4 Decorating Tricks For A Smoother Makeover

If your last room makeover felt like a cross between a yard sale and a minor existential crisis, you’re not alone. It’s incredibly easy to get swept up in late-night online carts, “flash sales,” and that one influencer’s living room that somehow has zero visible cords.

The folks behind Young House Love have long preached a calmer, more practical approach: simple, low-tech tricks that keep you from blowing your budget and your sanity while you decorate. Their four big ideas anchor pieces, painter’s tape, placeholder furniture, and a strategic pause before you click “order” line up surprisingly well with what interior designers recommend for smoother makeovers in real life.

Let’s break down these four decorating tricks, see how they work together, and walk through how you can use them in your own home without needing a design degree (or a TV crew).

Trick 1: Start With Anchor Pieces (So the Room Has a Backbone)

Every great room has a backbone a few “anchor pieces” that quietly do the heavy lifting. Think: sofa, bed, dining table, large rug, or wall-to-wall storage. Young House Love uses these pieces as the starting point for planning a room instead of buying a dozen cute accessories and hoping they magically form a style. It’s like choosing the cake before the sprinkles.

Why anchor pieces matter

They define function. A deep sectional says “movie nights and naps.” A large dining table says “holidays live here.” When you’re clear on function, decisions get easier.
They determine layout. Once you know where the sofa or bed will sit, you can map traffic flow, side tables, and lighting instead of guessing.
They set the visual tone. Designers often start with a key item a sofa fabric, a rug, or a headboard and then build the color palette and style around it for balance and harmony.

How to pick your anchor pieces like a pro

Invest in comfort and quality first. The sofa you sit on daily deserves more budget than the trendy vase you’ll bump into twice a year.
Stay mostly neutral. A simple, neutral anchor (light gray sofa, natural wood table, jute rug) makes it easy to swap accent colors over time without a full redo.
Think about scale. A tiny sofa floating in a large living room will look lost, while an enormous sectional crammed into a small space will eat the room. Measure both the room and the furniture before buying.

Once your anchor pieces are chosen (or at least clearly defined), you’ve basically built the “skeleton” of your makeover. Now the fun low-tech magic begins.

Trick 2: Tape Things Out Before You Spend a Dollar

This is the secret weapon that feels almost too simple: painter’s tape. In the Young House Love method, taping things out means using low-tack tape on the floor and walls to mark where furniture, rugs, built-ins, and art will go. It’s like drawing a floor plan in real life instead of on a screen.

What to tape (and how)

Furniture footprint. Outline the sofa, bed, desk, or cabinets on the floor. It instantly shows you if that “perfect” piece will block pathways or crowd doorways.
Rug size. Tape out a 5x8, then an 8x10, then a 9x12. You’ll see how much more grounded a room feels when the rug is big enough to connect the main furniture.
Wall features. Mark art, shelving, headboards, or wall sconces at their planned heights. This helps avoid the classic mistake of hanging everything too high or too small.

Why tape beats guesswork

Designers constantly warn about skipping measurements and ignoring scale. Painter’s tape gives you instant feedback before you drag heavy furniture or commit to a purchase. You’ll see:

Whether two nightstands really fit next to a king bed.
If the dining chairs can pull out comfortably behind the table.
Whether that “small” console actually eats up your narrow hallway.

Bonus: It’s way less embarrassing to peel up some tape than to explain how the new sofa is currently living in your garage because it didn’t clear the doorway.

Trick 3: Use Placeholder Furniture (Shop Your House First)

Placeholder furniture is Young House Love’s term for using what you already own as stand-ins while you plan a room. It might not be perfect, but it gives you valuable intel before you buy anything new.

Smart ways to use placeholder pieces

Borrow from other rooms. Move dining chairs into a future office, a side table into the bedroom, or a bench into the entryway to test how extra seating or surfaces will function.
Mock up size with boxes. Stack moving boxes or storage bins to mimic the footprint of a dresser, media console, or bookcase.
Test arrangements. Try floating the sofa instead of pushing it against the wall, or swapping two chairs for one loveseat. Doing this with existing pieces lets you experiment without spending money.

Why placeholders make your makeover smoother

Placeholder furniture helps you answer questions that are hard to solve in your head:

Does this room need two chairs, or just one and a floor lamp?
Is a double desk realistic, or does it make the room feel cramped?
Will a larger rug really make the room feel cozier, or just bigger?

