had to scrape up the black adhesive by hand with a chemical stripper before the floor refinisher would sand them. It took us a solid couple of weeks on our hands and knees scraping that nasty stuff up. Our hands still hurt when we look at the photos all these years later. But it was worth it!

I've used them without much success. A layer of paint always seems to come with the hook.

Jess13 - Thank you! I thought I was the only one who struggles with "apartment mentality" now that I have my own home! It's taken me 6 years to finally paint the guest room. Now that I have (and it wasn't a failure), I'm looking to paint out the common areas - you can imagine the conversations with my past "rental self" about THAT!

".....there IS no wrong when it comes to design. Trends come and go. Styles are sometimes quite defined but sometimes they're not. One persons clash of disasters is another person's "eclectic". Tastes are different. It should be fun and our own expression."

THIS IS WISDOM

For what it's worth, I've found shopping at thrift stores and estate sales liberating. I'm much more willing to take a decorative risk on something when the price tag is ridiculously low. If it doesn't work out, then it just becomes a tax-deductible donation...or, in the case of one chain of thrift stores, my ticket to 20% savings on my next purchase.

I had a moment like this recently! I randomly thought painting my ikea leirvik bed frame gold would look amazing, so I bought some gold leaf and went at it. It looks AMAZING and I'm glad I didn't change my mind last minute.

I'm afraid fixing nail holes and repainting are a HUGE deal for me, so I have resigned myself to living with bare, white walls, and artwork stacked behind doors! If I was renting, I might be less risk-averse, but I am loath to make holes in my own, pristine walls. Also, I can't commit to artwork - I think I like a particular piece, then I change my mind, and don't want to put it up.

I painted a half a wall, last summer. The bottom. It's a weird shade of grade in a room that's mostly red and yellow (thanks to previous homeowners, without which it would be white). I had never done such a thing. For weeks, until I got used to it, I was ridiculously pleased with myself and life every time I wandered into the living room. Not because it was necessarily the right color or an excellent paint job. But because it was a CHANGE.

@pearmelon - have you tried 3M's Command series of products to hang artwork? They're amazing!!! I've used them in several rental units over the years, without so much as a flake of paint removed from a wall afterwards. They come in different sizes, shapes, and weight ratings, and can be found at Target, Walmart, etc.

Totally agree on the 3M strips. Patching holes is soooo annoying and time consuming when prepping to paint!

About five years ago, I decorated our bedroom in mostly silk fabrics. Silk panels, silk bedspread and shams. It was beautiful, but I decided last year that I wanted everything in the house to be low maintanence. So I replaced the panels with painting drop cloths, made a duvet cover and bedskirt from fabric I got at Walmart for 1.50 yd.
From now on, when I make decorating decisions, I try to think about how easy it will be to live with the items, not just how they'll look.

BTW, I sold all the bedroom stuff at a consignment shop. Got more than enough to pay for the new stuff.

We need mood lighting on our back deck. The spotlight we currently use blinds people looking toward the door. Will try stapling white Christmas lights under the deep eave of the roof hangover, running them back and forth several times. There is a low section where we built on that will be reachable. Am hoping it will be a fun, easy fix for our lighting issue.

For whitexb, this may sound dumb, but you could just change the bulb wattage to something lower. Or friction fit a plastic lens over the bulb to dim it. Just be careful if you are going to staple wire. We have white christmas lights with green wire hung on our pergola and a vine covers most of it in the summer. So pretty. We used little vinyl covered cup hooks to hook the lights on. It twinkles in the wind. I miss summer.

It's always paint with me. This article is timely indeed. Wanting to inject some colour into my family room, I opted for Farrow & Ball's 'Drawing Room Blue'. Great colour, but it is so WRONG for this room. I'm just about to leave to buy yet more tester pots and am enjoying the creative process but somewhere there is a little nagging voice which is telling me that after all, I shall revert to the colour it was originally painted in 'Hardwick White' or maybe a deeper grey. Who knows. But what fun :)

Yes, they pull the paint off the wall when you remove them -- and they have a tendency, after a few years, to suddenly fall in the middle of the night, taking your picture with them. Don't bother, unless you enjoy terrifying your pets.

The previous comment is in response to the question about adhesive hangers. I haven't had good results with the 3M Command strips, unfortunately.

All this talk of "nail holes" is making me extra appreciative of the picture railing throughout my house. I can move hanging art on a whim and keep moving it until it's juuussssttt right. It has definitely helped me try combinations and locations that I might not have had the guts to select.

Now, regarding risk-taking: when I bought my house nearly 7 years ago, I was so exhausted with the process of house hunting, then the buying cycle, then remodelin my kitchen, that when it came time to select colors and details, I went very simple and safe, aka boring. But it worked and I lived with it. Then, this past summer, I made a conscious decision to make no more "safe" interior design choices in my home. I wanted to live in a space that felt authentic and unique and made people say "Huh. I never would have thought of that". It's not totally there yet, of course, but this way have thinking has really energized my interior. We remodeled the living and dining room this summer, and one of the projects was doing something about the fireplace surround. Instead of doing a traditional mantel, we carved out three arched niches. It turned out great! We also added lots more color, too. It has been so fun to have FUN with our space!