Interior Decoration Guide

Interior decorating allows you to customize your home and set a mood. Discover common techniques to help pick a style and work with designers.

Whether you own your own home or rent a property, one of the best ways to make your home feel comfortable and unique is decorating it the way you want. Interior decorating is not only about making your home look good. It sets the mood for your house and gives you an opportunity to express yourself. This is especially important the more time you spend in your home. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, many individuals realized they were unhappy with the appearance of their homes because of how much time they were spending inside.

There are many different ways to decorate your home. Some designers utilize different color or lighting to highlight a room, while others use furniture or other belongings to set a mood. Interior design can be as simple as taking the existing furniture and rearranging it in a more pleasing fashion or covering up what feels like empty space.

Determine Your Style

Whether you intend to decorate your home on your own or want to hire a professional designer, the first step is determining your ideal style. If you never thought about style before, this can be a difficult process. One of the best ways to determine your ideal style is looking around your home and identify what elements you enjoy. This allows you to see if you gravitate towards certain colors or lighting choices. Focus on your feelings as well. Many individuals find certain styles of furniture more relaxing, which is ideal for a living room or bedroom. If you have a home office, you want something more professional that subtly encourages productivity.

Knowing what you like helps you narrow down possible styles and gives you a better idea of what to focus on. If you want to experience new styles, think about previous locations you’ve visited and what you enjoyed about them. You can also look up various styles online to get more interior decorating ideas.

There are multiple websites dedicated to showing off different styles. Many of these sites also include decorating tips or links to the products used in the images. Many of these sites have a specific focus, such as Apartment Therapy or Houzz. Other sites, such as Design Milk or Architectural Digest focus on broader interior design subjects.

What Doesn’t Work

When you are determining your style, identifying what you dislike matters as much as what you like. Many individuals have a difficult time expressing what they enjoy, but find it is much easier to discuss what they dislike. If you are unsure what type of styles you enjoy, look over some examples and eliminate the options you dislike. This gives you a curated list to work with. From there, you can look at what similarities are shared in the remaining examples to find out what you enjoy. If you are working with a professional designer, providing examples of what you like is helpful. Many designers show clients new styles they might not normally consider. If the designer knows which elements you dislike, it is easier for them to craft new styles you will enjoy.

Set a Budget

When you are redesigning your home, it is important to set a budget. One option is setting a general budget, but some designers prefer to set a per room budget. Once you set a budget, it becomes much easier to come up with design ideas. If you have a limited budget, you want to focus more on rearranging your existing furniture and less expensive changes, like applying new paint. With a larger budget, you have more options, like purchasing a designer couch for your living room or installing new countertops in your kitchen.

Understanding Scale

One of the most important factors with interior decorating is space. Some individuals make the mistake of finding their dream furniture for a room, only to find there is not enough space to accommodate the items. Instead of creating an open living room, your oversized couch makes you feel trapped or constrained. It also becomes harder to decorate your room because the oversized furniture now becomes the focal point, which completely changes your plan.

Importance of Paint

The color of your room plays a large role in setting a mood. It can be jarring to go from a darkly colored room into a brightly colored hallway. The safest option is to stick with neutral shades. If you find beige or gray unappealing, there are different shades of reds, browns, greens and orange that do not pop out as much.

Whenever you sample paint colors, make sure to place the sample directly on your wall. Another helpful tip is to sample the colors at different time, so you can experiment with how the color looks in natural light versus in the evening.

Home Workspace

In 2020, Covid-19 forced many employees to work from home. Even with businesses starting to open up in 2021, there are many companies encouraging remote working. Because of this, many homeowners and renters started building home workspaces. It may seem basic, but the first step to creating a workspace is choosing a location. If you have a whole room to work with, you can build a home office, but this is not always an option. Do not try and force a small space to become a workstation.

If your family is home with you during the work day, try and find a space where noise is not an issue. If your job requires you to take video calls on your computer, make sure the camera is positioned in a way that doesn’t expose the rest of your home, especially if you are set up in a shared space.

Your work space must be comfortable, but productivity is still important. If you make your work space too relaxing, it is harder to focus on work. Bright colors are a good way to both enrich a room and make it a more invigorating workspace.