Many designers also encourage “using what you have” to stretch your budget. Sometimes a room only needs a few high-impact additions like curtains, a bigger rug, or better lighting layered over your existing basics to feel completely new.

Trick 4: Hold the Phone Before You Hit “Order”

This is where your future self thanks your current self. “Hold the phone” is essentially a mandatory pause before you buy anything. Once you’ve taped things out and tested placeholders, you wait usually at least 24 hours before making the purchase.

What to check during the pause

Does it work with your anchor pieces? A bold accent chair is fun, but if it fights your sofa, rug, and paint, it will look like a stranger in the room.
Does it fit the color plan? Use a simple palette (for example, a 60-30-10 ratio of main color, secondary color, and accent) so every item has a job to do.
Is it solving a problem or creating one? Will this piece actually add storage, comfort, or function or just clutter?
Are you following a plan, or a sale banner? A cart filled entirely from the “new arrivals” page is usually a red flag that you’re impulse shopping, not designing.

This pause lines up with what designers recommend: start with a plan, then purchase intentionally. It’s far easier to avoid decorating mistakes when you slow down and ask, “What is this doing for my room?” before you tap “Place Order.”

Bonus: Design Principles That Support These 4 Tricks

The four Young House Love tricks are simple, but they’re backed up by classic interior design principles. Add these ideas into your makeover and everything will feel more polished and intentional.

1. Balance and proportion

Rooms feel calm when furniture and decor are balanced not all the heavy pieces on one side, not all the tall items on one wall, not all the color in a single corner. When you tape things out and test placeholders, you can see if one side of the room feels visually “heavier” than the other and adjust before you commit.

2. Lighting layers

Even the best furniture layout can fall flat under bad lighting. Aim for at least three layers:

Ambient: overhead fixtures or recessed lights.
Task: desk lamps, reading lamps, under-cabinet lights.
Accent: sconces, picture lights, or small lamps for mood.

During the planning phase, mark where lamps and outlets will go. Your future self will love not having cords snaking across the room.

3. Color and texture cohesion

Use your anchor pieces to guide your palette and textures. If your sofa is a soft oatmeal color, your rug might have warm neutrals, and your accent pillows can carry bolder hues or patterns. Spread those colors and textures around the room so it feels cohesive, not choppy.

4. Right-sized rugs and art

Rugs and art are where scale mistakes scream the loudest. As a general guide:

In a living room, choose a rug large enough that at least the front legs of your main seating sit on it.
Over a sofa or bed, art should usually be about two-thirds the width of the furniture below it.

Taping out rug sizes and art placement helps you avoid the “postage stamp rug” and “floating art island” look.

A Mini Makeover Example Using the 4 Tricks

Let’s say you’re turning a spare bedroom into a combo guest room and home office. Here’s how these tricks might play out in real life.

Step 1: Choose your anchor pieces

You decide you need:

A daybed that can double as a sofa for work breaks.
A desk big enough for a laptop, monitor, and notebook.
A rug to make the room feel cozy.

You select a neutral daybed and a simple wood desk style you like (even if you haven’t ordered them yet). These become your mental anchors.

Step 2: Tape it out

You grab painter’s tape and outline the daybed on the wall opposite the window, then try two desk positions: under the window and perpendicular to it. You quickly see that the desk under the window blocks the curtain and makes the room feel shallower, so perpendicular wins.

Next, you tape an 8x10 rug under the daybed and desk. A smaller 5x8 rectangle looks skimpy it doesn’t reach under the desk chair so you commit to the larger size.

Step 3: Drop in placeholder furniture

You borrow two dining chairs to imitate your planned desk seating and pull a side table in to stand in for a nightstand. Within minutes you realize two chairs crowd the room and make it feel like a conference room, not a cozy guest space so you switch to one chair and plan for a floor lamp instead of a second seat.

Step 4: Hold the phone

Armed with this info, you build a mood board or quick collage: neutral daybed, medium-toned desk, soft geometric rug, brass floor lamp, and a few colorful pillows. You wait a day before ordering, look over the images again, and ask:

Do these pieces share a style and color story?
Will they still make sense if you swap pillow colors next year?
Is every piece solving a real need?

