Lighting for Small Room Decorating

Proper lighting can make a big difference to a small space. Light opens up small room and creates an illusion of space. When decorating a smaller space, definitely keep these lighting tips in mind!

If your room has a lot of natural light, you can maximize it by staying clear of heavy thick drapes, and using thin airy ones instead. Put in large windows if you can. “See through” furniture, like backless bookshelves that divide a room or nightstands and chairs elevated by legs, let the natural light flow through the room without being blocked. Plants and lamps next to a window draw attention outside give your room the expansive feeling of the outdoors.

Creating artificial light in a room can be fun and inexpensive. There’s always the option to install track or recessed lighting fixtures but although this is beautiful, it can be costly. In general, light fixtures that bounce light of the ceiling forces focus upward and gives the room a feeling of height. This effect can also be created by tall lamps. Additionally, lamps, pendant lights, even Chinese and paper lantern fixtures can creatively and attractively add light to any room. Hanging pendant lights lower will make your ceiling seem taller. Also, try lighting all four corners of the room and

Mirrors are great for creating an illusion of space in a room. They reflect natural and artificial light and create an impression of depth. One room decorating idea is to hang a large mirror facing the window, to reflect a lot of sunlight. Placing a mirror behind your sofa that is the same length as it is a bold move that helps circulate light and adds a ton of décor.

Keep in mind; good lighting is one of the essentials of small room decorating. If you want your small space to feel breathable and open, start with
lighting, for day and night.

Decorating Your Bathroom on a Budget

You might think that turning your bathroom a place you’d actually want to spend time in requires a complete renovation.  The truth is that there are many budget-friendly ways to give your bathroom a beautiful and fresh look.

One way you can decorate your bathroom on a budget is by adding flowing fabrics.  Just like in your living room, the right fabrics can enrich your bathroom making it seem much more elegant.  Fabrics can be used on windows and your shower- just drape and fasten them over regular plastic shower curtains.  You can get creative with fabrics and use them to cover tissue boxes, toilet paper roll holders and trash cans.  You will have instantly have added a lot of character to your bathroom without spending a lot of money!

Flowers and plants are great for freshening up any bathroom.  Although they demand care, they add fresh air and beautiful colors.  Adding a few scented candles enhances the relaxing feeling.  Just make sure to keep flowers and plants to a minimum in order to avoid your bathroom looking like an indoor garden.

Another bathroom decorating idea that can be done on a budget is changing your fixtures.  You may not be able to spend a whole lot on retiling or buying a new sink, but changing light fixtures, faucets and handles can really change your bathroom’s look.

Placing your mirror in a beautiful colorful frame is another way to add dimension to your bathroom.  Placing a mirror over the bathtub adds to the illusion of space.  Inexpensive frames are not hard to find and can look great when placed over a mirror.  We decorated one of our mirrors with small spare tiles which gave it a frame that was both colorful and unique.

There are many more ways to decorate your bathroom on a budget.  You can hang stylish towels, buy new toothbrush holders and update your soap dish.  With enough creativity and attention to detail, your bathroom can look lavish and relaxing without overspending.

Find Your Decorating Inspiration

Finding decorating inspiration is a fun and creative experience. A great way to remember all of your different room decorating ideas is by creating a decorating scrapbook. A scrapbook is an ongoing and developing collection of ideas and inspiration. It allows you to have a wellspring of ideas at your fingertips when the time comes to design a space.

Your scrapbook is a place to put all your ideas about colors, fabrics, furniture, styles, accessories and layouts. Fill the pages with pictures from interior design magazines or websites. You can also add photos of beautiful ideas you see everywhere; whether it is art or furniture on display or a breathtaking scenic view that’s colors enthuse you.

There are different kinds of images you can place in your scrapbook. Some will be ones that exhibit practical ideas you can implement directly in your home; such as a great furniture layout you want to copy or a funky looking bright red fridge that you must have. Other images will be merely inspirational. For example, there might be picture of a room decked out in super bold colors that you love. You can save the picture for ideas when trying to choose colorful accessories that give your room a whole new look.

Make sure to have a pencil with you to draw in images or notes of your own. You might see a knock-out display in a furniture store and not have your camera handy (or not be allowed to take photos in the store!). Draw a quick sketch or jot down a few notes about what you liked about the picture. Some stores have fabric or color samples. Definitely takes ones that you like and add them to your scrapbook!

Your scrapbook is both an artistic and helpful endeavor. Different pages of your can represent different decorating styles. Have a page for traditional style, contemporary designs, Mediterranean looks, etc. You can also have different pages signify different moods by decorating it with different colors, lines, fabrics and images that embody the feeling for you personally. This will make it easier when the time comes to bring those styles and moods into your room design.

You can also reserve a few pages of the scrapbook for your own home as it currently is. Add it pictures, a layout sketch with proper measurements, and color and fabric samples. This way you will always have a quick reference to of your home to ensure that your new purchases match and fit in to what you have already.

