Archive for 'Interior Design'
Designing Your Home Office
Posted on 30. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
One of the most difficult places to think of an interior design idea for is the home office. You want the home office design to be work friendly, but at the same time, comfortable and inviting. An office away from home is usually stiff and uncomfortable. So at your own house, when you are on the computer or doing work at home, you do not want to feel like you are still at the office.
Tips And Ideas For Home Office Design
Before you design your home office space, you have to ask yourself a few questions. First, what is the purpose of your space? Is it just for internet use, or do you work from home and need a true home office? Do you have a specific room for your home office, or do you need a home office design that fits in a nook or corner of another room. Who will be using the space besides you? If you do not work at home and the space is for family use, make sure that the space is accessible for everyone. You will not like having your home office in your bedroom if children are going to be using it on a regular basis. Finally and very importantly, is there a telephone line, electrical outlet, and internet hookup nearby? If there are not, then you will have to have cords strewn across the floor. Even with cord covers this can be hazardous.
After you asked and answered these questions, you can begin to think about the home office design. There are several questions you must ask and things to think about the home office design before you begin implementing one. Do you have enough space for a full sized desk? If you do not, then you can use a computer armoire. This contraption is great for use in a family room. The computer will not be visible when it is not in use. If you are putting your home office in another existing room, you will want the home office design to mesh well with the pre existing design.
A computer armoire can make this happen. In addition, what type of storage do you intend to use? Are you planning on using shelves, drawers, or cabinets? If you have a separate home office, any home office design will be fine. But if you are working with a pre existing room, you will want the shelves or cabinets to match the rest of your shelves or cabinets. Finally, how will you handle any cord issues you may have? Try to get the cords to run along the baseboard of the room, if you need to have them run more than a few feet.
If you ask yourself these questions and think about these tips before embarking on your home office design, your home office should be a hit!
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Interior Decorating Tips
Posted on 27. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
If you have a home, you probably want to have it look the way you want. You want the style and dcor to match how you feel inside, be it contemporary, traditional, modern, or simplistic. Your home and its interior decorating should mirror who you are. It would be strange to find yourself coming home to a home that does not reflect a thing about you. Here are some interior decorating tips to bring out the best of your style without overwhelming your space.
Tip One: Personalize
When you are selling a home, any realtor or stager will tell you to depersonalize it. Take down family portraits, pictures of the kids, and personal artwork. Keep the colors neutral and the designs classic and simple. But when you are living in a home, you need to personalize it and make it your own. Interior decorating skills come in handy when you are personalizing your home, but you do not need specific skills to do a top notch job with your interior decorating. One thing you can do to personalize your home is to create a unique art piece. You can glue bits of fabric to a canvas, have your children paint abstract art, or paint your own abstract art. The key is that they do not have to look professional, just interesting.
Tip Two: Do Every Room
Even if it takes you years to do it, make sure that you decorate your entire home. There may be some rooms that you do not use frequently, like a home office. Even so, when you are in that room you will want it to be an enjoyable place of interest. A home office design that is unique and enticing may make you work harder and be more relaxed in your home office. If you decorate every room except that room, it will stand out like a sore thumb. Plus, you will not feel as comfortable in there as in the rest of the house and you may even avoid the room. But if you do some interior decorating in there, it will be a comfortable place to spend your working hours.
Tip Three: You Do Not Have To Paint
Interior decorating can be done without changing the color of your walls. You may have many reasons not to paint. Perhaps you are renting and are not allowed to paint. Or you may have many items in the room and are unable to move them to paint. You could even be disabled and not have the ability to paint. Whatever your reason, know that you can find great furniture and wall pieces to decorate your home without touching a paint can!
These tips will allow you to begin your journey in interior decorating. If you follow these tips and your intuition and instinct, you will have a beautiful home in no time at all!
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Designing Your Home Interior
Posted on 21. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
You do not need to hire a decorator or interior decorating professional to design your home interior. Even if you have no color sense or sense of style, you can still design your home interior without the help of a paid professional. There are many different online sites and television shows dedicated solely to designing home interiors, and if you read and listen, you can become your own interior designer for your home. The shows and websites will all tell you the same basics when designing your home interior.
Keep It Simple
If you are a first time home interior designer, make sure you keep your designs simple. The complex designs may look good on television, but for the average home, many of these designs just are not practical. If you have never decorated a home, the first time that you try your hand in home interior design should be a simple task. Instead of redoing your entire kitchen, try painting, decorating, and getting new furniture for your living room. Do not go overboard, and do not do too much with any one space. You may be tempted to keep putting more and more into a room, but for the most part, simple is better.
