Beauty comes in endless forms and there are so many ways to create beauty around you. Your thoughts, feelings and actions have a ripple effect and impact so many areas of your life and other’s. Sprucing up your home with a few simple touches helps to create a space that makes you feel beautiful so that you can then spread that joy and beauty to other areas and people in your life. Below are a few simple tips to beautify your home.
Choosing the Right Furniture
1. Determine Your Home’s Style and Vibe
If you haven’t already established a mood, tone or style for your home consider how you want your space to look and feel. Determine what feeling you want each room to evoke and choose patterns, textures and colors to enhance that feeling. By determining the feeling and energy you want each space to have, you will narrow down your inspiration and have an easier time finding meaningful, complimentary furniture pieces.
2. Be Playful with Color
Whether you’re going bright and bold or muted and neutral, color brings so much to a room. Determining a color palette for each room will help you make smart furniture purchases, but remember to be mindful of your home’s overarching color story. Need a quick brush up on color theory? Hues opposite one another on the color wheel, like purple and yellow or blue and orange, are called complimentary colors and they help create contrast in a room. Triadic color schemes are palettes using three colors that are equally spaced from one another on the color wheel, like orange, purple and green. Then there is of course a monochromatic color scheme that lends itself well to many interior design styles from coastal to farmhouse to monastic minimalism.
3. Pick The Right Fabric
Taking your home’s design to the next level can be as easy as choosing the right fabric. You don’t have to have vibrant fabric all over from the drapes to the upholstery, but having some throw pillows, an arm chair or your couch upholstered in a gorgeous fabric can go a long way to enhance your room. Leather is also a great option for furniture to create a sleek backdrop for more interestingly patterned rugs or pillows and ages in your home beautifully.
Arranging Your Furniture
4. Choose a Focal Point
This will be easier in some spaces than others, as some rooms have a focal point already built in, like a window wall or a beautiful fire place. Other rooms might not have either of those, so you’ll need to create a focal point. This could be with a newly upholstered headboard in a bedroom or a large coffee table in a sitting room. Once you choose what your focal point will be, arranging your furniture around it is an easy way to create a well-balanced room.
5. Consider Traffic Flow
Is there anything worse than stubbing your toe on the leg of a piece of furniture? Make sure there is roughly two feet between the coffee table and sofa and ensure a clear path from one area of the room to the other. Keeping furniture in line with the natural walking patterns throughout your home will ensure you and your guests won’t trip over furniture or each other trying to navigate through a complexly or tightly arranged living room.
6. Anchor with Area Rugs
Anchoring your furniture with a gorgeous area rug is a great way to tie in the design of your room and add a cozy textural element. The general rule of thumb is that all furniture should be on the rug, but if you’re rug isn’t quite big enough you want to ensure that at least the front legs of larger pieces of furniture in a seating arrangement are resting on the rug. The back legs of your couch can be on the floor if necessary, but if all the pieces of furniture are sitting completely on the area rug, you can create a curated vignette that doesn’t leave any floating pieces.
Decorating Your Space
7. Decide What You Don’t Like
Deciding what you like can be tough if you have a tendency to like multiple design styles or have an eclectic aesthetic. Deciding what you don’t like is a useful exercise for eliminating patterns, furniture and decor that you wouldn’t want in your home and narrowing in what you would like to include in your space.
8. Mix High-End and Second-Hand Items
When designing a room you want to create interest and contrast and a great way to do that is by mixing inexpensive, second-hand or antique items with high-end or luxury items. So many beautiful trinkets and treasures can be found at your local Goodwill or flea market if you’re willing to do a little digging through more than a few questionable items. Not everything has to be new to be valuable or precious, but there’s also nothing wrong with splurging on pieces you really love and plan to have for some time.
9. Sample Your Paint
Even if you plan to paint your room white, you should still sample the paint color you’re choosing. White paint can be warm, cool or neutral leaning and can definitely affect your room. If the fabric on your white couch is on the warmer side you won’t want to paint your walls a cool white – your room just won’t look quite right when you step back and take it all in. Observing your paint during different times of the day is also important as the color will change slightly in natural light, morning light and evening light.
10. Take Risks and Have Fun
Your home should be a reflection of you and the things you enjoy, after all, if you truly love something it will never go out of style. Don’t worry too much about things that can easily be changed like paint or artwork. Have fun experimenting with layers and textures, mix design styles that might not necessarily go together or really lean into using your favorite color without inhibition. Make your home an expression of your beautiful self and spread that beauty everywhere you go.
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