The honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of personal design and resourceful imagination. The location: your home.

The construction of a home is layered with concrete, wood beams, siding, windows and shingles. These layers work as one to provide a strong foundation. The same applies to the interior. When decorating, layers of color, scale and texture provide a strong foundation for appealing design.

The finishing touches of a home are based on unique accessories, visually captivating fabrics, and warm colors on the walls. Coordinating the elements can take some trial and error, but ultimately your choices should be based on a love for the items.

Third Street Interiors in Marysville specializes in providing inspiration for your home. For nearly 16 years, Beverly Lambert and her staff have pored over catalogs, looking for unique artwork, mirrors, lamps and upholstered goods for their customers.

New trends emerge all the time, and if you tend toward trying new things and frequently changing your rooms, trends provide great decorating opportunities. Ultimately, Lambert encourages people to choose pieces they will enjoy for years to come. She also encourages customers to choose accents for their rooms that adequately fit the space, instead of choosing several smaller pieces that may look cluttered. Choosing wall art that is proportioned to your space is especially important.

Also suggested: Forgo the expected. Thinking out of the box can create wonderful results. A French writing desk used in place of a nightstand adds a surprise element to a bedroom. You can prop a painting on the floor underneath it for an added surprise.

Lambert encourages customers to bring in photos of their homes so she can better assist with ideas that fit their needs. If you need additional design assistance, a design consultant is available for home visits. And keep in mind that design centers and home decor stores often have furniture and art catalogs you can browse through and make choices from.

Within her own home, Lambert is like many of her customers. Much of her home is in a state of progress, with an ongoing renovation in the process. But the bonus room in her home has been completely decorated and provides a lesson plan for those with eclectic tastes. With two beautiful mismatched sofas, a mixture of tables and shelving, artwork from her store and a mishmash of treasures from her mother and her years in business, the room holds sophistication and charm.

“The bonus room is really our family room, where we do our entertaining,” Lambert said. “We have a large extended family that visits often, so on one side of the room we added a large dining table with several chairs.”

Her use of color in the space is a wonderful example of how to mix colors within a room. “We have four colors within the room. Aged mint is the overall color, with Mediterranean blue and corral used on two accent walls,” Lambert said. She used taupe on the ceiling. “It makes for a room that is very livable and ready for entertaining.”

The flooring in the bonus room is unique, and can be done as a do-it-yourself project.

“We have concrete floors, so my husband stained the floors,” she said. “He used a three-step process using two different stains to result in a mottled look.”

Lambert successfully topped areas of the room with rugs, and added ambient lighting to give extra warmth to the large space.

Because an eclectic attitude toward decorating allows you to mix and match pieces from throughout your home, it is a cost-effective way of decorating. Antique pieces can be mixed with metropolitan pieces, rustic with modern. You can lend your home classic style and a bit of playful whimsy. It’s all in the charm of the detail.

Fabrics play a leading role when coordinating color in your home. A few pillows tossed on a sofa can add elegance or a touch of fun to your room. The great thing about pillows is they can be changed out for each season. A storage tip offered by Third Street Interiors: place the pillows you aren’t using in a vacuum-sealed bag. The bag offers protection and reduces the size of the pillows for storage purposes.

Windows dressed with fabrics also add warmth to a room. Beth Stibre, interior designer and owner of Absolute Interiors in Everett, has specialized in designing window treatments for more than 20 years.

“Soft window treatments finish off the window much nicer than a hard blind can do any day of the week,” Stibre said. “You can make the window so much more custom with a drapery or valance treatment than you can with a blind.”

The options for dressing a window are endless. There are literally thousands of fabric choices available, and specialty trims such as bullion fringe, beaded fringe and French gimp braiding add a beautiful finishing touch.

A cornice board is an economical way to dress a large window. Consisting of a wooden valance that is padded and covered with fabric, a cornice board can be built in hundreds of different styles. A cornice board with a scooped-out bottom makes a great treatment for an arched or half-moon window. They can be used with or without draperies coming out of the bottom. Cornice boards are also versatile when making changes to your home.

“Down the road in five years, if you change your decor, you can reupholster a cornice board for half the price of making a new one,” Stibre said.

Another way to add beautiful fabric to your home is to design your own wall art. Designed and made much like a cornice board, you simply have a piece of plywood cut to the size you desire. Next, cover the front and the edges of the plywood with batting, securing it on the back with staples. Finally, stretch the fabric evenly over the batting, securing it on the back with staples. After adding wire to the back of the piece, you will be able to display your new art in a prominent place in your home.

As you bring different fabrics and artwork together, you will notice a theme of color. In that theme is where you’ll find your colors for paint on the walls. Making your paint selections begins with choosing a fabric or piece of art with a variety of color. From your inspiration piece, break down the hues in terms of color priority, choosing the most dominant color, the second most dominant color and so on. Then use the colors to create the scheme, using them in the same balance, or making the most dominant color the dominant paint color in your room and the fifth most dominant color an accessory in the room.

Jackie Oglesby, paint specialist at E &E Lumber and Home Center in Marysville, enjoys helping customers choose color schemes for their homes. “Our theory is, bring in a carpet sample, furniture samples, and maybe pictures you want to decorate around to make a palette to choose colors from,” Oglesby said.

She also suggests browsing through the pages of magazines. “They are nice to use because so many people have no idea what their style is. You can pick up a decorating magazine and see if something catches your eye.” By showing your design or paint specialist magazine pictures of what you’re attracted to, they can help you recreate the look in your home.

“Don’t be afraid of color,” Oglesby said. “It makes a room so warm once you find the right color.” Instead of leaving the ceiling white, Oglesby suggests painting the ceiling two or three shades lighter than the walls. “White has its place as an accent,” she said.

Oglesby also noted that people are afraid to use dark colors in a small room. “They think that it makes the room seem smaller, but this isn’t true,” she said. In fact, the dark colors add more depth to the room, and paired with natural or ambient light, can be a warm retreat.

Designer Ralph Lauren has been instrumental in creating new colors and textures in the world of home design. New to Ralph Lauren Paint is a topcoat called Candlelight.

“The Candlelight finish is really a cool faux finish that makes your walls seem iridescent,” Oglesby said. “You just roll it on over any paint using a special roller. It’s something your normal do-it-yourselfer can do, so you don’t need to hire a professional.”

Paints with a metallic sheen are also a popular option that doesn’t take a lot of creativity. “It’s just two coats of paint and you’re good,” Oglesby said. “You can change a room in a day. Pop in some crown molding and you have a completely new look.”

So, what happens if you don’t like the color once it’s up? “The rule is if you put up color that you don’t like you can change it for $30,” Oglesby said. “If you don’t try it you’ll never know.”