Archive for February, 2011
Contemporary Decorating Style for Your Home – 8 Important Elements
Though it can be tough, decorating your home in contemporary style gives an elegant look and feel for your living space. Basically contemporary decorating style includes open floor plans, light filled spaces, minimal furnishings and uncluttered spaces.
Perhaps because contemporary decorating style embraces cleanliness, it will always draw comparison to simple approaches to enlighten space differences and modern styles. Many of you might like this particular style of home decorating, but lack proper guidance to carry it out.
Here are few important elements of contemporary decorating style to help you out:
1. Accessories
You don’t have to add lot of decorative pieces and extras for contemporary style. If you are interested to add some flair with decorative accessories, ensure that they are quite simple and elegant and match with other accessories of your home. Remember not to clutter the contemporary style living spaces with too many collections or pieces.
2. Color of your home
Neutral colors and black and white are the main colors that give your home contemporary look. The color combinations that you use for interiors must be often punched up with bold and bright colors. More often black is used to define the contemporary style.
Window Shades From Simple To Exquisite
Bored with the plain window shades that have no identity of their own but daren’t spend too much on the exclusive stuff? How about some exclusive window treatments that don’t cost the earth?
All this and more is all yours even if all you can afford are the $12 window shades from K-Mart. The secret ingredient is an inexpensive trip to your craft store and plenty of creativity.
With some heavy duty drapes and a dash of ingenuity there is a lot you can do to add pizazz to plain old boring shades. Here are three of the many things that can be done with them.
Window shades can be made personal with a unique message on them. It could be something as simple as a good morning or good night or a favorite quote or saying. You can choose your favorite phrase or word.
Before you embark on this personalization program the things that you will need are roller shades (of course), tape measure, Gaffers tape (chose from various colors available), scissors, rulers, small paintbrush, floating medium primer, acrylic paint (craft) and alphabet stamps (foam).
The 5 Must-Haves for 2011 Decoration
In order to have a trendy home, 2011 encourages you to be creative rather than bringing down the walls. Along the colors we know and love, the furniture pieces and accessories play a very important role in respecting trends. You don’t have to necessarily replace your furniture, but you can always recondition what you have so that it fits the 2011 style.
The last years were ruled by the Scandinavian style in interior design. The functional pieces specific to the Scandinavian design combine with the romantic lines and minimalist trends adding a warming note to your home. For this purpose you need furniture in neutral colors and only a few colored accents in bed covers and window blinds. The room will be bright from the visual point of view and it will show class.
The couch remains the steady living room piece all through the year. The 2011 brings forth couches in strong colors like vivid orange, turquoise and red. The minimalist lines are the favorites but the extreme baroque look is welcome too if you want a vintage touch.
The Art Gallery Looks for Your Home
In case you are going to decorate your interiors, here are a few tips that can help you renovate your home with artful items.
Don’t underestimate the power of art. It can change your home into whatever you like just with few items – sculpture, paintings, wall posters or accessories.
Designing with art isn’t that easy as it looks, for it requires an artistic point of view. Remember that not any piece of work is suitable for your home, so you should choose carefully.
Buying a piece of art should be linked to several things: your home décor, your taste of art and of course the price you are ready to pay.
In case your home décor is all about contemporary style, then the pieces of art in your house should be well selected. Go with the recent trends.
The trend of the season is the digital art-inspired décor. It means that you should place digital designed items at the right spots in your home.
The experts recommend computer screen designs on floors, rugs, walls, plates and anywhere else you decide to place them. The computer inspired art goes perfectly with iconic images.
Select Wisely Colors for Small Spaces
Whether it is a large room or small space, changing up the color adds a lot of appeal to your home. Most of you, who have smaller living space, are concerned about what type of colors to use in order to make your house look larger or decorate your apartment using colors.
More often people think of using a complete white color palette to make their small space design look larger, which is absolutely false.
In case if you feel that it really works there are certain considerations that you have to take into account in order to increase the appeal of your small living space.
Actually, there are no specific rules to follow while selecting colors for small spaces. But, the main goal of coloring small spaces should be to increase the overall appearance of the room using effective color combinations.
Go for solid colors
Don’t hesitate to use bold colors for small spaces. However, you should remember to use light contrasting colors to increase the beauty of smaller living space.
The better contrast in the color would definitely create better definition to the space. For instance, if you use blue color to one of the walls of the living room, together with red at doorway, it will give a feeling of depth to the room.
2011 – A Vintage Touch with a Hint of Luxury Décor
It is crystal clear that the major tendencies of 2011 will be focused on the notion of family with a high interest in glorifying the past. The focus will be to obtain a touch of luxury without huge investment and the colors will connect us to the spirit of nature.
