How To Make A Small Room Look Bigger

If you have huge rooms, high ceilings and an unlimited budget, it isn’t very hard to decorate it, or to redecorate it often. What proves to be real challenge is to make smaller spaces less claustrophobic and more livable. If you have a small space that you need to turn into a usable room, either for studying or into a guest room, here are a few things you can do to make it look bigger and better.

Hidden storage
No matter what you use the room for, you’re bound to need to put stuff somewhere. Since you’re space is already small don’t try putting up shelves or buying racks and stuff. Find furniture that provides hidden storage space. Beds and tables with storages spaces can easily be found.

Mirrors
To make a room seem less claustrophobic, use mirrors with lighting. Mirrors against any one wall, whether narrow or wide can help to make a room look more open and fools the eye into thinking it has bigger dimensions.

De-clutter
Since you’re going to be using hidden storage spaces it only makes sense that you keep any and all clutter out of the room. Don’t mount too many pillows on the bed if you’re making it in to a guest room, or if it’s a reading room, don’t do overboard trying to fill it with too many rugs, pillows, chairs, and any other kind of seats.

Lighter colors
It’s okay if you use a dark color sparingly but keep most of it in a lighter shade. Lighter shades in the carpet, on the walls and in the curtains will make a room seem bigger and less overwhelming.
Smaller furniture
If you know you’re room has limited capacity don’t fill it with the biggest beds or sofas or racks. You can find nice modern and functional furniture in smaller sizes. Even sitting chairs come in less space consuming designs.

Find space saving furniture here (with lots of ways to arrange it)

Taking Your Paint Palette Outside - How To Decorate The Backyard

Decorating inside may seem easy if you consider the daunting task of decorating an outdoor area. Inside, where you have a four or three walled room, you hang pictures and decorative lights and you don’t have to worry about the rain or snow ruining the shine on your new table top or the color running in your new cushions.

Whenever you plan a party you know where you’re going to hang the streamers and where the guests can set their drinks down (you’ve placed coasters accordingly) and when it’s time to eat everyone can sit where they see their place card on the table. All of this goes out the door once its summer and most if not all parties are likely to be held outdoor where decorating ideas on a budget run somewhat thin.

Here are a few things just to help you start out slow and steady so that by the time summer is full on and school is out, you can start the partying.

Lawn chairs
You may already have a lawn chair, you may have two of them but it would be nice if you had an entire outdoor sitting arrangement much like your living room in your backyard and lawn chairs are best for it. Here’s something that might surprise you; buy/ make cushions to match your lawn chairs. You can put cushions outside as easily as you can put them in. Make/ buy an outdoor storage baskets or cabinet to put them in when the weather is likely to get rough. If you have some old wicker baskets lying around, bring them outside and use them for storing the cushions.




Lighting
People have had the sense to create lighting for every room in your house and they’ve also had the sense to create outdoor lighting. If you try shopping online, you’ll find that there are all kinds of unique lightings available, ones that are decorative and that can stand any kind of weather. You’ve probably heard of tiki torches, well there just in a huge variety of outdoor lighting options available like Chinese lanterns. If you plan on having a party, it may be a good time to bring out all those scented candles (don’t forget to place them safely) to create a nice ambiance.

Outdoor accessories
Give your back yard a cozy look by adding ‘backyard accessories’ like a hammock, a nice table; one that can stand rain and excessive exposure to the sun and is preferably a darker color and don’t forget to mow the lawn! You can use place mats made of bamboo (instead of the regular doilies you use inside) and give you flower beds a unique look by planting different flowers in uniquely shaped bottles.

Simple Tips To Give Rooms A Refreshing New Look

The number of people that I know who can change the look of a room by altering everything from the furniture to the paint is an absolute zero. That’s right; no one redecorates all the time. On those rare occasions when people do decide to redecorate, they still try and fit some of the old stuff in or to re-use it somehow. On the other hand the number of people I know who’d love to have a free remodeling of their homes on an annual basis is infinite. Who doesn’t like a new fresh look to their home? Just think how great the family pictures will look with a different background each year and without the cost of having to Photoshop a fireplace into the background?