Don’t forget to decorate aesthetically! Make your scrapbook a beautiful piece of art that you will want to look at over and over. Design it with care and enjoy the flow of decorating inspiration it will bring!

Relaxing Bedroom Decorating Ideas

Your bedroom is a place specifically meant for rest and relaxation. The way you decorate it can create a peaceful and Zen-like mood. Here are some ideas to get started:

Color: Nothing is more relaxing than nature itself, so try choosing colors inspired by the great outdoors like greens, browns, or grays. Using different shades of the same color help create a serene feel. To keep things interesting, other colors can be used for accents and in accessories. Try to avoid shades that are very bright or very bold. They tend to evoke more energizing emotions.

Sounds and Scents: Gentle music playing in the background instantly gives a room a relaxing feeling. You can also try putting on CDs with soothing sounds of nature like waterfalls or crashing ocean waves. A sweet aroma can be easily added to your room by lighting incense, candles or scented oil.

Accessories: When looking for accessories to create a relaxing vibe, nature inspires once again. Plants filter the air, add color, and have a mood lifting effect. Other ideas are candles, vases, wall art with tranquil natural themes, and flowing white curtains.

Avoid Clutter: If you have too much stuff in a room, focus gets frazzled while furniture, artwork and accessories go unnoticed. Make sure to have a place for everything and only keep things in the bedroom that belong there. Get rid of extra odds and ends lying around and have storage space hidden places like under-the-bed containers.
I hope these relaxing bedroom decorating ideas will help you create a peaceful atmosphere and get all the ZZZs you need!

Organize Your Room with Style!

Having an organized and clutter free home is a challenging task.  The key is coming up with room decorating ideas that allow for easy and attractive storage solutions.  Check out our top ideas for organizing your room with style:

Documents: Don’t let important documents pile up and create clutter! You can keep them handy and hidden in an attractive container like a square wicker basket. You can cover a less attractive box with a beautiful fabric and place a lamp, candles or other accessories on top. Make sure to keep you documents in labeled files in the container and arrange them in alphabetical order for easy retrieval.

Odds and Ends: Small pretty storage containers with lids hide clutter and can be easily integrated into a room design. They are great places to store your keys, electronic odds and ends, loose change, and those things you don’t quite know what to do with. The containers can enhance your room’s style by blending with its colors and mood.

Curtains: If you are short on closet space and don’t like the look of untidy shelves here’s a solution that can work for you. Simply hang a curtain in front of the shelf and you’ve created a closet instantly! Design your “closet” with a curtain that blends with the rest of your room, or chose a vibrant color for a bolder style.

Magazines & Newspapers: Don’t just leave your magazines sprawled over the coffee table. Magazine racks come in all shapes, colors and sizes. For a cheaper version try using decorated wine bottle racks. They do the trick just as well!

Closet Organizing: Boxes and bins are great for storing scarves, gloves, socks, and out of season clothing and using a color theme makes it all the more interesting! Use all-white boxes and bins for a calming effect or use bright colors to radiate energy. If you are using every day shoe boxes for storage, try painting them or covering them with a nice fabric to organize your room while giving it a unified look.

Desktop Solution: A great way to organize your room is with inexpensive, unused paint cans! They can be purchased at paint stores for very cheap and used for your desktop. Just line them up on the shelf. Attach them one by one with Velcro strips that are cut a bit shorter than each can, and you instant have cubbies.

Bathroom Decorating Ideas: The Essentials

My husband is a plumber and he’s been in a lot of bathrooms.

He can go on and on about the most exquisite tiles, classy faucets and stunning sinks he’s seen. He always looks online at sites selling luxury bathroom accessories drooling over the latest technology and designs. So when I asked him what essentials really define a nice bathroom I was surprised that he answered “cleanliness and functionality”.

His reasons were as follows: people pour thousands of dollars into their bathrooms, only to find them covered with clutter and mold a few months later. Because bathrooms contain so much breakable hardware, they need to be treated with extra care to prevent major messes. Also, people decorate their bathrooms with intricate fittings and designs that often take up a lot of space making it harder to keep things clean and organized.

When designing your bathroom, making sure it’s functional means ensuring that nothing is too complicated or space-consuming. Everything should have a place and preferably, a built-in place. For example, bathtubs can have a ledge for soaps and shampoos and toilet tanks can be built into the wall with a shelf left on top. Bathroom cabinets should be used to hold only essential items and not as storage space to put all sorts of odds and ends. Clutter is thereby kept to an absolute minimum.

Although an orderly bathroom is easier to clean and maintain, keeping it in proper condition is hard work. Fighting mold, bacteria and drainage problems requires more than just a good scrub now and then.

To prevent mold from growing, make sure that the bathroom is well ventilated. Leave a window open to let the moisture out after taking a shower. This way the paint doesn’t start peeling and the tiles won’t collect mildew. Remember to wash your tiles frequently to prevent any type of buildup. It is also important to change the sealant around the bathtub or shower basin whenever it starts getting green and funky looking. Definitely don’t let that sit for too long!

