What Does It Take To Decorate A Room Beautifully?
Interior Designing: Where Should I Start?
Decorating or interior designing your own home is daunting for even the most visual of us. Why? Well, because there are so many elements to consider. You’ve got walls to paint, furniture that you often can’t afford to replace, lamps, curtains/drapes. You’ve also got walls that need photos or paintings or wall art. And of course, you’ll need to address your floors and rugs. And then there are room accessories to consider. All of these elements need to go together in a way that will be pleasing to you. And that’s the rub. How do you pull all of these elements together without spending lots of money and time? Where do you focus first?
To start out, determine what your basic color scheme is. Easy, right? What color is all the home furnishing “stuff” that you currently own? Do you like it’s coloration? Or do you want change it? This is a great place to start for sure. Pick your own color palette. Check out interior design magazines and tear out pages that have the colors you most enjoy and try and mimic that in your own home. Try to analyze what you like about the rooms you’ve seen in the interior design magazines.
Next, you might want to start looking at your overall rooms from the perspective of “visual weight”. All that means is how light or heavy say, a piece of furniture looks. Do you like overstuffed, upholstered furniture? Yes, then that’s usually heavy. If it’s big and blocky but is light colored, it will “read” visually as less heavy than if it has dark colored upholstery. Analyze all of your room objects in this fashion. And then consider the really basic principle of good interior designing: BALANCE. Yep, you want to shoot for having the rooms in your own home visually balanced. Using the example above, if your furniture is dark and heavy, make sure to include some glass end tables or maybe even a glass coffee table to add more visual “lightness”. Mix it up in your rooms combining both heavy and light pieces to create a real sense of warmth and visual balance.
Decorating or interior designing your own home is daunting for even the most visual of us. Why? Well, because there are so many elements to consider. You’ve got walls to paint, furniture that you often can’t afford to replace, lamps, curtains/drapes. You’ve also got walls that need photos or paintings or wall art. And of course, you’ll need to address your floors and rugs. And then there are room accessories to consider. All of these elements need to go together in a way that will be pleasing to you. And that’s the rub. How do you pull all of these elements together without spending lots of money and time? Where do you focus first?
To start out, determine what your basic color scheme is. Easy, right? What color is all the home furnishing “stuff” that you currently own? Do you like it’s coloration? Or do you want change it? This is a great place to start for sure. Pick your own color palette. Check out interior design magazines and tear out pages that have the colors you most enjoy and try and mimic that in your own home. Try to analyze what you like about the rooms you’ve seen in the interior design magazines.
Next, you might want to start looking at your overall rooms from the perspective of “visual weight”. All that means is how light or heavy say, a piece of furniture looks. Do you like overstuffed, upholstered furniture? Yes, then that’s usually heavy. If it’s big and blocky but is light colored, it will “read” visually as less heavy than if it has dark colored upholstery. Analyze all of your room objects in this fashion. And then consider the really basic principle of good interior designing: BALANCE. Yep, you want to shoot for having the rooms in your own home visually balanced. Using the example above, if your furniture is dark and heavy, make sure to include some glass end tables or maybe even a glass coffee table to add more visual “lightness”. Mix it up in your rooms combining both heavy and light pieces to create a real sense of warmth and visual balance.
What's the Difference Between Decorating and "Styling a Room?
Styling a room is much the same as decorating a room but the term does imply a bit more sophistication. It might also imply a bit of a larger interior designing budget. A lot of people simply don't have the budget, if they're moving, to go out and purchase entire new furnishings and accessories to accommodate their new digs. In that case, they'll usually decorate the rooms in their new home with what furnishings, etc. that they already own and add and adjust their rooms as they go. Styling a room has a bit more to do with purchasing the room's "belongings" to suit the exact room.
The room above is a good example of a styled room. Each piece of furniture was purchased specifically to go with the other pieces of furniture in the room. The light lavendar color of the faux finished wall (behind the inset wall storage unit on the left) was chosen to coordinate with the deep purple of the dining room chairs. The small round vase was chosen to bring out the colors in the pastel rug which also coordinates with the multi-colored area rug (which also coordinates with the purple in the chairs and the faux wall painting.
Another extremely important reason that this is a well styled room is that the belongings in this room are very well balanced. In many ways, it just all comes back to balance and the "visual weight" issue I mentioned above.
While the table appears a bit smaller than it is in reality, the visual weight of the wall storage unit is balanced by the two dining rooms chairs on the right. The room is light and bright, overlooking the backyard with its lush gardens. To reflect that, the billowy white curtains were chosen to add texture and warmth to the room. Floor to ceiling, they add considerable height to the too low celing. In an additional effort to raise that ceiling, a white semi-gloss paint was used adding to the overall light feeling of the room (see how the light is reflecting up on that ceiling?). The one thing that wasn't changed in this room prior to styling was the dark wood floor. Instead, the pastel rug was chosen to help lighten things up and counteract the dark flooring.
Accesories were also carefully selected to reflect the dominant colors in the room as well.
The room above is a good example of a styled room. Each piece of furniture was purchased specifically to go with the other pieces of furniture in the room. The light lavendar color of the faux finished wall (behind the inset wall storage unit on the left) was chosen to coordinate with the deep purple of the dining room chairs. The small round vase was chosen to bring out the colors in the pastel rug which also coordinates with the multi-colored area rug (which also coordinates with the purple in the chairs and the faux wall painting.
Another extremely important reason that this is a well styled room is that the belongings in this room are very well balanced. In many ways, it just all comes back to balance and the "visual weight" issue I mentioned above.
While the table appears a bit smaller than it is in reality, the visual weight of the wall storage unit is balanced by the two dining rooms chairs on the right. The room is light and bright, overlooking the backyard with its lush gardens. To reflect that, the billowy white curtains were chosen to add texture and warmth to the room. Floor to ceiling, they add considerable height to the too low celing. In an additional effort to raise that ceiling, a white semi-gloss paint was used adding to the overall light feeling of the room (see how the light is reflecting up on that ceiling?). The one thing that wasn't changed in this room prior to styling was the dark wood floor. Instead, the pastel rug was chosen to help lighten things up and counteract the dark flooring.
Accesories were also carefully selected to reflect the dominant colors in the room as well.