Since the chances of anyone offering a free annual home remodeling to someone for the rest of their lives is pretty small here are a few modification that you can make to give a fresh look to a room.

Change the knobs on the cabinets

Not just cabinets, but most fixtures, when replaced effect how the room looks. Even if you change the handle on a chest of drawers or give it a new color, it’s going to look wonderful and brand new not to mention it’ll be the change that you want.

Wall paper trimmings

Instead of re-papering an entire wall or repainting something, find a nice elegant wall paper and use it on the edges of a wall or create a frame in frame effect. The trimmings will give the room a new elegant look. It’s also a great way to bring out a wall or complement any frames you may have put up.

Change the lighting

Try changing out the ordinary wall placements with something unique or changing a lampshade. Things like that end up having a profound effect on the room. If you don’t feel like changing any lighting that you’ve installed consider adding some angular wall decorations like shadow boxes to a wall.

Add a funky shelf

Although this technique can’t be used in the living room or the dining area, it’s a great way to give a new fresh look to those parts of a house where you do routine tasks. Take the laundry area or the ironing space. You can brighten it up with some unique shelves (you can also paint the cabinets a new color).

Wall Paper To Go With Your Sofa

Ever have one of those irresistible desires to change how your wall looks? I know it sounds strange but when you’re walking past a store (or idly browsing its isles) you can’t but help imagine how great some of these patterns would look on your wall. I’m a sucker for anything with gold or silver trim because to me it gives the ultra sophisticated look (not to mention a hint of royalty). To satisfy my wall paper desires I have one wall reserved in the entrance hall where I change a panel of wall paper whenever I feel like it. There’s a nice little varnished table that sits there and I put a matching vase or some other decorations piece on the table and it looks just wonderful. For someone like me, whose compulsive at best whenever I see a new pattern for anything, this is the only thing that can be done. However, if you’re the calm and sensible home maker who doesn’t get giddy just walking past fabric you can do so much more to bring out any old room with a simple wall paper change.

You’re probably thinking that you’ll need to make some serious changes in your furniture if you decide on a wall paper that doesn’t go with your current scheme but there are a lot of other options. If you ever look closely at how rooms are made over, you’ll notice that the designers create a more sensible color interval to bring out the furniture. Color interval isn’t something official; it’s what I call it when there is a neutral color between any two matching strong colors. Say you’ve got a bold wall color, your sofa and cushions will be less bland but the center rug is going to be just as flashy as the wall.

When you re-paper the wall you just need to add something at a good interval. Let’s say you’re entire room is furnished in pink and you suddenly decide on sky blue or green wall paper. Add a matching decoration piece in the center of the room and at all corners that draw attention. You can purposely place something that matches the new wall color under bright light or add one or two cushions on the sofa to match the new color and tie in the whole theme.

Arranging Furniture…Rearranging Furniture

Where to put the Sofa? Rearranging the rearranged furniture

I spend countless hours going through magazines, catalogs and exploring sites just looking at chic sofa sets and cushions and stunning furniture layouts. There was a time when I thought that the look that came from these arrangements could only be achieved with that kind of furniture and that it’s pretty useless looking at interior design catalogs since I’m never really going to be able to afford a living room revamp as it is. upholstering doesn’t appeal to me because I can’t do it myself and the economy being what it is, I can’t dish out cash to have someone do it for me. so what I’ll normally do, when I’m not even up for changing the cushions and throws is rearrange the furniture.

A good way to start out with furniture rearrangement (from what I’ve learnt) is to always define your must haves, for example if your living room leads to the backyard, you can’t have anything blocking the way. You might want to avoid carpeting the area and just do with a simple rug in order to avoid having to clean dirt off later.