Get Help If Necessary
Another great tip for designing your home interior is not to do anything that you do not necessarily feel comfortable with. While it is great to go outside of your comfort zone, there are certain things that you simply should not do if you do not know how. If your home interior is not the lay out you want it to be, you may be contemplating knocking down some walls. This is not as simple as using a hammer on the wall, however, and you should probably get help from someone who knows what they are doing. This is especially true if there are electrical wires in the wall. If you are not an electrician, you should not be messing around with electrical wires. You or someone else could wind up seriously injured by trying to do things that are above your level of expertise. So do not be afraid to get help if you need it.
Have Fun
One of the keys to home interior design is to have fun. If you have fun while creating or designing a space, that will show in the final design. If you are stressed and worried the whole time, your design will not be nearly as polished or finished.
So make sure that you keep it simple, do not do things you are uncomfortable doing, and have fun while designing your home’s interior!
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Designing Your Home
Posted on 17. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
No one wants to live in a house with plain white walls and no decorations. A plain house is just that a house. It is not a home. In order to make your house a home, house design is important. There are some tips that you need to take into consideration when contemplating your house design.
Tip One: What Do You Like?
Your house design is what sets the tone for your home. If you have Asian inspired house design or contemporary house design and do not like it, you will not feel comfortable in your own home. Because house design is something that usually stays for many years as it is not necessarily easy or cheap to change, it is important that your design choices reflect something that you and your family enjoy and appreciate.
Tip Two: Fit Your Needs
Your home interior design needs to be something that suits the needs of you and/or your family. If you have young children, you cannot design your only large living space into something that is untouchable. In addition, white carpets or furniture are usually a bad choice for a home with any children at all, regardless of age. If you are single or married with children out of the house, you can chose more elegant house designs like white furniture or carpet or glass objects in low places. Of course, if you have pets, these design options are out of the question as well.
Tip Three: Size Matters
When designing a room or space in your home, it is crucial that you take into consideration the size of the room and the size of the pieces you are putting in that room. Everyone may love a large, luxurious sectional sofa, but the fact is that some rooms do not lend well to that type of furniture. If you have a small space, you need to think of that when you are designing your space. Likewise, if you have a very large room, you will need a large piece of furniture to occupy that space. A huge living room is perfect for that large, luxurious ten seater sectional sofa. If you use too small pieces in a large room, you will end up making the room look cluttered, not elegant and sophisticated.
Tip Four: Choose Wisely
While you may love the current trends and fads with house design, be selective. Stripes on walls are big right now, as are bright colors, and bold patterns. But if you combine bright colored stripes on your walls with bold patterns on the furniture or art work, your room will end up looking like some sort of circus. Instead, use muted neutral tones for the stripes on your walls. Try putting up a chair rain and having a solid color on top with stripes on the bottom. Then you can have one piece of boldly patterned or bright colored furniture to make it pop. The key to beautiful house design is being selective with trends and fads!
If you follow these tips, you will have a beautiful home that everyone loves to visit!
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Home Decorating Tips
Posted on 11. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
If you are into home decorating and are trying to decorate your living space, you may feel a little overwhelmed. Home decorating does not come easy to most people, but there are many television shows and online web sites that can offer you help. Your house design may be improved if you follow these tips.
Tip One: Know What You Want From The Room
Home decorating can get confusing if you do not know precisely what you want from the room you are designing. The first step is to know what you want from the room. Do you want it to be a play room, a formal sitting room, or a media room? Do you want your kitchen to be a chef’s kitchen, an eat-in kitchen, or do you prefer to eat in the dining room? Do you want your bedroom to simply be a place to sleep, or do you want it to be a haven or a retreat as well?
In addition, part of knowing what you want from the room is knowing who will be in the room. You have to remember who lives in the home and who frequents the room. For example, if you have young toddlers, you do not want expensive glass pieces in a formal living room. If you only have one large living space, you probably do not want a formal space at all if you have a toddler. Instead, you would want a more relaxed, comfortable living space.
Tip Two: Focus On One Piece
A room can get convoluted and cluttered if you have too many important pieces in the room that you are trying to focus on. Instead, try having one main piece that focuses the entire room. When choosing this piece, make sure that you keep the size of the room in mind. If you have a small bedroom, you do not want a large four post king bed. While the piece may be stunning, it is just too large to really make a good home decorating impact on your bedroom. Home decorating is about tasteful, manageable pieces. Try to find a focal piece that really fits in your room and makes a statement without overwhelming the room.
Tip Three: Do Not Follow Fads
Home decorating is about being fresh and fabulous. This does not mean following fads exclusively. While trends may be fun to follow and add some life and interest to your home, try not to follow them exclusively. If your home decorating is based on fads, in just a few years (or maybe even a few months!), your home will be completely out dated. Instead, stick to classic ideas that you freshen up with bright colors.
