Decoration Tips to Make Your Home Truly Yours.

Whether you just moved in or looked around and felt like it was time for a change, here are some home decorating tips to spruce up your home decor.

Look at the room's purpose

You're not going to decorate your home office the same way you would a kitchen or living room. The temptation to slip away from work is already there, no need to make it more enticing.

When you're decorating, it's important to take into account the whole house. Even if you won't address the entire home in one go, keep in mind what you want to feel like when you move from room to room.

When you decide on a theme or feel, everything else will follow.

Let's take the dining area for example, what does the space feel like when you walk through it? What do you want it to feel like afterward? The art of decoration is the opposite of one-size-fits-all, but there are some concepts and design tricks that can be applied to help bring your vision to life.

Let's take a look at those concepts and how they can guide your reshaping efforts.

Play with focal points

What is a room's focal point?

It's the center or most important point in a room when it comes to decoration. Sometimes, it is a painting; other times, it is a piece of furniture.

The focal point could be anything that draws someone's eyes to it.

When you have a good focal point you can design the room around it. For many living rooms, people's eyes will be drawn to a large television screen or a fireplace. You can then orient the whole room toward the item.

It will all seem to have a flow.

In a dining room, for example, the dining room table will usually be the main attraction. Having a beautiful table and matching chairs is the best place to begin. A vase that matches the rest of the room's aesthetic can also further draw the eye toward the table. If you're unsure of what to do if your focal points seem bland is either to try to change the focal point or embellish the obvious one.

Imagine a large dark wood dining table, you could add a thin piece of lighter-coloured decorative fabric and add some items of visual interest on display - vase, small sculpture, travel souvenir. The contrast in size, shape, and colour will draw eyes instantly. We'll talk about how to choose the right colours a little later.

Your focal point could also be an entire wall.

Decorating your home is also about telling your story. If you're wondering how you can do that, let's talk about what an accent wall is.

There are different ways of doing it but usually, the wall you want to draw attention to is painted in a different colour or has a different texture than the others in the room. One room changed like that can become a great room used to tell your home's story by turning it into a gallery wall.

Family photos tell a long and beautiful story and they don't need to just sit on a mantle or dressers.

If you have a transitional with a wall of exposed brick, for example, you can place pictures of great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and children in a sequence.

It's a great use of wall space and if you accent the photos with some beautiful light fixtures (like hanging light bulbs) or take advantage of some architectural details unique to your home.

This wall can serve double duty as both something to draw the eyes of guests and something to remind your family that your house is their safe haven.

A Fresh Coat of Paint

A lot of homes play it safe with white or off-white walls. If you're one of those people who'd like to add a little more life and personality into your home, simply painting the walls is a great way to do that.

Decoration can be as simple as deciding on a paint colour and going with it. There are so many different shades, tones, and hues that there's no such thing as a bad colour.

If you don't know where to start, perhaps the easiest thing to do is to take your cue from nature and decorate with neutral colours like green, grey, or brown. You can even add in brighter shades of blue or red if that's what you're into.

Dealing With Colours

Here is a free tool that can help you visualize what kind of colour goes with what.

Figuring out complementary colours is something that will help you add the right mood to a room without making the room feel like a mish-mash of clashing colours.

It's also important to have some cohesion throughout your home so that the guest room and the dining room don't look like they belong in completely different houses. It's not that all the rooms need to obey the same colour scheme - that would remove their individuality - but you do want some sort of unifying theme.

Colours, obviously, are not limited to walls. You won't need professional interior designers to tell you that an area rug doesn't work in a room because of how it clashes with the accent colours.

Why do so many people paint walls white?

White reflects light better than anything except mirrors, as such it serves double duty: it creates a 'clean' look and can make a room feel bigger.

White paint is not a novelty but because of how complicated it can be to clean, white furniture is not a common sight.

When it comes to home decorating tips, one thing you need to keep in mind is not just how your house will look right after redecorating but how you will keep it looking like an interior designer just left the room.

Between Barebones & Crowded

Unless you want to make it seem like you live in the corner of an old fantasy tavern, it's a good idea to make some room so you can move around.

A good rule of thumb is that you should be able to walk throughout an entire room without having to tiptoe.

There's a big difference between the above and just moving everything but a few pieces of furniture to the laundry room. Balance is a core component of decorating.

You can use area rugs to help you organize the space in a room. This is helpful for a small room because the rug allows you to map out the room before moving furniture in.

For a larger room that doesn't have a lot of walls, area rugs can help you create mini-rooms that each have their purpose.

Something else that has a strong effect on the perceived fullness of a room is whether or not you have window treatments. Curtains and other types of decorations applied to your windows from the inside (think Roman Shades, Panel Track Blinds) are things that you need to choose carefully.

Big fluffy drapery can suffocate a small space but enhance a large room.

Bring in Fresh Flowers & Plants

Plants can do wonders for a home's decorations. If you have a yard where you garden then placing plants near windows or doors leading out (like the front door) can help create a bridge between the two spaces.

Plants in good shape make a home feel alive and well-cared for. You don't need to have a garden with the same square footage as your local park or an entrance hall filled with cascading ferns; a plant on a coffee table, near a window, and in the kitchen will do wonders.

Plants will also help you give your rooms some orientation and structure without feeling like things are boxed out. They do this simply by requiring light, this means that you will naturally put them closer to brighter areas. Those brighter areas will draw the eyes of your guests and there are few things more pleasing than the sight of light scattering through lush leaves and petals.

Remove Clutter Wherever Possible

A select few items on the end table of your bedroom will not only help you have a clearer head when you go to sleep and wake up but will also bring attention to what matters.

A crowded mantle doesn't tell a story, it's a mess. Diligently choosing the best things to showcase will weave a tale for your guests and the people in your family.

We use surfaces everywhere in our homes to live, a low level of clutter makes it easier to manoeuver things around whether it's items in a home office or spices on the kitchen island. You could have gorgeous colour-coordinated paint on your walls, tasteful window treatment adapted to each room's needs, and a nice well-cared-for plant, but clutter can negate all of that effort.

Think of what you can store in kitchen cabinets, or under the sink in your powder room. Your well-kept furniture deserves to be seen just as much as your hardwood floors. Speaking of which, the same concept applies to items that can take up space without serving a purpose.

Is a floor lamp a good idea when you already have more than enough light? Could you replace the TV stand with a built-in that could save space and turn that space into a pseudo-gallery wall? Are all the pillows necessary on the bed?

Of course, don't go overboard. This is your home, not an open house with blank photo frames. No need to go with the most basic bedding you can think of either. The goal of removing clutter is something, understandably, misunderstood: the end goal is clarity.

A bunch of items, no matter their value or how clean, crowded together give the idea of a mess. The harder it is for someone to quickly understand the purpose of an area, the quicker they will associate it with untidiness.

To conclude...

Find out what colours work for you using the free tool we pointed to, rearrange your spaces so that you can move comfortably, and make your spaces easier to 'read'. Decorating isn't just about adding pillows or looking at houses staged by real estate agents, decorating is about you feeling comfortable in your own home and feeling like your environment is resonating with you.

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