| 10 Surefire Ways to Liven up your Interior During the Dark Winter Months |
| February 19, 2008 |
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So it’s after the holidays and all the festive decorations have been put away, leaving a bland uninspired interior that echoes the cold and stark landscape of winter. It’s time for some changes to your home that will bring back life and warmth without emptying your bank account, and that will lift up your spirits and help you get through the winter once again. To follow are 10 simple suggestions that will brighten up and liven any interior space.
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Paint a new color on the walls. It’s always suggested in home interior decorating magazines as a simple way to transform a room. It works! It doesn’t take much money, just a little bit of time, and you can add a whole new feeling to a room. Start by collecting lots and lots of color chips from your local paint shop, narrow the colors down to about three that you love, buy some small cans of these colors you love and try them on the walls before you commit to larger cans of paint. Once you paint the samples on your walls, live with them for a few days to see if there is one color that stands out and enhances everything else you have in the room. The new color should breath new life into your old furnishings.
- Hang up large pictures of bold colorful flowers (think Georgia O’Keefe) for bursts of color in a room. You can find affordable art online and either frame it yourself or order it with a frame. Try to stick to similar colors if you are hanging more than one picture. Use reds, yellows, and oranges together or blues, greens, and purples together. Hang up 2 or 3 in a row for more visual impact.
- Add new lights to your rooms such as small and discreet accent lights to bring warmth, coziness, and drama. You can purchase smaller sconce lights (plug-in or hardwire) and have them flank an entryway, fireplace, or bookcase. Purchase up lights to cast an interesting light up on tall plants or behind an arrangement of vases on a console table. Up lights add wonderful drama and warmth to a room and easily and cheaply transform a space with a wash of light.
- Change out your area rugs. Buying a new bright area rug for a room is an easy way to breathe new life into your space. Try a solid rug with an unexpected color. A new color underfoot can be carried out in new throw pillows and drapes or pictures on the wall. A new rug is a great starting point when you need to revive a room because it has so many functions: it can divide up a larger room by delineating a seating arrangement, it can add a large burst of color, it can provide an interesting texture if you go for a shag rug or sisal weave, and it can echo shapes in the room (i.e.: using a circular rug under a circular coffee table or using a rectangular area rug in a rectangular room).
- New throw pillows are a great way to revive older sofas and chairs. I consider new pillows a “mini-reupholstering” because the pillow fabrics tend to stand out over the sofa fabric – your eye is drawn to the pillows first so you can make the sofa look like new again. Stripes look great on most sofas and add a pattern that is easy to incorporate into the room. If you choose solid colors, choose interesting textures such as a nubby weave or quilted velvet.
- Bring spring inside! Buy some large leaf plants or trees that can add a soft architectural element to a room (like large palm plants). I think of tall plants and trees in large oversized planters as organic columns. Use them in the corners of a room to bring life and interest to dead space or flank two to spice up transitions and entrances between rooms.
- Dress your bare windows. New simple drapes are a major factor in creating coziness during the winter months. Even if you have window treatments, changing them out for a season will make everything around feel new. And they can be simple and inexpensive. I love to buy tablecloths on sale and use them as drapes. I can usually get two panels from one tablecloth by dividing in half lengthwise. Buy some drapery clips (online is a good place to find them) to clip rings right across the top hem of the panels and hand on a drapery rod. Or there are lots of inexpensive shades make out of woven natural materials that can add a warm casual touch to a room. As long as your windows are standard sizes and you can order ready-made shades, they shouldn’t cost too much. When you buy inexpensive window treatments, you can afford to change them from time to time. Being able to change colors and accessories with the seasons keeps an interior exciting.
- Play music. So often we forget the other senses when we decorate our homes. Music can have a tremendous effect on our mood and should be played often. Though you’re not adding something visual, you’re adding another layer to your environment that has a great impact. When you’re alone at home, play whatever makes you happy. When you have your family or friends at home, play something everyone can appreciate like instrumentals or classical music played softly that stays in the background.
- Add fragrance. Scent is a great mood enhancer. I love to use either fragranced candles or oil diffusers that burn with a tea light candle. My favorite fragrances for winter are cinnamon, apple, clove, pumpkin, and balsam. Again, you’re not adding a visual enhancement but the sense of smell is so powerful in enhancing your interior. It can make you and your company feel happier without even realizing why.
And that is the goal of getting through winter – to create a warm inviting and cozy atmosphere inside so that you don’t even care if you can’t get outside. You might even prefer it.
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