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I have a confession to make.

I'm horrible at visualizing things.

I need to actually push a couch to all corners of a room to figure out where it looks best.

My inability to do the mental maneuvering has resulted in a lot of buyer's remorse and returns over the years.

That is, until I discovered this one. simple. trick: the PicCollage app.

It's the quickest, simplest way to see how a piece of furniture will look in your room before pulling the trigger.

When I first downloaded the app, I intended to use it to edit photos for the blog. Once I figured out what it could do, I've been using it non-stop to decorate our home and help friends and family with theirs.

In today's post, I'll show you step-by-step how to use the this app to visualize furniture and accessories in your home before adding them to your cart.

1. Download and open the PicCollage app on your phone.

2. Choose 'freestyle' mode.

3. Click the 'photos' button to add photos of your room and the piece(s) of furniture you're considering buying.

You can use a screen shot from an online shop or an in-store photo taken on your phone.

In this case, the 'room' is the West Elm showroom in Toronto and the furniture is a set of teak MCM chairs my sister had already purchased. She wanted to see if this West Elm dining table would work with the chairs.

4. Use two fingers to stretch out the image you want to be the background beneath the image of the furniture you want to see in the room.

5. Double click the image of the furniture to open the options menu and click on 'cut out.'

6. Trace your finger around the outline of the furniture to cut it out of the background.

As you can see, your outline need not be precise. This tool allows you to choose between the image you've actually outlined (bottom left in screen shot above) or a more accurate outline of the furniture (bottom right, above). Select the image on the right. Obvi!

If you're still not happy with the accuracy, the app allows you to add back parts of the furniture you might have accidentally cut out in your tracing. Click the check mark once you're happy with the result.

And, voila!

Now you can see exactly how this piece of furniture will look in your room (or how two pieces of furniture will look when juxtaposed) before buying anything!

The app also allows you to rotate and resize the overlying image to get it to scale.

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The Pic Collage app also works well when trying to figure out how multiple decor pieces look together.

For instance, I've been helping my sister, Cher from House of High/Low, pick out decor for her new house. We confirmed that this couch and chair from Article will work well with this West Elm rug using the app:

Here are a few examples from our home of how this app has come in handy pre-purchase:

Vintage mini rug from Worn & Woven.

Mudcloth pillows from Thils & Lils.

Wall rack from Kroft.

Pillow covers from Mae Woven.

There you have it! My best hack for figuring out how something will look in your space before buying. There are lots of decor-specific apps available for doing this, but in my opinion, this non-decor app is the simplest and most user friendly...and it's free!

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