Vanguards Of Design, '80s-Style

By Martha Smilgis

Tired of last year's tubular furniture? Depressed by dreary drapes, bent blinds, avocado wallpaper and grease-stained cushions? Embarrassed when splayed rattan furniture leaves your guests bleeding? Yes, but you have neither the time nor patience to tackle the job?

Well, there is help. Just make a quick phone call, and a compact van, stocked with thousands of solutions, will arrive at your door. A driver- decorator (98% are women) will survey the immediate problems and analyze whether your inclinations are in the formal, casual, transitional or luxurious mode. Then, presto! Out from the van can come decks of fabric swatches, wheels of paint chips, pages of wall coverings, rows of baked tiles, furniture catalogs -- even lamps and statuary. For customers who like things fancy, there are silk screens, antique engravings, custom-framed landscapes and Old Master reproductions -- a Degas for the master suite, perhaps, or a Bruegel for the bar.

Convoys of minivans are now daily crisscrossing the country, leaving behind a trail of satisfied customers, mostly overworked yuppie couples, young mothers and small-business owners. Maryland-based Decorating Den has accelerated from 100 vans in 1984 to more than 600 franchised van drivers today. The Georgia-based TransDesigns, which sells its own product lines of rugs, drapes and fine-arts objects, has grown from 183 decorators in 1975 to 32,000 decorators and $31 million in retail sales last year.

"People need reassurance that what they want to do will work out," says Patricia St. Hilaire-Croteau, 32, a TransDesigns decorator in Connecticut. For a cost of about $500, a face-lifting might include three custom-framed reproductions and four toss pillows. A full room overhaul, which includes several pieces of furniture, an area rug, window treatments and art, might run about $3,800.

A stickler for detail, TransDesigns Decorator Joan Caruso-Zinicola packs her van with shadow boxes, even containing seashells to complete the "traditional look," and raku pottery to be mounted on pedestals to "bring dead corners to life." Like most of her colleagues, she recommends local craftsmen and contractors and tries to keep them on schedule.

Guy and Joan Scala, a young couple in sales management and owners of a large four-bedroom home in Jamison, Pa., sought help from Dana Noonan of Decorating Den. For $5,000, Noonan finished the dining room with a new rug, a lambrequin over the windows and matching chair cushions, designed a sunny "Florida" solarium adjacent to the newly outfitted family room, and dramatized the guest bathroom with mauve, black and white accents. The Scalas are happy with the result. Says Joan: "I'm saving money in that I count my time as valuable."

Noonan finds that analyzing America's nesting habits is half the job. Today closets have new priority and are "being treated like rooms," as they expand to fit more active life-styles, while bathrooms "have become fortresses" of marble, mirrors and glass. Master-bedroom suites get special attention because working couples spend much of their leisure time in them. There has been a resurgence of "libraries" (home offices to the unredecorated) for dual- income families to stash books, papers, computers and answering machines. Baked ceramic tile is in vogue for every surface from countertops to foyer floors, and the mixing of bleached and raw-wood textures is common. Formica furniture, in startling shapes and bold solids, is a yuppie favorite. As for colors, earth tones -- drab tans, harvest golds and avocados -- are now out of favor. Yolk yellow and soft pastels are comers, and classic Wedgwood and Williamsburg blue are being revved up to purples and periwinkles. From California to Connecticut, country French decor is most popular.

Still, not all customers are satisfied. "Some people think they want a decorator," says Noonan, "but when you suggest something, they say, 'Oh, I can't do that!' What they really want is a coordinator." Instead of making proposals, a coordinator implements the client's own ideas. Some decorators perform that service too, right down to the thank-you gift of a pair of , earrings, color coordinated to go with milady's new decor.

With reporting by Elizabeth Rudulph/Jamison