Someone once suggested that I should inventory all the furniture in a room before rearranging it, Just so I don’t forget to pick out the place for something but I find making a nice illustrated layout for it to be better. It’s what HGTV suggests. I prefer it because it gives me an entire picture of where I’m going to put what instead of just giving me the number of furniture items that I have.

Then there’s the whole question of just how many ways can I rearrange the same sofa and coffee table? Furniture galleries have always been my aid when it comes down to it. Interior warrior has some fantastic furniture and a really great gallery. Even if I don’t follow the layout as it is, I can usually pull something good off.

Take these two furniture layouts from Interior Warrior. While the two sofa sets are almost the same, they’re arranged different and look amazing either way.

Wall paper to go with your sofa

Ever have one of those irresistible desires to change how your wall looks? I know it sounds strange but when you’re walking past a store (or idly browsing its isles) you can’t but help imagine how great some of these patterns would look on your wall. I’m a sucker for anything with gold or silver trim because to me it gives the ultra sophisticated look (not to mention a hint or royalty). To satisfy my wall paper desires I have one wall reserved in the entrance hall where I change a panel of wall paper whenever I feel like it. There’s a nice little varnished table that sits there and I put a matching vase or some other decorations piece on the table and it looks just wonderful. For someone like me, whose compulsive at best whenever I see some a new pattern for anything, this is the only thing that can be done. However, if you’re the calm and sensible home maker who doesn’t get giddy just walking past fabric stores you can do so much more to bring out any old room with a simple wall paper change.

You’re probably thinking that you’ll need to make some serious changes in your furniture if you decide on a wall paper that doesn’t go with your current scheme but there are a lot of other options. If you ever look closely at how rooms are made over, you’ll notice that the designers create a more sensible color interval to bring out the furniture. Color interval isn’t something official; it’s what I call it when there is a neutral color between any two matching strong colors. Say you’ve got a bold wall color, your sofa and cushions will be less bland but the center rug is going to be just as flashy as the wall.

When you repaper the wall you just need to add something at a good interval. Let’s say you’re entire room is furnished in pink and you suddenly decide on sky blue or green wall paper. Add a matching decoration piece in the center of the room and at all corners that draw attention. You can purposely place something that matches the new wall color under bright light or add one or two cushions on the sofa to match the new color and tie in the whole theme.

Crossing over to the White light- Planning the Lighting in a Room

Furniture isn’t the only thing you need to plan when you think of decorating a room. A lot of furniture depends on the amount and angle of light in a room to give the complete effect. Which is why when you plan to redecorate an entire room, you should always consider lighting as a factor. If you have a room that’s already arranged the way you want it and you’re thinking of improving the lighting then here are a few tips.

Who?
Always think of who’s going to be using that room and what they’re likely to need. If it’s a children’s bedroom for kids that are still young enough to knock over a lamp, you should go with overhead fixtures and/or track lighting. If it’s going to be used as a reading room make sure there’s at least one table lamp and plenty of over head light. Always keep in mind the different kinds of functions that are going to be performed in that room. The room’s usage will define your where you need the light.

What?
Always find out what different kinds of lightings are suggested for your usage. You may need a table lamp but there are all sorts of table lamps, some are meant for bedroom reading, keeping the light concentrated to a very small part of the room while others are meant for reading at the desk. They cast brighter and better light. Lamps for bedrooms are likely to have a lamp shade while desk lamps will not. Wall fixtures are best for areas that get little sunlight and places that you’d like to illuminate or set apart from the room like a wall with a special or unique decorating piece. If you’re choosing lighting for the living room, you should use a unique or eye catching wall fixture. Not only will it contribute to the room’s décor but also if you have a wall that you can’t get inspired enough to decorate, or one that you feel is too blank, a unique wall fixture will bring it out.

Where?
There are some general areas where you need light; by the bed, next to the comfy arm chair where your read ‘The night before Christmas’ to your kids, above or beside the mirror where you get ready in the morning, in the dining room. If you think you’re lighting needs for a room can change through the day then you need to use dimmer switches , not only do they help conserve energy but they’re also an easy way change the look of the room for special occasions or parties.