This year is definitely going to make your interior design task easier by simply letting us be green, creative and original, all at the same time.
Living room and bedroom design seems to be encouraged to approach the concept of enjoying the treasures of the past. We could consider that this is because of the recession and the need of bouncing back. Or…we can simply accept that a touch of old is a touch of value.
The aged colors, old finish and vintage touches mix with eclectic combinations of delicate fabrics all ready to help us make the most of what we currently have. Earth brown, Provence green and smoky blue are all in trend.
The trends call for restored furniture and complex accessories ready to take it out from the expected classical standard. 2011 underlines the current wave of decorating green. We are encouraged to reinvent everything from wallpaper to furniture and make the items we own look luxurious.
Chair Renovation – Cheap and Cool Decoration Tips
In case you are going to have a renovation, start with the chairs. It is not necessary to throw them away. If you have time on your hands, you can remake the old chairs by yourself.
All you need to do is to use the right materials and of course your imagination. In case you have chairs with rush seats, you can renovate them very easily. Covering the seats with inexpensive jute webbing is a good decision, which will add new atmosphere in your home.
Repainting is also recommendable. For instance, you can have old white chairs with rush seats.
The first thing you should do is to remove the seats and repaint the chair; the dark taupe color gives a magical touch to any old surface, for it covers the damaged areas of the chair.
Choose dark colors for they give a new look to your chairs. After repainting the chairs, think about the seats.
The rush seat chairs are very easy to remodel, for you can cover them with any fabric.
So far, the jute is the best decision, for it is inexpensive. You can go creative and replace the old covering with jute tote bags, some old jute shirts and whatever you find in the wardrobe.
Replacement Windows Installation with Minimum Damage
In case you are going to install replacement windows at your home, here are a few steps, which you should consider carefully, in order to install the windows without damage.
The first and the most important thing is to measure the old window frame. Make sure you are measuring the frame’s height from the top of the sill to the underside of the head jamb. Record the smallest measurements, for they will guide you to what window to choose.
Use an angle-measuring tool to measure the slop of the still. Remove the old sash from the window frame as you pry off the wooden stops, in order to remove the sash.
Be careful for prying off the jam liners. The best thing you can do is to use flat bar, for you will pry them free. Prep the frame as you remove all the loose and blistered paint.
Scrape them off and sand the jambs. Then you can paint the surfaces. In case this is the first window replacement you are doing, then you need to remove the original sash weights from their pockets. After that, simply insulate the frame with insulation foam. Spray it into the holes and into the sash-weight pockets. Leave the foam for 6 hours and then continue with the work.
Bathroom Design Tips – 6 Mistakes to Avoid
Who doesn’t want a bathroom to look practical and good? Bathrooms are one of the most used rooms in home that require proper planning while constructing or remodeling.
Whether you are thinking of hiring a professional or trying to do it by yourself, it’s worth putting some serious thought in bathroom designing.
These bathroom design tips will help you avoid few most common mistakes people commit while designing a bathroom.
1. Not using waterproof adhesives
One of the most important bathroom design tips is to use waterproof adhesives. Most of the inexperienced designers can commit a mistake of using non waterproof adhesives to fix bathroom tiles.
As water and condensation can easily pass through the cracks between tiles, even the most tightly laid tiles can be damaged with non waterproof adhesives.
As a result, gradually the adhesive will tend to deteriorate with too much exposure to water and bathroom tiles will start to crack and fall from the walls.
2. Not leaving sufficient room for bathroom door
Most of us fail to provide enough space for easy accessibility of bathroom door and finally when it is installed, we find that it is hitting the vanity and creating some other problems. So, ensure that you plan properly to select right doors for your bathroom. If you have smaller spaces, consider sliding bathroom doors.
Decorate your Living Room in Tuscan Style
In case you want to decorate your living room, there are many styles to choose from, but the bespoke classy style remains the Tuscan living room décor. It is a romantic and comfortable décor, created with spicy notes and stylish accessories.
The must haves for a Tuscany décor are: brown leather sofa, wood coffee table, throw rug, brick fireplace and wood book cabinet.
Start with the walls. Repaint them in a sunny Tuscan yellow, which will create a certain contrast in the room. The silk accent pillows on the sofa are another way to bring Tuscany close to you. The paintings on the wall are recommendable, in case you want to achieve the typical Italian style.
Choose a renaissance like paintings, which will add a mystique note to your living room. The table lamps should be vintage ones, so go for the old classy table lamps. Leave a place for a wine storage, which is a must, for it is a part of the Italian décor style.
The fabrics should be lavish and luxurious. Go for long curtains with floral prints for this will open your living room.
