Top Interior Design & Home Decorating Tips Of the Month
Here are some home decorating tips and interior design ideas to help you with your decorating:
• What will make a little princess' room really magical is the addition of the special accessory: a canopy on the bed. Hearthsong makes one such canopy, which hangs over the bed from the ceiling — so it can be used with any kind of bed, and doesn't need a four-poster or a canopy bed. Learn More in Decorating Children's Rooms.
• If you think your room is stuck in a decorating rut, try asymmetry. Do you have even numbers of things in a collection? Is the mantel over the fireplace anchored by a candlestick on either end? Try mixing things up by putting both candlesticks on one end, or by making your collection of small vases an uneven number.
•The top of the dressers in the bedrooms is often a spot that draws clutter, because it's a place that's in frequent use. The change from your pockets, the earrings, the button that came off your sweater, all have a way of gathering en masse on the dresser top, and before you know it, you don't even want to look for that bracelet you know is in there somewhere. Learn more about jewelry boxes in The Little Things.
• One of the frequently asked questions is how high should I hang the artwork? The answer depends on the artwork and the type of room. If it's a gallery or hallway where the viewers are mostly standing, then art work should be hung higher up – around eye level standing up. Traditionally this means the center of the art work is 60 inches from the floor. Get tips on how to hang artwork in our Special Report: Displaying Artwork.
• To achieve a unified look in a room, buy a little extra wallpaper and/or fabric when you're decorating. You can use either wallpaper or fabric to cover the sides of an old armoire, the covers of photo albums, or cardboard storage boxes which you can stack on top of a bookshelf. Throw pillows covered with the same fabric you've used for curtains or bedspreads will bring the whole room together.
• Teal will also give a springtime lift to a room. It's light, and has several bright notes in it, without being cloying or too Easter-egg bright. When you're trying to make over a room in order to brighten it up, it's important not to over do it by adding a shade that's too bright in a room with predominant darker or more somber tones. Unless you're totally making over the room, the changes must be gradual. More suggestions for using teal in Magic of Color.
• It's easy to spruce up the kitchen in a retro style. Shop around for some vintage tea-towels in bright patterns and colors, and install a simple towel rack on one wall of the room. Hang the towels on the rack for a festive, old-time country look.
• The remarkable thing about this room is that despite its eclectic nature, everything here pulls together to provide one complete look. Much of this is done with color: the rattan flooring is the same color as the antique framed shirt and as the background of the bedspread. In fact, there are many shades of brown in this room, each of which helps to bring out the others Dont' miss the rest of our Room of the Month.
• Whenever you're considering a design or decorating move, you have to take into account what the current trends are, even if you're not going to be following them. Trends in design often work on us in subtle ways, and so we may not even be aware that we're following them until we suddenly start seeing "our" brilliant ideas in magazine photographs and at decorator show houses.
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