To­day we are aim­ing for April Smarts; not April Fools. There is noth­ing wrong with pre­tend­ing. There is noth­ing fool­ish about that! The key is do­ing it right. You do not want your ef­forts to be recog­nised as a cheap im­i­ta­tor. That will not be very smart! You want your ef­forts to be just as good or even bet­ter. Let's look at some clever im­i­ta­tors and pre­tenders in d&ea­cute;cor.

Smart mul­ti­taskers

One smart idea is get­ting more out of your fur­ni­ture by mak­ing them mul­ti-task. This is es­pe­cial­ly valu­able in small homes and apart­ments where you do not have the lux­u­ry of space. It is smart when one piece of fur­ni­ture can be used for oth­er func­tions. We are all fa­mil­iar with the so­fa bed: so­fa by day and bed by night, and great for stu­dio apart­ments and for guests. Here are some oth­er smarts. What about the daybed – a cre­ation of the French. Dec­o­rat­ed with pil­lows and bol­sters in the day, the daybed serves as a seat­ing op­tion. Get rid of the dec­o­ra­tive pil­lows and the daybed does night du­ty. Use a wall of book­shelves as a room di­vider. On one side you can ac­tu­al­ly store books or you can use the shelves for dis­play (or both). On the oth­er side you can treat the back of the book­cas­es as a wall. Wall pa­per is an in­ter­est­ing wall treat­ment for the back of the cas­es, but what about an up­hol­stered wall? Re­al­ly tall head­boards are trendy right now. The up­hol­stered back can pre­tend to be a head­board in a stu­dio apart­ment. Liv­ing small does not mean you can­not live styl­ish! Do you have an old trunk ly­ing around? Put a firm cush­ion on top of the trunk and it can dou­ble as ex­tra seat­ing or an ot­toman. With a tray it can be called to serve as a cof­fee ta­ble. At the foot of your bed, the trunk can be used as seat­ing while dress­ing and can hold all the dec­o­ra­tive bed linen and pil­lows when it is time to sleep. Your din­ing ta­ble can be a study desk for your kids to do home­work or a com­put­er desk for a home of­fice. Put a skirt around the ta­ble or use a floor length ta­ble cloth and you have ex­tra stor­age space. In ad­di­tion to your tele­vi­sion, the TV cab­i­net or ar­moire can be used for stor­ing linen, toi­letries, clothes ... use your imag­i­na­tion. Es­pe­cial­ly in a small apart­ment where the ar­moire is in close prox­im­i­ty to every­thing, it can be used for just about any­thing. It can even dou­ble as a pantry.

Copy­cat dec­o­rat­ing

We all copy­cat. There is no copy­right on ideas. Be in­spired. Browse your favourite web­sites and mag­a­zines and take note and pic­tures of what ap­peals to you. You can then try to du­pli­cate the look in your home – put your spin on it. Just ob­serve chil­dren. They learn by copy­ing what we do. We can do the same. Af­ter all the great­est form of a com­pli­ment to a dec­o­ra­tor is im­i­ta­tion of, or copy­ing their style. You can re­al­ly dec­o­rate for less by us­ing im­i­ta­tions of the re­al thing. De­sign­er and vin­tage items can cost a for­tune. But take heart. There are many look-a-likes out there and you can still have an au­then­tic look. Many re­pro­duc­tions are dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from the re­al thing. A lit­tle goes a long way. If you can­not af­ford an ex­pen­sive suite, you can pur­chase one piece. If the fab­ric is out of your bud­get, you do not have to treat the en­tire win­dow or re-up­hol­ster the en­tire suite. Pil­lows in the fab­ric, on­ly do­ing a valance or mix­ing the fab­ric with solids are smart ways of mak­ing a good thing go a long way. We are all ac­quaint­ed with faux leather and faux silk and oth­er tex­tiles. Very of­ten, the pre­tenders are man­u­fac­tured to erad­i­cate the weak­ness­es of the nat­ur­al fi­bre or ma­te­r­i­al, mak­ing them more func­tion­al. Faux silks are more colour sta­ble, re­sis­tant to wrin­kle and will not rot in the sun. Re­al silk, though ex­pen­sive, is acute­ly af­fect­ed by the en­vi­ron­ment and many wrin­kle like crazy. Great pre­tend­ing is smart... and re­al. Fol­low these tips and we will make to­day, All Smart's Day!