If you follow these three tips, you will have home decorating skills that people will envy!
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Interior Design In Your Home
Posted on 09. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
Home decorating is not the easiest task for many people. Some people do not find it naturally easy to do home interior design, and even seemingly simple things like choosing colors can be very difficult. However, thanks to many different technological advances and advancement in do it yourself painting and decorating, even the most lost home owner can realistically do their own home interior design.
Technological Advances In Do It Yourself Home Interior Design
Technological advances are making it easier to do your own home interior design and not have to pay a professional thousands of dollars to do the same work. Many home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowes offer online paint buying guides that allow you to virtually paint your home on the computer. You can put different colors and textures together and actually see how they look before you do the home interior design. In addition, Lowes offers a unique color matching program. You can bring in any piece of color to the store and using a special machine, they can create a paint that matches the color exactly. So if you find an amazing piece of furniture and want to have it be the focal point in your room, you can now find paint that matches it perfectly.
Advancements In Do It Yourself Home Interior Design
In addition to technological advances, other advances have been made in do it yourself home interior design. Instead of having to choose the paint colors for your house from a thousand different paint chips, there are now booklets available at almost every place that sells paint with compatible colors. These booklets have pages with several dozen colors that go well together on each page. Instead of looking at a paint sheet with four shades of the same color, you can see what yellows go with what blues, or what browns go with what greens. There is no longer any excuse for the non color oriented person to not be able to do simple home interior design.
Decorating Your Home
Even with the painting made simple with home interior design, you may still be leery to actually decorate your home. Do not be afraid to try new things in your home. If you use neutral colors on your walls, make sure that you use some color in the decorations to make the room pop. Most stores that sell home furnishing sell things in sets, so even if you do not feel comfortable choosing individual pieces, you can still have an excellent home interior design by using items that you purchased in sets.
Anyone can design their home beautifully!
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Studying Interior Design
Posted on 03. Jul, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
Is your home the envy of the neighborhood? Do you constantly get complements on the style of your home, or do people often ask you to decorate rooms in their homes? Are you about to enter the career world, or want a career change? Do you consider yourself artsy and creative? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might want to seriously consider studying interior design.
Job Description
As an interior designer, you will never be bored. Being an interior designer means that you will have many different job opportunities. Home interior design has much more to it than you may think. There are many different rooms in the house and you will have the opportunity to design kitchens, formal living rooms, basements, family rooms, recreational rooms, bedrooms, and offices. There are so many different rooms and concepts for a house and interior design encompasses all of them.
Personal Touch
As an interior designer, the most important part of your job will be your personal touch. Anyone can paint a room and put pictures on the wall, but it takes a true interior designer to make a house a home. An interior designer is a talented individual, and your personal touch is what will keep your clients asking for more. Every interior designer has a personal touch that they bring to their designs. Some focus on modern design while others focus on contemporary or traditional interior design. No matter what your style is, with a personal touch you will be able to wow your clients.
How To Become An Interior Designer
Becoming an interior designer is like many careers. You can go to school and learn the trade, but if you do not have innate talent your designs will be lacking that special wow factor and people will notice. If you do have talent and drive, you can become an interior designer without going to school. Simply apprentice with another interior designer to learn the ins and outs of interior design. Even if you have the passion and talent, you will have more success if you follow an established interior designer before going out on your own. That way you will be able to learn what your region likes and dislikes, what stores have the best materials, and what retailers offer the best discounts. If you have a passion for interior design, do not let anything stand in your way of becoming a top notch interior designer!
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The Best Home Dcor Design
Posted on 28. Jun, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
Choosing a Home Dcor Design
The factors used to determine the best home dcor design is strictly an individual choice. What you like and don’t like should be taken into consideration when choosing your home dcor design but it’s also beneficial to be expand your scope of choices and be willing to experiment and incorporate a different home dcor design, along with your personal preferences. Selecting a theme for your home dcor design and then creating a comfortable and relaxing atmosphere in the home to fit the theme is the first step. The second step is accentuating the theme by creating the visual aspect of the design through the use of color and accessories.
Types of Home Dcor Design
The types of interior design are numerous and should reflect your personality. The basic home dcor design which includes furniture, accessories, flooring and window dressings, can revolve can range from a heavy or dark dcor to a more light and airy home dcor design. For example, Spanish or Mediterranean dcor may include dark wood for furniture pieces along with earth tones contrasted by vibrant colors. On the lighter side, there is the very popular French Country dcor. You’ll find sophistication and sleek, contemporary lines with Scandinavian dcor while the unique and exotic style of Feng Shui is very relaxing. There are many other home decors with specific themes such as Victorian, Rustic, Farmhouse and Country Cottage decors that might suit your needs. Home dcor design can range from simple to chic.