An In House Paint Job- Getting the Colors Right

When the kids throw cereal at the walls the stains are going to stay forever

A home maker that I’ve always admired once told me never to paint the walls in anything other than a neutral shade, ‘when the kids throw cereal at the walls the stains are going to stay forever!’ that home maker was none other than my mom who in my opinion kept the house award winning clean with us four kids running around and me having an odd fascination with drawing on the walls. Since moms are always right, I never really experimented much with paint and was deeply thankful to God for giving mankind the genius to invent wall paper.

When reality TV took over as America’s highest rated programs, I too joined in to watch rooms, offices, apartments and entire homes get remodeled. The one thing that stood out was the paint jobs. I’d always used wallpaper in the living room and kept the rest of the house in a neutral shade. After my first month of watching stunningly beautiful and dramatic home makeovers, I decided it was time for change, (I should’ve had ‘yes we can’ patented). One trip to the paint store however and I retreated back into my neutral colored shell (no offense meant to turtles). I couldn’t figure out which shade of any color was good for any room! They made it look so darn easy on TV! Since I already had the house ready for a new paint job I ended up giving it a fresh coat of beige which did absolutely nothing for the room except give it an Adam’s family look. I’m proud to say that I’ve grown wise now as far as paint is concerned and I’m going to share what little I know about rooms and paint jobs.

Choosing a paint type:

Paint type refers to either latex based or oil based paints. Latex is better for the exterior of your home as opposed to the walls because it can take a lot of weathering and oil based paints are easier to clean stains from.

Choosing a paint finish:

Paint finish is how glossy or matte a paint will look once it’s dried. When you pick your finish, keep in mind the amount of light in the room you intend to paint. If you’ve always wanted to brighten up the room or give a dramatic light effect choose a high glossy finish. Take two slightly different shades of the same color in a high gloss finish and use them on parallel walls to create a unique effect. Finishes come in flat, eggshell, sating, semi gloss, high gloss and ceiling flat. Egg shell and satin will work well for bedrooms and the living room. Ceiling flat is meant for the ceiling (a no brainer) and other textures are more suited for rooms where the cereal and or ketchup is less likely to be thrown at the walls.

Choosing the color:

What you need to figure out before you enter the paint store is your color. The color doesn’t depend on what available in the paint store but rather on the furniture you have in your room. So sit down and take a good look at the colors. When deciding on the color you need to come to one of two mind sets; either match the color or make a contrast. This all depends on how you want your room to turn out. If you decide to match, pick the color that’s least prominent in your room for example the color of the cushions or the rug. If you decide to make a contrast then pick shades that will make your furniture stand out. And pay close attention to any wall that may be covered with frames or shadow boxes. It may be a good idea to paint that one wall a different color. The shade will be decided once you pick which way you want to go. If you have light colored cushions and you’re looking to match with the furniture try going with a darker shade of the color of your cushions.

Once you’ve made these three critical decisions, you’re all set to visit the paint store, happy painting.

This is an excellent example where the paint matches the furniture, you can see more images here.

The Top 5 Interior Design Websites

My fascination with online interior design resources began when I realized that there was virtually tons and tons of ideas out there for the average home maker, just begging him/her to them a chance. I kind of always thought that people would be kind of secretive and copy right protective about their work but people, bloggers and companies are more than generous, just another reason to love the World Wide Web.

The only problem that I had was with finding a reliable source of constantly updated work. I don’t even rearrange the things on my dresser very often let alone my house, but for me looking at stunning rooms is eye candy.

The list I complied is based on how much information is available on the site, how well it’s arranged and the quality of the content. I didn’t go looking for the sites myself though, these are the top ten sites cited in some list on the internet and I’m taking them for a spin.

