I’ve called this page ‘Funky Tips’ because it’s what I’d like to imagine no one has thought of when decorating or designing their home! I’m an interior design nut and I love finding cool and quirky ways to make my house, and my client’s houses, even better. So here they are, from accessorising to constructing to remodelling, read more on the top tipds I can offer on making your family home perfect!
Take Your Time
When you move into a new house or flat or apartment, I know it’s going to be so tempting to dive straight in with the perfect design in your mind. But DON’T. Live in the space for a while before deciding what you want, you’ll get to know the new accommodation and get a feel for what you want where. Chances are, in your mind, you imagined the perfect place when you were still living somewhere else. Whether you intend to or not, that perfect image will be catered to the place you lived before and won’t be translatable to your new space.
Move Your Artwork Down
People put their artwork way too high! I don’t know how it came to be, but so many people hang their paintings, pictures, digital prints etc really far up their walls! Lower your wall features to about eye level. It’s perfect and doesn’t lead the eye away from other, potentially better, features of the room.
Make A Mood Board
This comes at the ‘dreamer’ stage. The first thing you should ever do before embarking on your design journey is to collect images, textures, materials and inspirational words that perfectly reflect what it is you’re trying to achieve from the renovation or redecoration. This can be on a computer or from magazine and physical materials. But go all out, make it wild, make it crazy. Chances are, it will help narrow down your ideas to one tangible theme. If you’re getting an interior design to design the room, a mood board is literally so helpful.
Lighting Makes All The Difference
The brighter the light, the worse your room will look. Opt for dimmers rather than a low-wattage lightbulb. Remember – light can make or break a room! Keep windows clean and spacious to make the most of natural light and always have white windowsills and frames. Consider using ceiling lights (such as those available from stores like City Lights SF) for rooms where you’re going to work, side lamps for entertaining, and up lighting for art displays.
Make Small Spaces Smart
If you don’t have much space to work with, you need to be smart in how you organise and design your family space. Utilise all hidden spaces for storage, prioritise the daily items and have them easily accessible, while putting less high priority items further back, or even in lofts or garages. Make items multifunctional to optimise space to organise things – get a dining table (from portals like tommarshfurniture.co.uk) that has drawers to store cutlery and plates, get a bed with space underneath to put roller boxes for clothes, or opt for a sofa that can be folded out into a bed for extra space.
Replace the worn-out flooring
When you enter a room, what are the first few things that you may notice? Walls? Floors? If the answer is yes, then you would need to fix both. To fix your wall, you would just need to apply a fresh coat of paint and hang a few decorative items. That’s it! But fixing the floors requires more than just applying paint. If your flooring is worn out to the point where it cannot be restored, then getting it replaced with the help of floor installers at https://www.shadowwoodflooring.com/buford/ could add to the curb appeal of your house. If you are wondering which kind of flooring material you should use this time, then probably go for hardwood or vinyl, since they are known for their durability and strength. Once installed, they can last for a good 5-6 years.
Keep Your Colours Balanced
This is a really hard one to get right, you don’t want too many colours as you’ll create a clash of tones (more the merrier is not the case when it comes to colours) but you also don’t want everything to be exactly the same. This is where the advice of an interior designer like Helen Coulston might come in handy, as she can help you to find that perfect balance to create a zen environment in your home.
Get The Kids Involved
Giving children the opportunity to have a say in what their room looks like allows them to test their creat8ive edges. You can guide them through it and make suggestions and small changes, but at the end of the day it is their room and it needs to be a reflection of their personality. As children get older, it is a sad fact that they will spend more and more time in their room, help them to make it special and give them the tools to create a charming and enjoyable atmosphere in there.