Interior design, like all the arts, is loaded down with useless, meaningless, and pretentious words and ideas. They are hereby banned.

rich cream
Why is it always rich cream? Why never pure cream, golden cream, shadowy cream, off-cream, or ascetic cream? Why is it rarely just cream? Kill this overused gobbet of hominess.

crisp white
White, at least, has several dozen common qualifiers. This one pops up the most, though. It's shorthand for, "We want this to look clean and minimalist but not ascetic, 'kay?" Just call it white.

window treatment
Curtains, drapes, and valances, plus all the other things that the pleasant minds of interior designers have devised through the revolving ages to replace curtains, drapes, and valances. Windows do not have treatments unless they develop dry rot or termites.

Space.

space, when used to mean "room"
Yes, you're terribly artsy, seeing a room as the area it defines rather than the walls that define it. Now shut up and go back to drawing houses with three-story cathedral ceilings and no windows.

personalizing a room
It's a sad and sorry creature whose house still looks like a motel suite after they've laid their stuff out. So long as you don't buy all your things in sets at Wal-Mart, your room will look like your own personal room. Stop fretting.

expressing yourself through interior design
You are not your IKEA bookshelves. You are not your collection of vintage bobbleheads. You are not even your slightly clashing but reasonably competently performed dragging job. Nor are you able to convey any useful and complex ideas through your choice of decor, unless you paint the words on the wall. The decor you choose indicates what you think is attractive, how you want others to think of you, and how skilled you are at managing the latter; when designers talk about "expressing yourself through design," they are using a socially acceptable shortcut for "impressing others with your taste and controlling the image they have of you." This is not an unworthy goal, as humans are social animals, but it's far, far from the psychological project implied by "expressing yourself." I hereby absolve you from worry and release you from your preoccupation with self-expression. Go ye forth and concentrate on putting together a room that's fun to live in.

The image on this page is courtesy of NASA (Comet Kohoutek).