Just like a blank canvas, a new home waits for texture, art, furniture and colours to come to life. A house becomes a home when personal touches are added. Just like taking that first stroke of a paint brush on a new canvas, the interior of a home can be intimidating. When designing a home, it is sometimes a good idea to consider what not to do. Rather than quality, many DIY home designers tend to go for quantity. People want to move into a house and rush the decoration process, which is not recommended. It is not advisable to buy without putting a lot of thought in the pieces. Focus from one room to another and eventually, in time, your home will be filled with carefully selected, meaningful pieces that look great. Knowing what the best kept secrets are about interior design is a great way to begin your home decoration the way the experts do it.
Pick a Theme Before You Buy
Interior decorating takes time and selecting the theme you want before you buy any new pieces is important. A theme can be a piece of fabric, a photograph or any object that you happen to love. Take the theme colours and buy objects for your interior in the same colours. Buy slowly, taking your time and finding less obvious places to shop for one of a kind furniture. Antique stores, estate sales or closeout warehouse sales are some ideas. If you are feeling even more daring, you might want to check out garage sales. Check out various upholstery, blinds and carpet stores in your area and see how much they charge to re-upholster your existing furniture, as an option. Being resourceful may open up possibilities you never expected.
Buy Big Art
When buying art to decorate a wall, rather than just buying tiny pieces, buying big works of art is the recommendation of interior decorators. Small pieces of art will make a big wall look even bigger. In contrast, a big work of art that you hang on a big wall will be very attractive, decorative and will transform the look of your interiors in a big way.
Accessorizing in 3’s
An interior designer will not tell you this but accessorizing in groups of 3 is a big trade secret. Use items of the same size and maintain balance. Use the latest colour in the room that is most prominent and blend an assortment of textures such as cottons, tweeds and silks.
Take Photos of Your Space
One big secret about interior design is to take photographs of the space you plan to design. Ensure that within a space, there is a balance of height. Everything within your space does not have to match but if you really want to know what your interiors look like, take a photo from a distance and make an analysis.
Fabric Before Paint
Before you select colours of paint, choose your fabric first. When it comes to fabrics, there are so many choices you can get and you can always find coordinating colours of paint. When you choose a palette of colours in a room, look at the wall paint colours throughout the day in particular. See how these change when light is added. A wall that looks light green in the morning hours might look like a grey coloured wall at night.
Neutral Wall Colours
Keeping walls neutral is a trade secret among interior designers. When you need to get inspired, find fabric with colours you love and use this as a basis for your own walls. On large spaces such as walls, keep colours neutral. On smaller objects like accessories and lamps, use brighter colours. For a successful colour scheme, include a bright, a neutral, a light and a dark object.
Consultations Are Inexpensive
One design industry insider secret is that you don’t have to spend millions to get some advice about how to design the interior of your home successfully. There really is no need to spend a fortune. When the work of a certain designer catches your eye, ask how much they would charge for a consultation in-home. Usually, their advice produces great interiors that are worth a lot more than what you paid for. As a matter of fact, this eliminates the guess work on what pieces you need to buy and in the long run, saves you money since you will know exactly where to find your furniture and what pieces to get.
Great Bargains from Estate Sales
Gorgeous furniture does not need to have a hefty price tag. Estate sales and furniture closeout bargain centres features coveted pieces that are inexpensive. One secret many interior designers won’t tell you is that a lot of the best quality pieces were discovered at estate sales or showroom sales. You can find timeless furniture that is well constructed for cents. If you are willing to make investments such as reupholstering pieces or investing in great slip covers, you will have great furniture in your home that is more unique and has much higher quality compared to what you can get in the stores today.
Take Your Time
When it comes to an interior design project, whether you are doing this yourself or you are helping decorate someone else’s interiors, it is tempting to rush the process. The fact is that rushing anything, including designing rooms may work against you rather than for you. If at all possible, don’t rush the process of decorating your home. Take your time selecting colour schemes that are calming or vibrant, depending on the effect you are trying to achieve. Check to see how a new piece of furniture works out and give yourself time to appreciate the process. A rush job may cause you to over buy furniture pieces or pick the wrong colour combinations. Keeping things simple in the beginning and working towards decorating your interiors into more sophisticated, elegant spaces takes time as well as effort. In the long run, a long thought out process tends to be more thorough and looks more put together’ rather than one that had been rushed.