Ghazala Nasir

Home Improvement

1) Designing Basics
Before you begin designing your home you should be aware of a few basic things, which will help your dream home, come into being. Find out all about it in the following sections.

FINDING YOUR STYLE FOR DECORATING HOUSE
The first step towards decorating your house is to find out your style and taste and decorate your house with your personal touch. The most successfully decorated interiors are the ones, which express the occupants' personality, interests, and outlook about life. You need to find a style to call your own. You and your family need a style that you are comfortable with, which reflect your lifestyle. Some people are born with an inherent sense of knowing what they like, have excellent taste, the ability to choose and blend elements, to create design that reflects their style. Other people cannot easily do this.

Following are the guidelines on how to easily find your house decorating style:

1) Where do you live?
Do you live in the city or suburbs? Do you live in a town or village? This is important to flow with the style of the place where you live and look of the home, keeping the initial theme consistent. You may want to continue the same style in your interior to make the home really flow.

2) Is the home dark, excessively sunny, light and airy?
If the home is dark, then lighten it up in colour, furniture, mirrors, etc. If the home is excessively sunny, take care of the sun problems when planning ideas for decorating your house.

3) How would you like to furnish your house?
Look at the existing furniture to see what you have selected in the past and have a tendency to prefer. What do you choose to take while decorating your home? Work with these items in color and style.

4) Colouring your home.
What are your favorite colors, and which of these favorites colours would you like to live with for a long period of time?

5) Assorted styles are always a very comfortable way to decorate.
Eclectric arrangements and combinations add interest and relief from too much of the same look. You may want to invest in artwork. Use the artwork as the focal point. Use the colors of the artwork to decorate the room around. Look through books and magazines. See what you consistently seem to prefer. Decide what you like about certain elements and ideas over others.

6) Study your surroundings.
By studying your surroundings you will gain insight to using the style in your home and also touring model homes and seeing the actual rooms decorated will benefit you a lot. Snap pictures of ideas you see that you particularly admire. Visiting friends and neighbours homes will give you a range of design ideas. Tour decorating shops and studios reflect in your decorating selections and preferences for a wide range of displayed styles and effects. Your occupation will also reflect in your decorating selections and preferences.

7) Style according to your personality and status.
Do you entertain a lot, and desire elaborate treatments to show your status in life? Is the home primarily a backdrop for entertainment? Your lifestyle will heavily reflect upon your designing style.

8) Be sure to think about your animals while designing your home.

9) Your lifestyle.
Are you home often? Do you put the home to full use or do you just come home to sleep, bathe, and change clothes? Are you seeking a comfortable, cozy feeling, or is an extremely clean atmosphere desired?

10) Interior selection.
Try to decide how you really want your interior to look. You and your family are the ones who must live in the home with the interior selections. You should have what you really want. If what you desire is not affordable, do the decorating in stages.

11) Ultimate analysis.
When you decide which design direction you are going to go in for, assemble all the fabric samples, flooring samples, and wallpaper samples. Look at all the samples together in the home. Live with the combination for a few days to see if you and your family are happy with the selected design. Try to match all the things together and try to relate it with your personality, lifestyle, taste and choices and there you go your have the best design for your home.


CHOOSING THE RIGHT COLOUR
The next step towards decorating your house is picking the right colour. Color is important. It is the key. A person's choice of color for their home depends on many things; trends, childhood influences, etc. Try using colour which match your taste and sense of style. When it comes to using colours that aren't going to be replaced often, choose a neutral colour. Reserve the more daring or trendy colors for your accessories, such as rugs, pillows and art, because these can be changed cheaply. If you cannot decide upon a colour then simply chose a colour, which will match with your furniture and curtains. If you want to try out some bright and vivacious colours then listed below are a few colours, which are trendy and vivid.

Red expresses excitement, high energy, warmth and vibrancy. It is the strongest of all colours. It is a very stimulating and active colour. It would be a beautiful colour for an entrance hall or lobby. Warm reds are also inviting and intimate in the dining room.