To avoid needless visits from the plumber, my husband suggests constantly removing hair from your drain. Hair is always building up and causing blockages. Also make sure you use a good strainer so that hair is caught before it can get down the drain. But it is still a good idea to have a plumber come once a year to snake out your pipes. This prevents surprise blockages at unwanted times (they have the tendency to get blocked up at the worst times possible).

So before coming up with elaborate bathroom decorating ideas, keep in mind that cleanliness and functionality come first!

Living Room Accessories: Do’s and Don’ts

Accessories enhance the furniture and overall look of any room.  They can highlight the parts of your living room you wish to draw attention to, and can give the space an overall unified look.  They can also be useful if you want to change or update your room’s style without going all out and investing in new furniture.

Idea Throw pillows, art, candles, curtains, ethnic (or ethnic-looking) objects, lamps, and area rugs are all great living room decorating ideas!  Here are a few tips to make sure your room looks tasteful and not tacky:

Don’t #1: Turning Accessories into Clutter

Your living room can easily begin to look disastrous if it’s overloaded with too much stuff.  Because there is usually so much traffic in and out of the living room, people are always leaving things behind so be careful that items don’t constantly amass.  Accessories are more noticeable when they stand on their own or are arranged in a thoughtful and minimal display.  Make storage space wherever you can and periodically give away all that junk you don’t need to a local charity.

Don’t #2: Going Wrong with Artwork

Artwork should be chosen carefully and blend in with the overall feeling of your living room.  Some common mistakes that people make are hanging their artwork too high (and causing company needless neck strains!) and hanging up paintings just because they have them around.  Ugly and tacky artwork doesn’t need to be displayed just because you have nothing else to hang up!  If you don’t have something matching and attractive to display, a framed piece of fabric that matches your room’s color theme can definitely do the job.

Don’t #3: Color Matters

A point that I’ve already stressed a few times is: make sure that your accessories match the rest of your room’s design.  Living room accessories are a great way of exhibiting bright and bold colors without seeming too eccentric.  I love turquoise, but I think a turquoise wall or couch would be too much for me.  Instead I use turquoise accessories in the form of candles, through pillows and a nargilla!  Having too many colors or colors that are irrelevant will make your room look disconnected.  The bottom line with colors is to use them to pull a room together.

Don’t #4: Keeping to a Style

Even an eclectic style has rules.  A living room that half-hazardly mixes styles and patterns will just look jumbled.  Make sure your accessories blend with the style you are going for.  If your living room is modern, then choose accessories that are simple and contemporary (i.e. find another place for the massive candelabra you inherited from your grandmother).  Just like furniture, accessories some in different decorating styles

Don’t #5: Using too many Throw Pillows

We all love throw pillows! They are great accessories for your living room.  But remember, people still have to sit on your couch! Too many throw pillows can detract from your living room by covering up furniture too much or giving the room a cluttered look.  It seems simple and obvious but is actually a common decorating mistake.  So keep throw pillows to a chic minimum.

Kitchen Design 101

Having a beautiful kitchen design is no simple task. For many, the kitchen is the place where everyone congregates and of course, leaves all their things. It gets dirty easily, collects endless clutter and often contains outdated-looking appliances that are very expensive to replace.

But being that we all spend so much time in the kitchen, we want it to be stylish and organized with a modern, fresh look. We want to enjoy the experiences of food and family that take place in the kitchen. To do this, it is important that everything used on a regular basis is easily accessible and can be put away neatly. There needs to be a place to put the odds and ends collected by the kitchen counters, table and shelves. Having an attractive kitchen design, of course, is also a key factor! Tastes and styles change and evolve over time, so there’s no reason for our kitchen to be stuck in the past.

When trying to come up with ideas try finding out how other people redecorated their kitchens. Browsing through magazines can give you all types of room decorating ideas, and have a lot of “before” and “after” pictures which are great for finding inspiration. Notice what colors, themes, and decorating styles appeal to you most. Look for creative solutions people found to create more space for their kitchen appliances and clutter.

Altering the look of your kitchen can accomplished either by hiring a contractor for a complete renovation, or by making smaller changes on your own. Painting the walls and cabinets can have a huge impact. So can adding pretty curtains, an area rug under the table, and new lighting fixtures especially if you are sticking to a color theme. Other ideas are to change the faucets, replace the cabinet and drawer handles and add framed art. Placing attractive covers on appliances give them a new look and can also coordinate with you colors and theme.

Don’t forget to make organization a top priority! A clean and tidy kitchen is far more appetizing than a messy one. Utility racks and drawer organizers are great investments. You can also get creative by using a bookshelf you have lying around for extra kitchen storage. Storing similar tools and appliances together makes for easy retrieval.

Styling and organizing a kitchen is a fun and creative experience. Make your decorating plan today and let the transformation begin!