Home Decorating Tips
So you want to decorate a room or perhaps your entire home but don’t know where to start. Or maybe you have some ideas but you’re not sure that your ideas will work. Any sized decorating project can be intimidating. Caren DeHart, Home Interior Designer from Home Xpressions has some time and money saving design tips to help you get your decorating project under way.
To begin, think about the room you want to decorate first then take some time to look through home decor magazines, catalogs, books or websites and collect examples of what you like and dislike. Pay attention to colors, patterns, textures, moods and styles as you look through pages of rooms and jot down those you seem to be drawn to the most.
Do you prefer casual, formal or rustic style? Do you prefer jewel tones, pastels, warm or cool tones? Knowing which style and color scheme you prefer can help guide you when putting together a cohesive plan for your room. Create a file to store your decorating ideas in and bring it with you when making purchases for your room.
You may also develop a plan for your room around an inspiration piece. This is often an area rug or favorite piece of furniture that can help you with decisions on wall color, furniture fabrics and accent pieces. This can also help you to define your preferred style. When you are deciding on a style don’t forget to take the architectural style of your home into consideration. Stark modern furniture may be out of place in a log style home.
Whether you decorate your own room or enlist the help of an interior designer, having a general idea of your likes, dislikes and decorating style preferences will save you time and money by giving you focus with your decorating decisions and confidence in finding items you’ll love to have in your home. Developing a general plan for color and style will give any designer a jumping off point from which to build your room.
Be realistic with your timeline. A well-designed room takes time. Keep in mind that many times furniture, lighting and window treatments need to be custom ordered.
Setting a decorating budget is a step that often gets overlooked. Take the time to assess what you hope to accomplish with your project and determine a reasonable budget so that you can avoid the problem of completing only half of your project due to lack of funds. If needed, it is possible to break a project up into stages, completing each stage as funds become available.
Next, determine what the primary function of the room will be used for. Make a list of essential pieces the room needs to have, keeping the function of the room foremost in your mind. Measure the room, locating windows and other immovable structures and sketch to scale onto graph paper. This will help you when finding furniture pieces that fit the space. You may even want to mark off the room using masking tape to determine whether or not the pieces you wish to put in the room will realistically fit. Your interior designer can also develop a space plan specific to your needs.
If your budget allows, this is a good time to make any architectural changes to the room such as adding crown molding or putting in electrical outlets or lighting fixtures. Adding the right lighting can have a huge impact on any room’s decorating scheme.
Next it’s time to choose and coordinate color schemes, paint finishes, furniture fabric, lighting and more. Ask to speak with an interior designer when starting your next decorating project. A good interior designer can walk you through these decisions and save you months of hunting down product samples and prevent some potentially costly missteps.
Caren DeHart, Interior Designer, Home Xpressions, Minocqua, WI
