Libby Langdon Has Advice For Summer Decorating

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Yesterday and this morning's weather in the New York City area would be described by many as perfect.

It's a great time to decorate your home for summer, and designer and television personality Libby Langdon spoke with WCBS 880's Pat Farnack and had some tips.

Langdon With Farnack

(Download the full interview here)

She said she loves color in the summer, and especially the color from painted furniture.

"I love to paint furniture. This time of the year, there are so many yard sales. So, if you want to freshen up your space, but you don't really want to spend the money going to buy new furniture, I can't tell you how I've transformed old side tables, or end tables, or coffee tables, with paint," Langdon told Farnack. "You can paint them a bright color, or you could paint them black or white. So, painting furniture is a great way to shift up the look of tired items that you've got, or pieces that you find on the side of the road."

"Can you spray paint furniture. Does that give it a good look, or should you stick to a brush?" asked Farnack.

"If you don't want to sand the furniture. There's this great stuff called liquid sandpaper, and you just rub it on, leave it for 30 minutes, and what it does is it basically eats into the finish of what's on the piece of furniture," Langdon said. "There's another spray paint that's fabulous, called, Krylon, and it's actually meant to spray onto plastic. So, it really does adhere to pretty much anything, and all of these paints come in a wide range of colors."

Langdon also said that your fireplace doesn't have to go to waste during the summer.

"During the summer, our fireplaces just become this become this big black hole," Langdon said. "So, what I tell people to do sometimes is take a a rectangular mirror, and you can get it at any home improvement store, inexpensively, and lean it up in front of your fireplace. What's it's going to do is reflect light and keep it from feeling like a big black hole."

She also suggested arranging candles, shells, plants, flowers, and/or other things in front of the mirror, which she said would take the sting out of looking at a big empty fireplace all summer long.

Another thing Langdon likes to do is use outdoor drapes for a back porch.

For more on Libby Langdon, visit her website here.

What's your favorite summer deocorating technique? Share it in the comments section below.