The three design principles are extremely important to staging, but when decorating you can take more liberty with them.
The three principles are:
Simplicity: As Coco Channel said, less is more. Limit the amount of furniture and accessories you have in a room. Too much and the room becomes 'noisey'. When selling a house, you want buyers to feel relaxed, calm, comfortable, not overwhelmed or 'edgy'. No one takes their time in an overwhelming room. The only thought going through buyers' minds is to get out and move on to the next showing. As a seller, you don't want this to be your house's lasting impression!
- remove all family photos, artwork and magnets from the fridge, clear all countertops, tables of clutter and minimize what is in you closets, bookshelves and cabinets.
Proportion: If you have small rooms, make sure they do not have too many big pieces of furniture. While you can have large pieces in small rooms, you can not fill the room with too much. 99% of houses for sale have far too much furniture in them to show well. The last thing you want is to have large scale furniture in a small room or a large room with small scale furniture. When proportion is off it is extremely difficult to imagine the possibilities of a room.
- Reorganize furniture to ensure furniture is proportionate to each room.
- Take out the extra leaves from the dining room table if it is a smaller room.
- Make sure any artwork is proportionate to the room, it's surrounding pieces
- Don't fill a side table with overwhelmingly large accents.
- Make sure your baseboard and crown moldings are proportional to each other and the room.
Suitability: When selling you want the furnishings to complement the architectural details of the house. If your home is traditional in it's architectural details, don't fight it. You want the furniture to complement the rooms. While it is nice to see a mix of contemporary with traditional, 
it is awkward to be in a traditional room with wood paneling, ornate fireplace mantles, herringbone wood flooring and a chandelier furnished with ultra modern furniture. While you may like the conflict this creates, buyers won't.
With these 3 principles in mind, and in your new home, you can use them as guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Until your current house is sold though...follow these rules to ensure you leave the 'I could live here' lasting impression and not the 'not in this lifetime' sentiment!
Dane Caldwell is the Lead Design Consultant with Toronto, GTA and Durhams Region's 2 Hounds Design + Home Staging. http://www.2-hounds.com/
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