How to tame the supersized

The American “bigger is better” aesthetic — so evident in cars, food and even grocery stores — has left its mark on home size, especially in Los Angeles, where the towering “great room” has become standard even in average homes.

That can mean challenges for interior decorators, but good design can give vast spaces quality with their quantity.

Not surprisingly, in the world of the mega-home, owners often hire a team of designers and consultants to consider specialized furnishings and unusual paint colors to add a cozy quality to great rooms and huge master bedroom suites. Even selecting art requires a special expertise. Custom is king, and an entire industry has sprung up to provide the latest in electronics or the perfect painting, all suited to the large home.

Change the scale

Finding furnishings that are on the scale of the rooms in big houses is one problem. The Phyllis Morris line of formal furniture has been revived by Morris’ daughter, Jamie Adler, and is on view at the newly opened Robertson Court in West Hollywood along with the firm’s new retro-inspired line, Circa Furniture.

Although the lines are not expressly designed with large homes in mind, 90% of the firm’s work is custom and can be scaled to the size of homes in which normal pieces would look like doll furniture.

One area of the showroom is devoted to the Grande Venetian — a swirl of draperies over a Super Ultra King bed that is approximately the size of two queen-sized mattresses and priced at $60,000.

Adler says the high price includes hand-carving and even custom sheets made without a single seam. Recently, the firm supersized an entry hall table to a 9-foot circumference for a new home in Los Angeles.

They also routinely manufacture 20-foot sectionals and massive coffee tables. Shipping the pieces and making sure they fit through doors and hallways require extensive planning. Many of the pieces are so large, in fact, that they have to be assembled on site.

Creating islands

Just pumping up the size of furnishings does not necessarily make for an inviting room. L.A. designer Tom Beeton avoids using one huge piece in a large space in favor of several smaller pieces and rugs to create “islands of warmth.”

Because decorating great rooms in particular can be wildly expensive, Beeton urges homeowners to prioritize. For example, he advocates using neoprene moldings rather than expensive custom plaster or wood pieces. The resulting savings can be used for rich upholstery, which Beeton considers “the bone structure of the room.”

Sarah Susanka, author of the “Not So Big House” books, suggests that “spaces be differentiated from one another without the use of walls. Many of these great rooms are like an unpunctuated sentence. You need to put in commas.”

For punctuation, she suggests the use of soffits (shelves hung above window height that can run along one wall or the entire perimeter of the room).

These shelves provide a division in the room and allow the eye to break the space into several sections.

Additionally, many bedrooms in large houses have high sloping ceilings that are unwelcoming. In these spaces, Susanka suggests a “floating shelf” — a deep soffit that looks like a canopy built on the taller of the rooms’ walls to provide balance. She encourages homeowners to use darker ceiling colors to bring down the height of the room. In her clients’ homes, Susanka typically creates some type of separation between the entry foyer and the great room, as well as window seats and other smaller seating arrangements in corners.

Custom rugs and carpets are often a necessity in large, contemporary homes, and, because they are a primary design element, finding the perfect rug can be difficult. Carpet designer Christopher Farr has done rugs as large as 30 by 50 feet. While the thought of paying $30,000 to $40,000 for one of his large rugs might initially seem shocking, similarly sized antique rugs often begin at $150,000.

The wall-scape

Although architectural colorist Scott Flax creates individual solutions for each home, he says the general rule for vast walls is “the flatter the finish the better because it is less in your face, more atmospheric.” He loves to use textured “stone paints” from companies like Sydney Harbour or Portola that create a “beautiful haze” of color.

Generally, Flax shies away from white or pastels that can create a “void” in a huge room. Rather, he says, “the key to large spaces is to explore medium tone colors and natural light.”

A large home often demands large electronics, which can be overwhelming. New products and installation techniques have been developed to keep television and stereo equipment from becoming the focus of the space. Screen sizes in great rooms often run from 60 to more than 100 inches with system prices starting at $30,000.

Alberto Fabiano of Ambrose Audio and Video, a supplier of luxury home electronics, says homeowners want to see well-designed components but “not the wires.” Wireless technology and custom installation allows them to display their flat screens and high-style speakers without the intrusive jumble of wiring needed to connect them.

For those who want a more minimal look, installers can hide screens behind paintings or in trap doors in the floor and ceiling. The new Stealth Acoustics audio system features speakers that can be installed behind drywall and are entirely invisible.

“Art is one of the best ways to personalize large spaces, creating warmth and individuality,” says Ilene Kurtz, a Los Angeles art consultant who helps homeowners assemble collections.

Framing and placement of art are important in terms of filling a big space without making it seem too busy. Kurtz deals primarily with contemporary art and says the general rule on framing such pieces is, “the simpler the better.”

“Some pieces are so powerful that they don’t need to be big to command the entire wall but generally one looks to cover one-half to two-thirds of the wall,” she says.

Homeowners might be tempted to fill every wall but Kurtz says that an empty wall, or one with a sculpture in front of it, can complement a facing wall with a powerful art work.