Bill Daflos shared this GREAT post on how to get creative in home decor — for less . Sonya
Ever had that feeling when you wish you could inject some freshness into your home interior and decor? Updating your home can be simple, cheap, quick fixes with these interior design trick and tips.
Mix up your interior styles
Whether you have a more traditional interior decor or a modern decor, you can try mixing up the styles to create an eclectic and more interesting look and feel in your home. Add a four-poster bed or wooden bed and traditional side lamps to a modern bedroom to remove a uniform look. If you have a traditional styled home, mix it up with bold printed and coloured accessories or add a funky rug or modern piece of furniture like a modern chair or coffee table. Try mixing modern with vintage prints, colours and accessories, and mixing traditional with bold, modern colours that you wouldn’t normal associate together. It will make an interesting, fun project to mix up decor designs and create an unexpected and unique look.
By: MyWallArt
Change fabrics
If you are tired of your curtains and blinds, give them a new look by adding fringing or braiding to the edges of the fabric. Choose designer fabric braid, tasselled fringing and edging and add them to the hem or leading edge of curtains and blinds. If you don’t have tie-backs, add sumptuous tie-backs and fixtures to the curtains to make them look more luxurious.
You can also use fabric to add special touches to your home decor. Try making a dining table centre piece and place mats and matching seat pads for your dining chairs in co-ordinating fabrics. Also you can make cushions, floor cushions and bolster cushions for your seating areas and bedroom in gorgeous designer fabrics.
Try different lighting techniques
Think about your lighting and havea change-around. You can create a whole new ambience to a room just by changing and adding to your lighting. Use layered lighting which adds varied strengths of light in a room and use both direct and soft lighting. Use a variety of floor lamps, table lamps, pendant lights, down lighters and spotlights to create intriguing light effects. You can also pick out pieces of furniture, ornaments and pictures with spotlights and LED portable lights.
For a cheap way to transform your home, swap over your lamp shades and bases for new ideas or buy new lampshades to use with your existing lamp bases that are totally different to what you had before.
Rearrange your furniture
Rearranging furniture is one of the most effective ways of transforming your home, especially if you don’t have a budget to spend.
Try rearranging your furniture in a completely different way. You can arrange furniture on an angle so that it gives the room a completely different look and dynamic. You can also mix up furniture between rooms to try different furniture pieces together. You can also rearrange your accessories such as tables, rugs, pictures, cushions and throws and use them in different rooms.
Create moulding, cornices and architraves
Moulding, cornices and architraves create a classical and grand feel in a home, and can transform a home to make it look more special and beautiful. You can get mouldings and architraves for windows, doors and windows, skirting boards, and to join walls and ceilings and it isn’t an expensive way to transform a room. There are a whole range of mouldings you can choose from, including hard and soft wood, MDF, plaster and ornate mouldings. Create panels on your walls, add dado rails and picture rails to create a heritage style that is perfect for both modern and traditional home interiors. Pick out your doorways and windows with crafted and moulded architraves that will widen your doorways and windows and make them look larger and unique.
Transform a small room
If you have a smaller sized room that you feel you can’t do much with, there are a number of things to help make it look larger. Painting the walls dark wouldn’t be the first thought, but by painting the walls of a smaller room dark, it has the opposite effect and makes it look larger. You can also add a large mirror to a smaller room so that light and space is reflected in the glass.
In a small room, think about scale. You can make a room appear larger and higher than it really is by having smaller scale furniture placed in the room, and taller cupboards, shelving or units that will make more use of the space whilst giving it the illusion of space and height. Use your smaller space for a quiet library area, a meditation space, or for an additional dressing and beauty room.
Sonya writes for Fabric World, a leading supplier of designer fabrics, curtains, blinds and soft furnishing fabrics. Fabric World also offer interior design in London and Surrey.
Thanks to Sonya and Bill Daflos for this piece!!
Great tips!
