Decor – Adding a Natural Touch May 14, 2012
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Bonsai miniature trees bring nature inside, but they aren’t the only way to add a natural touch to a room. House plants can add color, texture and even clean the air in a room, making the home not only prettier but fresher. A weekly purchase of fresh flowers can brighten any room in the home for as little as ten dollars. These natural touches are great reminders of the changing seasons.
You can get the look of real house plants with silk plants but you won’t get the added benefit of a living breathing plant cleaning your home’s air. Some designers are against silk and fake plants. We say buy what you love. If you have a black thumb, a real ficus tree probably isn’t the best choice for your home.
Other natural touches can be added in more subtle ways. Choosing natural materials for the fabrics and flooring in your home will add natural elements. Wool carpeting, wood or bamboo floors, cork floors, cotton, silk or wool upholstery—there are many options for going natural in your decorating. Sisal and jute are woven materials commonly used in area rugs that add great texture as well as a natural feeling to a design.
Whether you choose fresh flowers, house plants or natural materials, adding a few natural elements to your home’s interiors can make it a healthier as well as prettier home for you and your family.
Color In Room Decor May 7, 2012
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Color can be used as the building blocks for a room design. Selecting colors for a room and building a design off of a color palette is one way to build a design from scratch for a room. Knowing what colors you want in the room on the walls, floors and furniture will set the foundation for the rest of the design.
There are several ways to build a room design with color. You may start with the walls with a specific color in mind. Or you might base a room design off of the upholstery of a piece of furniture or the fabric of a curtain or pillow. You might pull colors from a wallpaper for an accent wall. Choose colors that you love and you will be happy to live with them.
No matter if you start with the color of the carpet or the sofa, work with a color palette to create an overall design for the room. You can build off of a single color or a group of colors. Select a paint color for the walls that works with the furniture, flooring and curtains. Bring samples of your paint, upholstery and floor with you when shopping for accent pieces.
Looking at a color wheel can help inspire you as well. The color wheel is the building block of creating a room full of colors that harmonize and complement each other. Knowing what colors contrast other colors can help you add the right pop of color to make a room look polished.
Shabby Chic Garden May 1, 2012
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Shabby chic style is perfect for the garden, outdoor living space or porch. The vintage, aged appeal of shabby chic is perfect for life outdoors. The faded, chipped, and rusted look of shabby chic furniture and accessories will only get more chic as they age. Shabby chic for the garden is a romantic look perfect for cottage style homes and gardens as well as homes that are more chic than shabby.
The ice cream parlor chair and painted shutters in this photo are a lovely example of the patina so favored by shabby chic style. It is nearly impossible to recreate the effects of weather and time on furniture and garden accessories. Clever DIYers have good tricks for imitating crackled paint and the patina on metal, but nothing can quite capture the beauty of aged surfaces.
Along with vintage garden furniture, accessories like indoor/outdoor rugs, pillows and textiles can enhance the shabby chic garden look for porches and outdoor living spaces. Faded florals and stripes along with crisp whites are beautiful accents in a cottage garden or porch. Florals can reflect the flowers growing in the garden or be inspired by vintage patterns found at flea markets and antique shops.
Vintage garden ornaments and planters are perfect in a shabby chic garden or outdoor living space. These can be found in painted metal, woods, cement, wicker and tin amongst other materials. Combined with vintage garden furniture and shabby chic accessories and fabrics, the vintage pieces will create a beautiful shabby chic look indoors or out.
Saving Up for Home Projects April 23, 2012
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Did you ever have a piggy bank when you were a kid? Were you the kind of kid who was good about putting money into the bank and saving for something you really wanted like a bike or game or new jeans? Or were you the kind of kid who spent the money in the piggy bank almost as soon as you put it inside?
Some people are just born savers while others of us struggle to delay gratification and save up for the big purchases. With today’s economy, credit and financing might not be as easily come by as they have in the past. If we want to make a major purchase we have to save up for it.
Owning a home means there are always a list of want-to-do’s and have-to-do’s. Wanting a new bathroom or hardwood floors is different than having to replace a broken water heater or leaking washing machine. Saving a little each month or by paycheck is a great way to be able to afford the want list while leaving the emergency fund for the need list.
Bigger purchases like flooring or a kitchen remodel might take months, or every years, to save up for. The less you have to finance or put on credit is always better so even if you can put away a percentage of the project’s budget in savings, you’ll be ahead of the game. Smaller wants like a new sofa for the family room or area rug for the bedroom can be saved up for more quickly.
Color and Pattern in Small Spaces April 16, 2012
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Contrary to what might seem like logic, color and pattern can make a small space feel bigger rather than smaller. Adding color and pattern to a small space like a hallway, staircase or powder room can turn this small, often overlooked space into a jewel box of design.
This enclosed staircase is a great example of color and pattern adding flair to a small space. Rather than stick with neutrals and solids, the owner’s used a bright color on the stairs and a contrasting colored stripe for the walls. The red carpet paired with the pale blue and white striped wallpaper is a lively combination. Using a deeper red and a pale blue keeps the combination from feeling too much like the 4th of July or overly patriotic. Instead the combination has a classic feeling that could be nautical or country depending on the décor in the rest of the house.
Using color on the floors and colorful patterns on the walls can work with coordinating as well as contrasting colors. You can choose a color from the wallpaper and use it as both a floor and accent color in the space. This will create a more cohesive design.
Another option is to put pattern on the floor and bright color on the walls. This is a nice twist on the more traditional pairing of patterned wallpaper and solid floors. Patterned floors can be carpet or tiles. Stair runners can be patterned as well as carpet or area rugs.
