Renovating your home can be a time-consuming and expensive process (I should know; I’ve been slowly working on my 1880s house outside Boston for almost two years now).
But you’d be surprised by how easy it is to refresh a room with just a few simple tweaks. I was reminded of this fact a few weeks ago when I volunteered to help a friend get her house ready for a party. Ostensibly, I was on hand to make the flower arrangements, but I couldn’t resist the urge to move a few things here and there. Before I knew it, we had completely transformed the look of the place, all within a couple of hours and without buying anything new.
None of the things I did would qualify as groundbreaking design, but what a difference it made. Sometimes even the simplest design tenets bear repeating. 1. Rehang your art.

Above: At Harbor Cottage in Maine, a silkscreen print by British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham hovers above the objects on the cabinet so that it feels like part of a larger composition. Photograph by Justine Hand.
One of the most common design mistakes I see is art that is hung too high. Rule number one with art, it should “relate” to the object(s) around it. I subscribe to the idea that, generally, pictures should be at eye level; you should never have to look up to view art (unless it’s hung over a tall object). My aunt Sheila, an architect, uses her windows as a guide, hanging art so the middle of the pictures hangs in line with or only slight...