P L C 

I have a friendly challenge for you. There’s no prize at the end other than a growing awareness of what constitutes good design. The challenge is to view images through the lens of scale and proportion. The next time you’re looking at shelter magazines or online, home-design and decorating sites, try to identify the small, medium and large elements in the space. Also, try to note in which order you identify them. What? It’s better if I explain with an example. Let’s say you’r

Do you ever long to have a kitchen just like the ones featured on the covers of shelter magazines? While I’ve swooned over many, myself, the

countertops, and tile. My husband and I know what we like and usually agree. But we don’t know if it is good design and never thought about that before. I read your column and you have me interested in doing a better job than just choosing things we like. Can you give us a synopsis of what good design is? You also sometimes describe things as a “tight” design. Can you explain what that is? (Originally published in the Napa Valley Register) Let me start with the last question