Home designs certainly go through changes as time marches on. What was all the rage 10 years ago is old hat today. The savvy homeowner understands the need to stay up with the times and maintain a well designed home. Design can be a bit of a challenge even for an experienced designer, so if you have hit a snag with your current home design, here are 10 design tips for your home to help get those creative juices flowing once more.
- Choose Versatile Colours
Interior designers can sometimes get a bit carried away with colours. Accent colours are great, but they can quickly take over a space. The best option, especially if you are new to the interior design market, is to use versatile colours in muted tones with small pops of vivid colour throughout the space.
- Keep Themes Minimal
As with too much colour, too much of a theme is not a good idea either. Theming a room is perfectly acceptable, but maintain some form of order to the theming. Too much of one thing is never a good thing and can actually make guests feel a bit uncomfortable.
- Utilize Layered Lighting
Proper lighting is one of the more important areas of the home that tends to be left to its own design. Homeowners tend to believe that as long as a room has an overhead light and some form of natural lighting, it is perfectly acceptable. However, layering lighting with lamps and other lighting features offers more options for accenting certain areas of the room as well as giving occupants the chance to utilize intimate lighting entities rather than lighting the entire space.
- Mirrors for Small Spaces
Not everyone can afford the purchase and upkeep of a high end, spacious mansion. The vast majority of homeowners are left with minimal spaces, but that does not have to be a negative. When properly furnished and lit ideally, even a small space can feel much larger. Another design tip is to use mirrors as a means of extending the space without actually adding to the floor space.
- Reclaimed Tiles are the Way to Go
Tile flooring adds a clean look to any space and beautifully designed accent tiles added to a space will give it a unique appearance, but if you believe buying new is your only option, you would be wrong. Reclaimed tiles offer the opportunity to have a unique look as well as utilize already manufactured material to the space. Reclaimed tiles are better for the environment and add an impressive feature to any room or entire home. Hand painted reclaimed tiles can also add an old world feel to a space when used as accent tiles.
- Intimate Meeting Areas
Homes today emphasize large spaces as in open planned living. The ability to see everything and everyone in the home while cooking may be an enticing option, but sometimes too much space is not a good thing. Try making intimate meeting places throughout larger spaces. Use a cluster of comfy chairs in a corner for a reading nook or a few small couches set at a window for an easy intimate meeting space in larger rooms.
- Area Rugs Separate Large Rooms
Breaking up spaces can feel like a challenge and putting up walls to separate spaces can simply break up a large open plan room too much. The solution can be found at your feet. Area rugs, both large and small work to break up large areas. It also gives the designer a change to play around with design and colour a bit more.
- Smart Storage Areas Reduce Clutter
Adding to a room’s space is not always an option, but families need things to feel comfortable. Smart storage options give you space to put the things you want to keep without making the room look overly cluttered. Try a few options such as a coffee table with a lifted lid for additional storage or shallow storage bins for under the bed storage.
- Play with Textures
Colour is important, but flat colour can get boring. They eye needs more entertainment than simple flat colour. While designing your home, play around with various textures. Features such as throw pillows in various textures add a lot of interest to any room.
- Bring the Outside In
If you find that your home still looks a little flat and boring after you have implemented these design tips, try bringing the outside in. household plants bring a fresh look to any space while providing a natural way to bring oxygen in as well. For homeowners lacking a green thumb, silk plants are beautiful as well, just remember to keep them dusted to maintain their glossy, almost natural appearance.