Only after everything checks out do you buy. When the items arrive, you’ve already done the thinking, so installation day is basically just “decorate by numbers.”

Real-Life Makeover Lessons: Extra Experience for an Even Smoother Update

Once you start using these four decorating tricks, you’ll notice patterns good and bad in how your projects usually go. Here are some extra lessons drawn from real-world makeovers that can help you stretch these ideas even further.

Lesson 1: Your first plan is rarely your best plan

The first layout you sketch or tape out is often just the “obvious” one, not the ideal one. Maybe you automatically shove the sofa against the longest wall because that’s what you’ve always done. When you give yourself permission to try a second or third layout with tape and placeholder furniture, you often land on something much better: a floating sofa that creates a cozy seating zone, a bed centered under a window, or a reading chair that tucks perfectly into a corner you thought was useless.

Try committing to at least three layout experiments before you decide. The first one is “habit,” the second is “interesting,” and the third is usually where the magic happens.

Lesson 2: “Use what you have” is not settling

At first, placeholder furniture can feel like a compromise like you’re making do until you can buy “real” pieces. But a lot of people discover that some placeholders become permanent. The old dresser you moved into the entry might look perfect once it’s painted and styled. The bench you borrowed for under the window suddenly feels like it was made for that spot.

Instead of thinking of existing furniture as second best, treat it as raw material. Could a dated nightstand become a chic side table with new hardware and paint? Could a rug from the guest room be the missing piece in your office? Young House Love’s projects are full of this kind of smart re-homing and your budget will love it.

Lesson 3: Emotions are data, too

Yes, we’re measuring, taping, and planning like responsible grown-ups. But notice how you feel during the placeholder stage. When you walk into the room, does it feel cramped, echoey, cozy, or empty? Do you instinctively sit in one spot and avoid another? That reaction is telling you something about scale, flow, and comfort.

If your shoulders relax when you remove one bulky chair or shift the desk away from a wall, pay attention. That’s your body voting on the layout. The four tricks simply give you a way to test those feelings before you spend money.

Lesson 4: Small tweaks can rescue a “failed” makeover

Almost everyone has had a makeover that didn’t quite land the rug that felt too busy, the paint color that turned neon in daylight, the “statement chair” that was secretly uncomfortable. The good news: using these tricks, you rarely have to start over.

Instead of declaring the entire room a disaster, go back to basics:

Re-evaluate your anchor pieces. Are they still right for how you use the room?
Drop painter’s tape around and test a new furniture arrangement.
Borrow pieces from other rooms to see if swapping one thing (a rug, lamp, or coffee table) fixes the vibe.
Use the “hold the phone” rule on new fix-it purchases so you don’t chase one mistake with three more.

Most “failed” rooms are just one or two decisions away from working. The slower, low-tech method helps you find those decisions without panic-shopping.

Lesson 5: The middle will always look messy

There’s a phase in every makeover where the room looks worse than when you started: furniture shoved into the hall, tape on the floor, half-emptied drawers everywhere. It’s tempting to assume you’ve ruined everything and retreat to scrolling other people’s finished spaces.

Here’s the truth: the middle always looks wild. Builders know this when a house is just studs and wires. Designers know this when a room has mismatched samples and extra chairs piled in the corner. The four tricks don’t eliminate the messy middle, but they keep it controlled and purposeful. You’re not destroying the room; you’re testing ideas safely before you commit.

Once you accept that the middle is supposed to look weird, you stop panicking and start observing. “Okay, this layout feels cramped good to know.” “That rug size is too small happy I tested it with tape first.” Every “wrong” attempt is simply data that leads you to the right solution.

Conclusion: Simple Tricks, Big Confidence

A smoother makeover isn’t about buying everything at once, copying a mood board pixel-for-pixel, or magically skipping the awkward in-between phase. It’s about planning like a pro with tools you already have: painter’s tape, existing furniture, a measuring tape, and a little patience.

Start with solid anchor pieces, tape out your plans, test them with placeholder furniture, and pause before you hit “order.” Layer in basic design principles like balance, lighting, and scale, and suddenly you’re not guessing you’re making informed choices.

That’s the heart of the Young House Love approach: low-stress, low-tech decorating that respects your budget, your time, and your real life. The only thing you’ll miss from your old makeover style is the part where you regretted your cart the next morning.