Thursday, June 12, 2014
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| Barry Grossman Photography |
When I shifted to my new house, I simply shifted all my furniture and settled down. But, I wanted my new house to feel like home, and I was having a hard time in decorating the rooms to make them feel cosier and warmer. Then a friend suggested using personal accents to add a personal touch. In this article, I elaborate some of the measures I undertook to achieve this task.
1. Don’t stack away all your personal stuff inside cupboards. For example, let a couple of your favorite books remain over your center-table. You could also ensure that your favorite flowers are there in the vase. Having your favorite stuff around will give you a warm feeling and a sense of belonging.
2. If you do not like the color of the walls, and you are not willing to take the effort of changing the colors, please give it a second thought. Color the walls in your favorite color, and give your home a personality that you can relate to.
3. Bring out all your good china, cutlery or fancy glasses from inside your cupboard, and use them. Pamper yourself with the best even in your daily routine.
4. Filling the walls with photographs of you and your loved ones is one of the most potent ways to create a cosy and personal space. Swap the photos in the photo frames frequently with older or newer photos and relive pleasant memories.
5. If there is some piece of furniture that you still repent buying, get it out of your home. This will help eliminate the negative feeling every time you look at this furniture, and also create some extra space.
6. Clean and declutter your house at least once a week.
7. Rearrange your furniture and your cabinets once every six months. This will create a new look and you will surely find it interesting to search for newer and more innovative ways to rearrange your furniture.
8. Change the look of your sofa or chair by draping it with a colorful blanket or some other textile. This is a very effective way to give the feeling of new furniture.
9. If you like fireplaces or lamps, get yourself an indoor fireplace or a beautiful lamp. Sit around it in leisure and relax.
10. You’ve always wanted to decorate your bathroom, but kept yourself from thinking that a bathroom is not a place to be decorated? Give it a second thought. The bathroom is an indispensable space in your home and it needs as much attention as your living room. So go ahead and put all your creativity in decorating your bathroom with your favorite lamps and bath vanities.
11. Color your doors in funky hues. You thought that doors can only be painted in white or brown? Try using peach, pink, or even yellow for your doors.
Try these easy, fun ideas to freshen up yourself and your home, and to make it cosier, warmer and more comfortable.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
In interior design, the focal point holds special importance, and the easiest way to go ahead with designing a room is to start with the focal point, and build the entire interior design around it. So, what is the focal point? When you enter any room, wait for a second, and look around. What is the first thing that catches your attention? This is what the focal point is. A focal point of a room can be a gorgeous floor lamp, or it can be a dull center-table with all kinds of magazines and newspaper lying over it. Thus, the focal point is what defines a room, and determines its overall beauty. Deliberately creating a focal point can also help in taking away attention from less attractive features of a room.
The easiest and the cheapest way to create a focal point is to highlight an existing element within the room. This could be a window or a sliding balcony door. Natural light is an excellent attention seeker and a good source of natural light can be converted into the focal point. Spend some extra money in buying an attractive curtain, and you have your focal point ready! A fireplace can be a good focal point with all furniture arranged around it in such a manner that the fireplace becomes the center of attraction. A ceiling light fixture such as an elaborate chandelier is sure to grab anybody’s attention, but this will be a rather expensive focal point.
What if your apartment does not boast of a window or a door good enough to qualify as a focal point? Well, then you will have to create a focal point. However, creating a focal point need not be expensive. Here are some ways:
1. A Featured wall is an excellent form of focal point. Choose a wall that is central to the room, and paint it in a color and/or pattern different from the rest of the room. This color could be a bright hue such as orange, mustard, olive green, or bright blue. You can hang your television on this wall, or hang a huge painting over it, and you have your focal point ready! Arrange your furniture in such a way that this featured wall becomes the central point.
2. Even if your windows are small, you can accentuate them by using oversized curtains that reach all the way to the bottom of the wall. This will create an impression of large windows behind the curtains, and the curtains can become the focal point.
3. An antique cupboard passed down over generations can be a nice focal point.
4. A large mirror with a nice frame, or a collection of smaller mirrors placed in harmony over the wall can become an attractive focal point.
5. Similarly, you can frame photographs of you and your family and arrange them neatly over an entire wall, or part of it, and your room will instantly become much livelier.
You might have a window with a nice view, and a fireplace as well. In such a situation, take care not to create two focal points. This creates competition, and gives an overall feeling of discomfort and disharmony. Choose one of the two as the focal point, and use the other to balance the focal point.
Once you’ve decided on what your focal point will be, dress it up to make it attractive enough. If your curtains are dull and unattractive, consider replacing them with bold colors and prints. If you choose a featured wall as the focal point, try accentuating it further by adding recessed lighting or ceiling lighting in such a way that it illuminates this wall and highlights it. Remember to arrange all your furniture to be facing towards your focal point, or with its lines leading toward the focal point.
Choose the focal point cleverly and treat it appropriately and you your room will look so beautiful that your visitors will start inquiring about your interior designer and then you can slyly tell them that the creativity is all yours!.
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