Decorating your new home is very exciting, but it can also be overwhelming and that’s why we’ve compiled these 8 tips from the pros to help you out. Whether you have a general decorating style for your new home in mind or you don’t have the faintest ideas of where to hang your artwork start.
The following tips will help you create a home that you’ll be happy to get back to at the end of each day.
Visualize your design plans
Some people have a natural eye for design, but if you find it hard to settle on a certain style for your home, start by looking for inspiration online or in home decor magazines and catalogs and create a mood board of your design ideas. This will help you get a good sense of the style you like and translate it into something you can shop for. Ideally, we’d all have an interior designer on speed dial before making any major changes, but unfortunately, it’s not always possible. This is why interior design experts from modsy recommend using services that allow you to virtually create and adjust design plans for your home that are customized for your space with the help of professional designers. Seeing realistic 3D renderings of your home with real products can give you a better understanding of what works for your home.
Layer your lighting
Nothing affects the atmosphere of a room more than the lighting. Layering the lighting is one of the experts’ best-kept secrets, adding different levels of lighting can really set the ambiance of the space. There are three main types of lighting that you can integrate into a room: accent, which is a decorative type of lighting that’s mostly used to highlight ornamental objects and artwork; ambient, which often comes from ceiling fixtures and provides overall illumination; and task, which is the warm and soft light often found over a kitchen island or a reading nook. Alternatively, you can set up lamps around the room so you wouldn’t feel like you’re constantly under a spotlight in an interrogation room and place uplights in the corners to cast a glow on the ceiling and make the room seem bigger.
Paint it up
Never underestimate the power of paint, it’s the easiest way to set the tone for the entire home and give it a fresh look. Your first step should be to create a color palette for the whole house and then see which color works best for each room. Neutral colors such as beige, or gray can give you the greatest decorating flexibility, allowing you to easily switch up your furniture while vibrant colors can take an old piece of furniture or an empty white room and give it new life. Dark colors, on the other hand, work with most styles and can really make your furniture stand out.
Don’t ignore your ceiling
Most houses have one thing in common which is plain white ceilings. You can amp up your ceiling game by painting it a color that compliments, contrasts, or matches your walls. This will add that extra wow factor and pull the entire room together, giving it a clean and elegant finish.
Create conversation areas in your living room
Living rooms are usually where you socialize with your family and guests, which is why arranging your furniture in a way that invites conversation is key. The best layout would be to create a U-shaped conversation area with two chairs facing each other at each end of a coffee table. You can also create an H-shaped space by setting two chairs directly across from a sofa with a coffee table in the middle. However you choose to place your furniture, be sure to avoid pushing your furniture against the wall, some people believe that this creates a bigger, more inviting space, but pushing your furniture against the walls actually creates unnecessary extra space between the seating areas which doesn’t exactly encourage socialization.
Let the light in
There’s no substitute for natural light so try to create as many opportunities to let the sun in as you can. Window dressings are a great alternative to those heavy, outdated drapes that block natural light from coming in. They’re functional, elegant, and come in a variety of fabrics that can add a clean sophisticated touch to any room.
Warm up the room with mirrors
By bouncing the light around the room, mirrors can open up a space and make it feel warmer and brighter if you set them up correctly. Don’t hang mirrors directly opposite a window because this will actually bounce the light right back out the window, rendering the mirror useless. Instead, put mirrors on the walls perpendicular to your windows, this way you’ll effectively enhance the natural light in your room.
Properly hang your artwork
You’re probably proud of your artwork collection, but how you showcase it makes all the difference. When hanging your artwork, the center of the picture should be at the average person’s eye-level. You should also take scale into account; for large walls, go big with one oversized piece or group smaller pieces together and for short walls, don’t space your artwork too far apart; 2 to 4 inches between pieces usually looks best.
If you’re overwhelmed by the ideas you have in mind or you’re suffering a creative block and can’t seem to envision the final outcome of your home, use the previously mentioned tips to help you with all your decorating needs and have fun settling in your new home.