We all have an idea of what our dream home looks like, and when we can, we try and bring our homes closer to that dream. Home decorating is an important part of that journey, but it is a part that often confuses people who have never done it before. There are, however, certain guidelines you can follow to make the process much simpler.
- Trust your Instincts
Home decorating can seem like such a foreign thing that we assume that only experts understand what works best for our homes. Ultimately, you and your family will live in your home, so you alone are the ultimate judge of what works and what doesn’t. You may seek out an expert to help you in that journey, but everything has to reflect your tastes, your vision, and your needs.
- Don’t Be Afraid of Space
Often, there’s a rush to fill up the space in a home, because we are afraid of the vastness of the space. However, that space is a gift, it’s an opportunity to intimately understand the features of your home, and that intimacy of understanding can lead to imaginative solutions. The best decorative aspects of any home take advantage of a home’s features, rather than trying to overcome them, or mask them. Take time with the decorative process, and strip everything back until you have a sense of the architectural features of your home. Creative Cabinets & Fine Finishes believes that a smart use of space can serve to accentuate not just the best architectural features of your home, but important furniture pieces and works of art.
- Define Your Dislikes
It sounds strange but often, people don’t articulate what they don’t like, and they allow it to stay with a home, festering like an old, untreated wound. When interior designer Grant K. Gibson spoke with Time, he said that defining your dislikes was a very good way of becoming clearer about what your preferred style is. The things you say “no” to are just as important as those that you say “yes” to.
- Choose a color theme
Think about what your happy colors are. This is a great place to start in terms of defining your style. You need a base of three colors that will be the thematic base for your home. Once you have three main colors, you can build from that. Dan Mazzarini, the principal designer of BHDM Design, said in an article at Claire, that using a triad of colors is a pleasing decorative technique that brings cohesion to any decorative style.
- Be Creative with Materials
Creativity is about bringing together things that would otherwise not come together. This is an important concept to hold throughout the design process. Try and bring things together that would normally not go together. A starting point for this experimental approach is with materials. Experiment with using different kinds of materials together. You’re not just going for uniformity, but for contrast, for instance, by mixing wood with metal. This principle should be used with furniture, colors, and other things within your home.