Published: November 06, 2009 06:18 pm      

11-7 At Home: style & trends

NEW YORK — A ‘Well-Dressed Home’ complements the closet

NEW YORK (AP) — Are you a T-shirt-and-jeans person with a chintz living room, or someone who loves the structure of a suit but wakes up in a shabby chic bedroom?

The decorating world is shifting toward a streamlined look that, at the very least, complements the personal style that people already incorporate into their wardrobes.

“It’s a really modern thing that people look more and more like their houses,” said Stephen Drucker, editor in chief of House Beautiful. “It’s all connected. People used to look the way they thought they were supposed to look and decorated their homes the way they thought they should decorate their homes. But we’ve been moving in the last decade to a ‘do-it-your-way’ philosophy.”

It wouldn’t be uncommon to find a 42-inch, flat-screen TV as the centerpiece of a home anymore, Drucker said, and you’d probably assume the person who lives in those surroundings has the casual lifestyle to match it. Twenty years ago, that same person probably would have hidden that TV in a cabinet — and hidden his true, couch-potato self under a suit, he said.