Happy Homebuying: A 5-Step Guide to Decorating Your New Home
A new home is a perfect excuse to go all out with new décor, play around with themes, colors, styles, and a chance to add a dash of your personality to every room.
You have infinite choices with everything –furniture, decorating style, window and door sizes, floorings, paint, and everything in between that makes your home truly unique.
The big question is, where do you start, and at what point do you hang your designer boots, call it a day, and celebrate with a calming glass of wine?
This blog gives you helpful tips on how to decorate your home from scratch.
- Find Ideas
You may come in armed with a pretty good idea of what you want your home to look like, and that's okay. But looking for alternatives doesn't hurt, and you may find something that helps you create a timelessly inviting home.
Go online and browse collections for décor –Pinterest and Instagram are rife with them. You can also look at hotel magazines, or take inspiration from bits and pieces of your friends' homes you'd like to borrow, etc.
Keep in mind the feeling you want your home to embody. For example, you may choose fun and sassy, minimalist yet classy, luxurious with an air of comfort, or peaceful and laid back.
- Choose a Decorating Style
Next, find a style that defines what you want the best. This idea will lay down a plan for what your home's interior and exterior will look like. Here are some of the most popular options:
- Modern
The modern style's most defining feature is clean lines and a well-calculated play between wood and earthy tones, paired with mid-century modern furniture. If you have a ranch home or a home constructed in the 50s, this style will settle in just right.
- Transitional
The transitional style is a cross between modern and traditional styles. It features dark woods, use of stone, greys, whites, beiges, earthy reds, and other neutral tones. Accent pieces may adorn deep shades of green, sage, and purples. Furniture tends to sport curvier lines than that in the modern style.
- Contemporary
This style is for the minimalist decorator -characterized by a few pieces in each room and a color palette that sticks to black, whites, and greys with accents toeing the line at primary colors. In some cases, metal and glass replace wood, and the design style works best when you want to optimize nature in your home and flood the house with natural light.
- Farmhouse
Think practicality, comfort, simplicity, and a rustic look. Sofas are stuffed for comfort and covered with fabric to make them low maintenance. Earthy tones are common, and furniture may adorn vintage looks, while lighting fixtures may look like mason jars, chandeliers made of wireframes, and toilet paper racks that look like chicken feeders.
- Organize Yourself
Now that you know which style you want, you're halfway there. The next step is about making decisions regarding the actual decoration work.
For example, what are you willing to splurge on, and what would you rather spend little on? Where will your source supplies from –furniture, paint, lighting fixtures, wallpapers, etc. Write a list of what you need along with projected costs (on the higher side) and the source.
You also need to decide whether you need experts to help and to what extent. If you do need to call in some pros, reach out to several to book consultations.
- Apply your Decorating Style Room by Room
The shortest route to get a perfectly planned decoration wrong is decorating the whole house at once. Instead, choose a room to start with –preferably the bedroom, because you'll spend most of your time there –and roll with it.
Always start with furniture, colors, and flooring. These three aspects set the tone for everything else, and once you get it right, you can move on to the more minor aspects that bring the space into an inviting whole.
Remember, the biggest piece in a room attracts the most attention, whether negative or positive. It pays to spend a good amount on it so you can attract the right attention.
For example, the biggest piece in a bedroom is the bed, for the dining room, it's the dining table, while the sofa and sectional define the sitting room.
While at it, avoid believing the myth that every room must match –it doesn't. Focus on the aspects that will last and make you feel great about your home.
- Personalize your Home
After making the home livable, it's time to layer up. Find pieces of accent furniture, organizers, lighting accessories, wall art, flowers, throw blankets and pillows, and window treatments.
This step also provides space to add your DNA into the home. You can choose to have a section of the wall dedicated to family photos, fireplace tops adorned with travel souvenirs, or a chalkboard in the kitchen that you can write whatever you want on it for extra charm.
Area rugs and runners are helpful when you want to personalize your home with a particular culture. For example, a Japanese kimono belt used as a chest runner introduces an Asian vibe and adds interest to a plain chest.
- Tie Up Everything with Lighting
Skillfully set lighting creates depth and height and helps statement pieces to stand out.
Your décor style can help you choose some fixtures over others -such as candle, shaded, or lantern chandeliers for a traditional style and fixtures with right angles, intentional symmetry, and right angles for the modern style. Because lighting is about more than fixtures, an expert lighting designer can help you work in different types of lights, including LEDs, exterior lighting, downlights, ceiling lights, and more. At the end of the day, it's about striking the right balance between light and shade and bringing new energy to a space.
Final Thoughts
Décor is more about aligning your personal style with available expert-engineered styles than sticking to a rule book. Each step should bring you closer to getting a stylish and inviting home.
At Urban Ambiance, lighting is our forte, and we know just important it is to get it right. Wherever you want to incorporate new lights, we have enough fixtures to brighten up your life. Contact us to Learn more.
