Vintage bicycle Posters

If you are decorating or redecorating your home in stages – which many people do because they can’t outlay the entire cost of refurnishing a new home all at the same time – then you may be stuck as to how you can be sure your decorating style stays focussed and on track, to ensure a cohesive and successful designer look.

Well the best and easiest way to stay on design when decorating your home is to use mood boards. You have probably already created an overall mood board for your home redecoration project when you started, however now is the time to make a board for each stage of the process – right when you’re losing steam is the time you need inspiration the most.

Plus, your decorating mood boards are all fluid and as well as being able to see the whole picture, you can also swap and change your choices between rooms before you’ve committed to a kitchen tile which would really look better in the bathroom.

Soft and Sweet Manly Decorating

Well maybe not the most ‘manly’ decorating style, but choosing a soft and light color scheme and style doesn’t have to be restricted to the girls. The style pictured is of a light and airy bedroom decor which has a soft and sweet feeling, but would easily accommodate a couple, rather than just a young woman.

This is because a soft decorating style is perfect for the bedroom where there is already an abundance of soft, plush furniture and textures in the bed, cushions and heavy curtains – for sleep ins! And yes, the pillow has flowers on it and the quilt has pink in the pattern, but boys you can incorporate a soft decor into your bedroom at home and your girlfriend or wife will love it.

The cushion is in neutral tones and the white flowers are against a light khaki background making them more subtle. Plus, the pink is more of a coral pink, rather than a baby or hot pink, and is surrounded by a lot of other neutrals. Also, the walls, side table and sheets are a soft blue – see, soft and sweet, and manly.

The shapes you choose when decorating your home are just as important as the colors and styles you go for, and can have just as much impact when they are done well, and cause just as many eyesores if done incorrectly.

And this doesn’t just apply to whether you choose a round or square dining table, or a square or rectangular wall art print. It is also important to consider the more subtle lines and shapes in your home.

For example, if you choose a simple, streamlined look for your home, your furniture will also be in line with this style (so to speak). This means that the rounded bench tops in the kitchen will be mirrored by rounded edges on your dining table, and your sideboard may have sharper lines, but it will be all one piece with no obvious joins – creating a smooth and streamlined look.

If you’re like most people you probably head into work when you should probably be resting after a bout of the flu, or you only take half of your holiday leave because you don’t want to leave your team. Well guess what – they can manage without you for a week or so while you redecorate.

That’s right, why not use that accumulated sick leave and holiday time – which is probably going to expire soon anyway – and save some money on paying tradespeople to do the jobs which you can do yourself, when you only have the time. For example, learning to tile your bathroom or kitchen is not rocket science, and you can even lay new floorboards, render the exterior and of course paint to your heart’s content during your time off.

Plus, change – that is changing the look of your home – is said to be as good as a holiday anyway!

If you have a close group of friends you’ve known for a while then you probably share a lot more than laughs and advice. You probably also swap clothes, books, shoes and bags, so why not add furniture to your swap meets?

You won’t find a much more affordable option than free when you are looking for a new piece of furniture to brighten up your home and chances are your friends have similar decorating tastes to your own, and even if they don’t sharing a piece of furniture you never would have looked at twice in the store, forces you to try new things when it comes to decorating your home.

You can choose to start swapping small and easy to move items like pieces of wall art or throw cushions, and move on up to sharing curtains, arm chairs and ottomans when you’d really love a new piece of furniture but there is a big fat zero in your decorating budget this month.

We’re always told not to put the cart before the horse, but is it ever a good idea to put the furniture before the horse? For example, what if you are building a new home and you want to be able to move in and have your life set up and ready, rather than feeling like you’re living in a student loft because you haven’t had a chance to buy furniture or hang curtains yet.

In this case it seems like a good idea, plus you already have all of your plans so you know how much space you have to work with – and fill with gorgeous finds!

But you can’t actually SEE it can you – a space on paper is a lot different to one in real life. So perhaps it’s alright to put your furniture before your horse – or house – when you’ve bought an existing home and you’re just waiting for settlement? At least you’ve been inside it.

Perhaps you are one of the millions of people who rent their home and, like your fellow renters, want to give it a nicer touch than the sterile and often under maintained look it’s got now.

I had a friend – a renter – tell me how she whipped up a curtain for her bathroom. She used iron on adhesive tape to make the corners of the new fabric she’d bought neat, and hung her new curtain in her rented bathroom giving her the privacy she was initially after. Plus, when she had been buying her decorating supplies, she had even convinced the saleswoman at the fabric store she was a born seamstress – when she didn’t even own a sewing machine!

But she got the look she was after and it was a simple and quick project to add a fresh look and a bit of individuality to her rental apartment, so I think we should all stretch the truth of our decorating skills once in a while – you never know you may just succeed!

Do you ever read through decorating magazines which have done a feature on a designer, with a tour of their perfectly decorated home, and feel a little bit envious. Not only do they live in a home which is so perfectly put together, but the interior designers also often have contacts with architects and tradespeople who can seemingly magically open up spaces and redesign whole homes in a matter of pages.

It’s also interesting that the old saying about painters never painting their own house doesn’t seem to apply to designers either – they are more than happy to take their work home with them and ensure that it is as carefully designed and executed as their gallery or shop front.

However, it’s probably also worth noting that a lot of your envy may be misplaced. After all, the designers who go home and stunningly decorate their own home probably have other aspects of their lives which are less than neat.

We all know the economy here is flagging and it’s not doing so great around the world either. While you could look at the obvious down sides of this situation, instead consider the freedom it now gives you to be a frugal shopper.

Frugality should be rewarded in this time of job uncertainty and ‘economic crisis’ which we hear about in every news report. Don’t be ashamed by the fact that you can’t afford a genuine Le Creuset cast iron cooking set, there are plenty of other more affordable brands of cookware out there, with just as many gorgeous colors to match your kitchen.

And don’t worry that you can’t afford to lay real wooden floorboards in your home when you’re renovating. There are a lot of cheaper alternatives which look almost as good and can be installed by you – saving you more money – plus you’re not cutting down any more forests for your floors.

Repaint Furniture

When you redecorate your home you will inevitably find that some of your furniture and accessories just don’t fit into your new color scheme – which makes sense since you bought them to match your old color scheme.

However, before you replace them, consider repainting them. if you’ve repainted the walls of your home already, you probably have some paint left over, and if you don’t head out and pick up a sample pot to match your accent color and be brave!

Take to your old dining table with a paint brush, as your freshly painted walls are likely to contrast to your accent color and a bright yellow table would make fresh art out of your walls when up against them, as in this image.

But you don’t have to start with the big items, why not repaint a mirror frame or picture frame in your accent color? Or take the paint brush to your dining chairs? You can even have your floors painted, best to leave that one to the professionals though.