IKEA

The site and blog are excellent. The site categorizes the furniture you’re looking for into appropriate rooms like living room, bedroom, kitchen and a kids’ collection. The layout is excellent and the site features items that emphasis practicality and modern design. There’s another site worth mention IKEA hacker, a blog features IKEA furniture redesigned , with a before and after shop. This site has a lot of credibility of online users and several mark it as the number one site.

Apartment Therapy

This site is really great if you’re trying to turn small spaces into practical functional and chic rooms. This is a great site to explore if you’re stuck living in a ‘this is all I can afford’ apartment where the plaster is coming off the walls. The site can help transform ugly walls and ridiculously small claustrophobic spaces into open and easy to live in rooms. their solutions aren’t just practical but very very affordable.

DeZeen

Dezeen is definitely less practical and more modern design. The featured rooms and layouts are for those who’ve crossed over to the side where having weird shaped things poking out of your wall is considered gorgeous. The rooms they have can look good when they’re complete and you’d need a lot of imagination and ingenuity to take any one part that you like and add it to a room of your personal design. As far as the rooms in their modern charm are concerned, they’re excellent. Even someone like me, who hasn’t really crossed over to this kind of contemporary design can appreciate how great the rooms are.

Design Sponge

Design Sponge is the place to go if you’re looking for fresh and innovative products and tips on keeping your home décor looking modern and chic. The site features multiple posts about everyday design. The posts go into details for room accessories and even feature ‘Before and After’ shots of rooms redesigned. If nothing else, the site is fun to explore for the wide range of ideas they feature.

Inhabitat

This is the only credible site I found that promotes green living and eco friendly designed and is highly revered online. The site has everything from eco friendly home décor to energy conservation ideas and green fashion! The site has one too many ads but the ideas are good and worth the effort of finding them. The site features products reviews and fashion tips while keeping the mission to stay green in mind.

Gorgeous Day Beds from Home and Bedroom Furniture

Home and Bedroom furniture have just released some new daybeds in their already huge line of existing furniture. For me day beds have always been an excuse to sleep in the middle of the day for no apparent reason so the fact that there are beautiful and highly affordable daybeds out now is encouraging. I might throw out a one of my comfy relaxing chairs for one of these:

You can see more day bed designs by Home and Bedroom Furniture here.

Eating Out is Still In!

After creating a backyard or Lawn space, the next step to having lunch outside is setting the table and setting the tone

Decorating for a nice kids party is easy and difficult at the same time. while I don’t have care much for everything being chic and giving a neat touch to every little fabric I do have to worry that a prop may end up falling on a kid or a prop or decoration will be too tempting for a child to leave it alone. With a grown-ups party or a nice outdoor lunch I have other things to worry about, for example, I can’t decorate the backyard with balloons and invite the book club over. What’s more, if conversation runs short, I can’t inhale helium and squeak out a song for general entertainment, a gag that works great with the kids.

I never realized how very demanding we, as women can be when it comes to creating a ‘festive setup’, until I hosted my first ever party, (it was an exemplary disaster). Since then, except for the rare times when I have stroke of genius, I’ve kept most formal lunches in doors. What really got me panicking was the whole idea of square plates! I couldn’t imagine it ever looking good on my table, especially since every dish and vase I owned was circular or cylindrical. So in addition to not being able to set up a nice lunch in my own backyard, I became inept at setting the table until last year when I found this amazing post on table decorating and table arranging ideas and it occurred to me that the plates were meant to go with my food and not with each other or my center pieces. Since then I’ve become fairly open if not experimental to the point of being a mad scientist with my outdoor summer parties.

