31 March 2014

Tips for Decorating Your New Home

Whether you’re an old hand at relocation or this is your first property, decorating a new home can be a daunting task. However, as long as you take the process of decorating step by step and don’t buy into the idea that your house should look like a furniture show room, the experience can be extremely liberating and creative.



Getting Started

The first thing you should do is set a budget and work out how much you can afford to spend. If money is tight, then choose a room that will get a great deal of use, and just focus on this. The kitchen or master bedroom is usually an obvious choice. This will allow you to have one finished room to retreat to, despite the others looking unfinished. Decorating room by room can be a sensible solution as it will keep the mess and upheaval confined to one place in the house at a time. If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to start collecting inspiration for your new home. Tear out pictures from magazines and print beautiful rooms from the internet, and arrange them on a pin board along with some fabric samples and color swatches. The next step is to sketch out a floor plan so that you can pick where all your new (or old) furniture will go. This may be quite time consuming but it’s completely worth it, and there are free floor planning tools online for those who want to take a more professional approach.


Investing in Furniture

If something is going to get a lot of use, like the sofa or kitchen table, it’s a good idea to spend money on a high quality version. Don’t be afraid of mixing old and new pieces, or splashing out on a handcrafted piece, like those available from Shackletons. You can always save on accessories.

Paint Colors

There are lots of ways to choose a room’s color palette. You can use the flooring as a starting point, or a much loved item of furniture, or a piece of art. As soon as you've chosen a scheme, things will start to fall into place. If you’re keen to try out a particularly bold shade but don’t want to completely commit, why not just choose one wall to feature? Some guides will urge you to go for neutral colors when choosing large pieces of furniture, but there really are no hard and fast rules for incorporating color into your new home. If you’re keen to keep things pale, you can add pops of color with accessories like cushion covers and lamp shades.

2 comments:

  1. these are great tips and I know for myself we did the rugs in our place and paint the walls, which alone was a lot of money, but we also had to replace a few items so a good budget to stick to is really important.. thanks for share :)

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  2. I like the idea of mixing old and new. I have found several pieces at estate sales and antique shops that are fairly inexpensive. It adds a bit of charm.

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