Cutting Costs
The cost of accessorizing your home can range from very cheap to extremely expensive depending on the home dcor design you’ve chosen. To keep it inexpensive, check local flea markets, private sales and thrift stores as these are good sources for finding bargains on accessories such as paintings, artwork, china pieces and plants for very little money. Auctions are another avenue for finding unique pieces and antiques for your home many times at very reasonable prices and companies that specialize in making reproductions based on original designs is a good way to get at item you want at a much lesser cost.
The End Result
Experiment and be as creative as possible with your home dcor design. Try unique color combinations for effect, use different textures to visually enhance an area or use a variety of fabrics and bold patterns as contrast. Find a point of interest in each room and use accessories to enhance the interior design but keep the accessories minimal so the point of interest remains as the main focus. Too many accessories can make the room overly busy so that know one knows what the focal point should be. Keep it simple and let your creativity shine through as you put it all together. The results you can achieve will only be limited by a lack of imagination.
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Utilizing an Interior Design Consultant
Posted on 21. Jun, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
Undertaking the responsibility of completely designing and decorating your home is a big commitment. The time required can be significant even if you’re using the best interior design software to help plan the project. To prevent the stress and frustration of trying to do the project on your own, using the services of an in-store or professional interior design consultant is the first step in having your home designed efficiently and in a timely manner.
In-Store Interior Design Consultant
You can find a reputable interior design consultant to help guide you through the decorating process at major department stores, specialty stores and even building supply stores where each department has a trained interior design consultant. In-store consultants can address installation and delivery issues and work specifically with their stores merchandise making them very knowledgeable about their products they sell. In addition to answering questions and suggesting ideas to better aid the customer in their decorating choices, they have the opportunity to sell additional decorating items from other departments. Being able to purchase all or at least the majority of the items you need for your project at one location will save you time and in some instances, can also save you money.
Professional Interior Design Consultant
A professional interior design consultant is a designer that may work for a corporation or large consulting firm or is someone who works freelance or has their own business. An interior design consultant of this caliber has the expertise to not only work on interior designs for homes, they also do design work for other types of buildings such as restaurants, office buildings, schools and malls. They are experienced in reading blue prints and must understand building codes. Their goal is to please the customer, stay within budget and meet the customer’s deadline.
Plan of Action
Depending on what type of home dcor design you are planning to do and the extent of how much is to be done provides an interior design consultant with the first step in creating a plan of action. Once they have determined these two factors, the interior design consultant will then have the information needed to plan the best way to utilize the space, whether it will be one room or the whole house. The interior design consultant will assess the available furniture and accessories that can be used and also determine additional materials, furniture, lighting, flooring, window treatments and accessories that will be needed within the allotted budget.
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Interior Design Tip Focal Points
Posted on 16. Jun, 2009 by Mark Coleman.
No matter how large or how small your interior design project will be, a key interior design tip centers on determining a focal point. Examples of focal points can be a fireplace, stairway, picture windows, decorative moldings or built-in bookshelves. Upon entering a room with a focal point, our eyes are immediately drawn to that area so a good interior design tip to remember is if you have a focal point, use it to its best advantage. An interior design consultant will tell you to accentuate the focal point and don’t clutter the area or add items that will compete with the main attraction.
Fireplaces
A room with a fireplace has an automatic focal point and a good interior design tip to enhance this area is to add decorative fireplace accessories, a piece or artwork to the wall behind the fireplace, if applicable, replacing or adding decorative tiles in front of the fireplace itself and decorating the mantle. Keep in mind, the fireplace is the focal point so anything you add should complement it. If you don’t have a fireplace, consider this interior design tip and do some research and find out if a wood burning stove can be installed in your home.
Picture Windows
A room with a view can be an outstanding focal point especially if the picture window looks out on a spectacular scene. A helpful interior design tip regarding the decorating of a window that is a focal point is to use a rich fabric with a dramatic color to accentuate or frame the window.
Stairways
A stairway leading to a second floor landing can also serve as a focal point. Another useful interior design tip is that in order to create the stairway as the focal point the central walls of the room should be painted in a color, either lighter or darker in shade that will be in contrast to the wall color in the stairwell.
Focal Point Accessories
If you find you don’t have any outstanding focal points, there are other options. For example, one interior design tip would be to utilize a piece of furniture as the focal point. This could be a large sideboard, armoire or even an over-stuffed sofa filled with throw pillows in a variety of fabrics or contrasting colors. Other types of accessories can include a piece of artwork such as a statue or a hand-blown vase. An original painting or framed lithograph can also be a focal point. Anything that will draw attention and becomes a point of interest in a room is a good focal point.