| 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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Posted in :
Decorating
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| How to Scale your Home’s Interior in a Few Easy Steps |
| February 18, 2008 |
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When I step into a client’s home to discuss redesigning a space one of the first things I notice is if the furniture and accessories are appropriately sized for each room. Usually it doesn’t take more than a two second glance to know when things are out of proportion. It just feels wrong and then I look around to find out exactly why it feels wrong. Scale has a powerful impact in a room and should always be thoroughly thought out before large purchases are made. Here are some tips for getting the right sizes for your home.
Many of the newer homes built today come with a great room. A great room is a very large living room, sometimes with soaring ceilings and lots of large windows and often opens to an adjoining room. Great rooms are a challenge to decorate because they need to be filled up without getting cluttered. You can do that by paying close attention to scale. Buy couches and chairs that can become a focal point near the center of the room. Make sure that the coffee table is over sized and is about two-thirds the size of the couch length and is almost double in width what an average coffee table measures. So if you’re finding that most coffee tables measure 20” x 50” (more or less) try to find one that is around 40” x 60”. You just want to take the average dimensions and bump them up.
Next, after buying and placing your furniture in the center of the room, the next item to scale would be an area rug. An area rug in a very large room is important because it breaks down the over sized scale into a smaller “room within a room”. A rug creates a subtle division within a room that helps to make the space more intimate. The best trick to use when trying to figure out the dimensions of an area rug is to take a roll of masking tape and map out a border that you think looks right under a collection of furniture. Live with your outline for a while as you come and go out of that room and see if you can get a sense if the outline is working. If not, try another dimension, and keep trying until you find one that feels right. Buy an area rug that will at least tuck under the front legs of your couch and chairs and extend at least 6 to 12 inches on either side of the couch and chairs.
After the central furniture arrangement is completed with the rug, move next to the perimeter walls. Arrange the walls with furniture that really fills space such as bookcases (placing two or three in a row really makes a statement) or armoires (media cabinets). You want to get good “bone structure” for the room that will then make it easier then to accessorize. Good bone structure for a room means properly scaled furniture appropriately arranged so that the accessories (pictures, lamps, drapes, vases, baskets, etc.) fall naturally into place.
Next you can fill in with large accessories: large ceramic lamps, large picture frames, extra large mirror, tall plants, chunky vases, long drapery panels on your windows, over sized basket/containers to disguise clutter, etc. The idea here is to continue keeping everything in the room large and “to scale” so that the room looks well planned and composed. Save smaller accessories that you love for your smaller rooms such as bedrooms or bathrooms.
When you follow these suggestions for keeping scaled proportions in your home you will have an easier time executing your vision for your home’s interior, and making each room feel just right.
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Posted in :
Decorating
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| Decorating for all the Senses |
| February 15, 2008 |
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When people think about decorating their homes they usually consider what they want it to look like but forget about the other senses and how important it is to consider these as well. Sight is important in decorating but smell, touch and sound can all play a big part in how your home environment nurtures you and your family or friends.
Smell
Let’s first consider the sense of smell. Have you ever walked into a bakery and just stopped to breathe in the sugary bread smell that makes you feel so happy? Do the same for your home! There are so many ways to fragrance your home from candles and potpourri, to oil that sits in a ring around a light bulb and gets heated up when the light is on. There are also lots of plug-in units which heat up and disperse the fragrance into the room. You need to find something that you will use often (daily). Sometimes even just a pot of coffee brewing gives a nice aroma to the house. The idea is to always keep some sort of pleasant scent in your home that lifts your mood.
Touch
When you’re purchasing items for you home, large furniture as well as all the accessories, pay attention to how it feels. Does it call out to you to be touched and welcome you to sit? Does your area rug invite you to take off your shoes to feel the texture (think of shag rugs)? Keep in mind fabrics for your throw pillows, drapes (try some luxurious velvet drapes), etc…And then as a contrast to all the softness, try some textural pieces such as large chunky baskets, a rugged wooden coffee table, woven wood blinds. Touch can go from soft and inviting to interesting with different textures.
Sound
When you walk into a place and it is complete silence, how do you feel? Or when it is filled with kids running around screaming, how do you feel? Sound is often overlooked as a component of interior design but sound has a profound impact on how we feel. While kids screaming is usually not a welcomed sound (especially for moms), silence can be equally unsettling. The best sounds that soothe and calm the soul are water trickling in a fountain, soft music, or white noise from a sound machine. I even love the sound of the dishwasher going. It has a rhythmic whir and splash sound that I find soothing and comforting.
When you are putting your final touches on a room, find something that will incorporate a soothing sound. Often even just opening the windows on a warm day and hearing the sounds outside (birds chirping, cars driving by, someone mowing a lawn) can fill your home with lively distant sounds.
Taste
This last sense doesn’t really fit into interior decorating unless you are talking about taste as a “sense of style”. Someone can have good taste or bad taste when it comes to buying for their home. Good taste sometimes comes naturally or it ca be developed over time with some guidance and trial and error. Good taste is a natural instinct for putting things together in a pleasing way. If you question whether you have good taste or not get some home decorating magazines and see if you can find your style in there somewhere. Most, if not all, interior decorating and home magazines showcase interiors done by professionals with good taste. That doesn’t mean that everything looks the same and appeals to everyone. It means that generally the homes look artfully done and composed. If you don’t like anything in any of the magazines you may need to rethink your style. Or not. If your home’s interior makes you happy, stay with it. But if you feel like you just can’t get it right, then chances are that you need help. Buy some magazines and books on interior decorating that appeal to you and then cut out all pictures you love. When you look at these pictures ask yourself exactly what in the pictures you are attracted to. Is it the use of distressed wood? Is it the color yellow painted in all shades of yellow? Is it bright floral patterns? When you find common denominators in the pictures, you can then piece together you sense of style, your taste, and set out to recreate that in your own home. You are teaching yourself how to have good taste.
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Decorating
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