Decorating with Blonde Woods April 10, 2012
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As with any other trend, wood floors and cabinetry go in and out of color trends. For a number of years dark cabinets and floors have been the favorite tones and types of wood for the home. Painted cabinetry comes in and out of style and trend as well. Lighter wood tones on floors and cabinets are due for a return to popularity. It is just a matter of time now that the pendulum has swung over to the dark tones before it will return to the light.
Birch, ash, beech and maple are all naturally pale woods. These woods are favorites of Scandinavian design which favors lighter wood tones and colors. Other woods like pine and oak can come in lighter shades or be stained with a white wash to make them as pale as possible. Light woods with tons of grey can recalled sun and salt water bleached driftwood, making them perfect for coastal style.
This picture illustrates how blonde woods can be used together to create an interesting and stylish design. The heavily figured wood on the chair backs adds pattern to the overall neutral space. Blond woods on table tops, the banquette, shelves and the room divider help unify the seating around. Pairing blond woods with pale neutrals creates an open and airy design. Accents in darker wood tones or color can easily be added to such a neutral design. A few touches of black on the chair legs and table bases ground the overall pale palette.
A Basement Remodel that Works April 2, 2012
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If you are thinking about doing a basement remodel to create more living space or making a home theater, this is the post for you. Basements have a reputation for being dark, unwelcoming and have low ceilings. The old notion of a basement as a “rec room” should be tossed aside in today’s home design. While the typical basement will never be a sun-filled space, there are tricks to making a basement feel open and welcoming.
This basement remodel is a great example of what to do right when redoing a basement. Let’s look at the elements that work here and can work for most basement remodels.
The flooring is a light color, which helps open up the space. Wood floors are not a good idea for below grade space, but if you love the look of wood floors you could use laminate to get the look of wood.
Carrying the light color onto the ceiling also makes the typically low ceiling feel higher. Recessed lighting bathes the room in light and doesn’t lower the feeling of the ceiling. Recessed lighting can also create lighting zones for different activities. Darker color on the walls is balanced by the light floors and ceiling.
Natural stone creates a focal wall in the space and adds some great texture. An alcove for the television and entertainment center has a built-in feeling. The alcove also creates more space in the main seating area of the room, which is divided into zones by the furniture arrangement.
Tips to take away from this basement remodel are: use lighting to create zones; keep things light on the floor and ceiling; arrange furniture to divide the space into activity areas.
Power Strip Chaos At Home March 21, 2012
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The power strip is a must have for all the electronics in our homes today. Computers, televisions, phone chargers, iPod chargers, cell phone chargers… the list goes on and on. The number of things we plug in everyday has multiplied over the years, resulting in the power strip in practically every room of the house. You might have a power strip in the kitchen, home office, living room, and even bedroom.
Along with a centralized power strip comes the chaos of cables and cords. Having so many things plugged into one outlet centralizes clutter but can result in a writhing pile and tangle of cords that makes the counter, floor or desk a mess. Isn’t corralling the mess part of why we love power strips to begin with?
Getting your cables and cords organized can be done in a few different ways. If your power strip is for electronics, hide it inside the media cabinet. If you can’t do this, get cable ties or cable snakes that go around the cables and cords to bundle them. This will reduce the visual clutter near the power strip.
If you keep a power strip in the kitchen or on your desk in the home office, place the power strip in a box and feed each cord or cable through a hold in the box. You can use a decorative box for this that coordinates with your room’s colors and palettes. One pretty box with a few cables coming out of it is a lot more attractive than the tangle of cords.
Shopping for Decorative Bargains February 27, 2012
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Decorating your home can be expensive if you are trying to decorate more than one room at the same time or have a new home to decorate. New homes can be daunting when you are beginning from scratch. Your old furniture may not fit or your old curtains aren’t the right size to work with your new windows. There are some things you can make work and others you’ll need to replace.
Redoing a room or a home can be daunting no matter your budget. Having good sources for decorative pieces at bargain prices is key to decorating on a tight budget. Hunting for a bargain can be a sport even if you have a large budget for decorating. Today there are so many resources for finding just the right decorative element from area rugs to china at fantastic prices.
Online daily flash sales are one source of decorating deals. You may find design services, contractors, cleaners and painters offering their services. Other sites offer daily deals on products that may include everything from framed art to hand-woven rug to silver frames.
Other sources include local consignment shops and antique stores. Consignment shops have a wide variety of items for sale, including gently used furniture and rugs as well as china and decorative objects. You can also use a consignment store to de-clutter your home and make money for your new décor. Antique stores, flea markets and estate sales offer one-of-a-kind pieces that can give your home a personal flair.
Dealing with Outdated Decor February 20, 2012
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Watching design shows and house hunting shows is a great way to learn about dealing with outdated décor. A house may be beautiful on the outside and even be mostly updated, but often there are one or two spaces in the home that need a design overhaul. Dealing with outdated décor can be intimidating and overwhelming. There are simple things that can be done to quickly deal with outdated décor.
This hall and staircase are a great example of a space that hasn’t been updated in decades. The avocado shag carpeting on the stairs, the dark wood paneling, old fashioned wallpaper and a now vintage light fixture date this space to the last century.
A few design tricks can transform this space from outdated to fresh and current. First step is removing the carpet on the stairs. If the stairs underneath are wood and in good shape you can stop there. Replacing the carpet with a runner or painting the stairs will transform them.
Removing the wood paneling would be ideal, but you never know what you’ll find behind it. Painting it a nice glossy white will open up the space and make it feel bright and fresh. The outdated wallpaper could be kept if the pattern was vintage enough to be in style again. Otherwise the paper should come down. This can be a messy task but so worth it. Paint can transform the bare wall.
After these changes the vintage light fixture might be a standout. Otherwise a simple pendant or small drum shade would be a good bet.