I’ve found some really nice layouts online that I’ve managed to replicate to a great degree, here’s a new find below

A New Living Room for Every Season

Giving a new seasonal look to your living room is easy and not as expensive as you would think. I actually manage to follow the trendy season colors on a nifty budget

I have a fairly distant aunt who lives in Colorado and who I visit for a week once in summer and in fall. She has no kids and a seriously ridiculous amount of money to her name which she gets to spend on redecorating her house on and off. I must have seen at least five different couches and seven different curtains sets in the last two years. Needless to say, I’m more than envious of her. For me the decision to change the way any one room in my house looks takes a long time to make. It’s an ongoing battle with myself. Part of me is comfortable with the way everything’s set and has its own ‘proper place’ but the other part, (the one that I suspect has always led me to believe that I too can model homes and arrange furniture like a pro) is always calling my other half a ‘boring stooge’.

What settles this argument that I have with myself is the fact that I don’t have the money to redecorate a room whenever I get the whim to. When I think I can pull a few corners and fit it into my budget, I recall the horror movie that was buying my curtains. I’ve found an easier way to pacify these redecorating impulses; with cushions!

I get to keep my curtains and my couch and my carpet, I change the cushions to different hues that fit with the room. Luckily my sofa is a fun dirty brown so a lot of colors work with it. I don’t know what all the patterns are called or what ancient wisdom lies behind them but I can still mix and match colors. You can add the brightest of colors to a living room this way.
At Designers Guild there is a huge gallery dedicated to couches, sofas and cushions and it’s always helped me out. The patterns they recommend there are just wonderful and when I want to spoil myself I go for something by Jonathan Adler, just looking at these cushions make me happy enough to float.

The best part of this design is that I can find some nice textured fabric in different colors and sew it together (much like a patchwork quilt) and I have the whole thing for far less!

The Seed Cathedral Is Revealed

Architectural design isn’t exactly the same as interior design, but I saw this image of the seed cathedral and I couldn’t help but write about it. I don’t exactly have a degree in architecture so all I can really say is that it’s really pretty and darn neat.
According to the Daily Mail, the project cost £25million to build and is 60ft-high in a cube-like formation covered by 60,000 quivering, transparent acrylic rods. I hope they have small miniatures at their gift shop soon. From the little I know about interior design, it’s bound to give a room a nice ‘modern’ look. Each rod is filled with a vegetable seed and it’s going to be the center piece at the Shanghai millennium expo.
The concept behind the design is to make a modern and cutting edge country. I hope it works out to accomplish that, and even if it doesn’t, it’s still fun to look at. I can’t wait for the National Geographic channel to do a feature on it, (I’m hoping it does, the one on Beijing’s Bird’s nest was amazing).





The design is by Thomas Heatherwick and the following abstract rendering of the complete project is featured on his site.



Images Source

Home Decorating Blues… and Greens

I remember back when Top Design used to air and I’d go gaga over all those rooms they made, the office spaces that were renovated by the contestants took my breath away. I always thought that the bright colors they used could never fit in an ordinary home or an apartment, or should I say, my home/ my apartment. The main problem I had was with how bright the colors were. I love bright colors but when it comes to decorating a room, I think once the new feeling of a room wears off, it begins to look pretty much like a circus side show which is probably why I’ve been just a few steps away from buying floral grandma type furniture. The little color that I do add is always, as I learned on Top Design, a splash of color in an otherwise blandly decorated room. I have a coffee table that has a transparent glass top and as long as my sofas were a murky brown, I put some fake turquoise flowers under it. (I later learnt that Oprah frowns on fake flowers)
I’m slowly coming around now to the idea of using brighter colors and I owe it to some really great ideas that I’ve found online, ones that use two of my favorite colors ever, blue and green.

Like this image I found , it got me thinking that I could combine a bright color with a darker one. I think black gets a bit gloomy but I think brown and turquoise should work just as well. Maybe someday I really will have a brightly colored living room. A room like this would need to have a lot of lighting though so it’s still in the maybe pile. Redoing the fireplace to look like that is out of the question.




This other image that I found seems to me a bit more practical. It’s easy to do, if you have a sofa that you like and don’t want to lose. All you need to do is change the curtains and get cushions to match. It’s all in the colors!





(Pictures are linked to their original source)