Today I have a guest post, written by Jessica Kane. She will give you tips how to decorate room like a professional.
An open space can be daunting for most people. The possibilities can be endless when it comes to decorating.
But making an open space feel like a room doesn’t have to be hard. When first decorating a room, you should proceed to follow these tips.
What’s the Room For?
Before any paint color or color scheme is chosen for a perfectly blank room, the homeowners should know what the room is for and how it will be used. The purpose of some rooms is obvious, like a bathroom or a kitchen. It’s also fairly easy to tell which is the master bedroom and which bedroom goes to the kids, but which kid gets which bedroom? Which of the rooms on the first floor will be the family room, which will see lots of use, and which will be the living room, which will mostly be used to entertain guests? Is there a room set aside to be a home office or a library?
Time For Tearsheets
After the purposes of the rooms have been sorted out, it’s time for the homeowner to start flipping through magazines and through websites such as Pinterest, tear out or print out pages she finds utterly irresistible and hang them up on a cork board. Indeed, some professional designers insist that their client does this before they go to work. Then, the homeowner should live with those tearsheets for a while.
Home Story
Coco Lapine Design
The Feel of the Place
After she’s lived with the pages on her cork board, she should then consider how she wants the room to feel, or more precisely, how she wants to feel when she walks into it. Should it be cozy, relaxing, stimulating, elegant?
Whatever adjectives feel right, she should write it down and be careful to choose only that decor that matches the adjective.
When the mood of the room is decided upon, it’s time to choose the color, the swatch of fabric, the piece of furniture or even the work of art that will anchor it. Some people derive the decor of a room from a vase half-filled with shards of sea glass that are different shades of frosted blue.
Since the walls usually take up the most space in a room, or are at least the most noticeable features in a room, their color and pattern should have something of the room’s anchor in them. Indeed, the color or patterns on the walls might be the room’s anchor.
Remember: Size Matters
Though the colors and patterns and overall decor have been decided upon, the coming furniture needs to be proportional to the room. This doesn’t mean there’s no place for a grouping of tiny vitrines on a lamp table, or oversized ginger jars on a buffet table, but like the patterns and colors, everything must belong to everything else in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. Experts recommend that before any furniture is bought that the homeowner use graph paper to make a scale model of the room. Also, don’t forget the height of the walls!
Mix and Match, But Not Too Much
Margaux Beja.Appartement M – Le Cube
The rest of the room’s decor should complement the anchor in some way. It may be time to break out the color wheel to see which colors complement others. Patterns and textures should also be contrasted. If the walls are to be covered with a swirling, floral wallpaper, full of bright colors, it might serve to complement it with a piece of furniture or two that is all angles, dark varnished wood and bronze hardware. If all the walls covered in florals and fern fronds is overwhelming, the wallpaper might be placed on the wall above the fireplace and the other walls painted in a muted tone of one of its colors. For example, if the wallpaper is full of great, blowzy red roses, perhaps a pale pink with white trim will do for the other walls.
Geometric patterns paired with the wallpaper’s vegetative swirls and colors can also pull the room together. The patterns do not have to show up in great blocks. They can be found on throw pillows or even on the upholstery of a footstool.
Jessica Kane is a professional writer who has an interest in interior design and home decor. She currently writes for ECOS Paints, a leading vendor of superior, durable and eco-friendly paints.
Galina Sherman is an Interior Designer at GSH Interior Design studio. The design studio offering services of planning and design for residential space , commercial space, design consultation, interior styling,
