I was speaking to our friend Joana Coles—Michael’s co-host on Inside Trump’s Head—when she told me she’d been standing in her living room, surveying it with her sharp eye. Something was missing.
“I need you to come in,” she said, “and do another layer.”
I loved this immediately. Another layer! So breezy. So accurate. So deeply design-correct. It sounds casual, but it contains an entire worldview. People in design talk about layering all the time, and I am 100% behind it. Like a good story, a good room should unfold. Your eye should feel intrigued, delighted, slightly curious. In a truly good room, there’s a small tale unfolding in every corner—told through art, heirlooms, books, pottery, and the faint remnants of gatherings past.
Layers are what make a room feel alive rather than staged, inhabited rather than merely photographed. They’re what turn a space from “nice” into I want to stay here.
Since that conversation, when I’m photographing rooms—or filming Michael—I find myself constantly nudging things: moving an object six inches, adding something small but meaningful, and muttering to myself, this corner needs another layer.
A reader’s message stopped me short recently. He relayed that his friend, the late Robert Kime, always believed that the two chief emotions a good home should provide are comfort and safety.
I think that may be the layer I’m most interested in now.
So—how do you add another layer?
And more specifically: how do you add a comfort and safety layer?
Here’s what I do.