Green represents nature, growth and relaxation. It is a soothing colour and may remind us of rebirth. Green goes with almost any colour and in its darker and more neutralized shades can be used as a neutral. A green kitchen feels fresh and clean.

Pink hints at trustworthiness, happiness, youth and sweetness. Pink is a very complementary colour to skin tones and is an ideal colour for the bath room.

Blue reflects a calm, restful and relaxing environment. Blue is one of the most popular colours and tints of blue will make a room appear more spacious.

Yellow represents happiness and optimism, however vivid and light tints can appear even brighter and more glaring than white. Yellow is an excellent colour to use in a room that does not receive any natural daylight or in a dark hallway.

Brown conveys contentment and comfort. It is a subtle and masculine colour and would be a perfect choice for a library.

Purple is a regal colour, which can denote nobility, dignity and luxury. Deep purple or plum is a wonderful colour to have in a guest room to make your visitors feel like they are getting the "royal treatment."

Orange symbolizes spirit, warmth, comfort and action. Orange would be pleasing in a family room, but, an extremely vivid shade of orange can be tiring when used over a large surface.

Taupe communicates conservative thinking and is considered a very sophisticated colour. A taupe living room will appear rich and glowing.

White implies virtue, purity, cleanliness, spaciousness and innocence. White rooms tend to be very dramatic and create a feeling of quiet luxury. A master bedroom with large amounts of white could become your oasis from a hectic world.

Gray depicts a sedate, neutral and composed environment. Gray is a very appropriate colour to use in a home/office office.

Of course, there are many different shades and tints of each of the previous colours and each will have it's own distinct personality. Designers should base their colour selections on how their client feels about a particular colour. A room filled with bright vivid colours may energize one person; another person may find the intense hues tiring. So ultimately it boils down to one thing is how well you adapt to a colour and which is the colour you want to live with and with which you are comfortable. Colour scheme basically highlights the personality of a person and whatever colour you choose should identify with your personality.

Ghazala Nasir

FURNISHING - HOME FURNITURE
Furniture is an important part of your house. Just as you dress up yourself you have to dress up your hoME with furnitures. The important thing to remember is whatever furniture you choose to go in for should match with the designing style and the wall paint. Do not make the room over crowded with furnitures.

When buying furniture for your home, you may want to think about versatility. Look at items that have more than one purpose. Shopping for secondhand items and putting them to new purposes can be a cheap way to put a spark in an ordinary room.

Secondhand furniture -- or your existing furniture -- can be updated with painting or a refinishing. This will save your from spending a huge amount in buying new furnitures and will also give you an added advantage of changing your furnitures which will match any new design style that you wish to go in for or if you have changed the wall paint. Experts suggest reviving an old sofa or chair with fabric slipcovers give you the flexibility of mixing and matching colours from time to time, perhaps when the seasons change.

Area rugs and plants can also change the feel of a room. It will give the room a fresher look. Plants placed in nice pots and lit from beneath so the light can bounce up off the leaves gives the room a very energetic look.

Use the following guidelines while dealing with furniture's in decorating your home:
Try to have a simple and neat furnishing.

Adequate storage space is an important factor while decorating your house. Kitchen cabinets, beds with storage space under them, built in furniture (cupboards, seating, tables etc) all utilise space well and hence try to go for it.

Go for cane, metal, modular furniture, which looks light and airy and
can be moved around now and then also.


Just as you think of furnishing your indoor have you ever thought of furnishing your outdoor as well. Today is the time to enjoy nature and a simple life. Thus relaxing in our garden or chatting with friends and relatives is a welcome thought. Whether you have an acre or an apartment balcony, you've got what it takes to create an outdoor space that is cheerful, relaxing, and functional.

If you have a big lawn or garden then a nice table with chairs would encourage lunch a la fresco or a dinner under the moon. There are many options for a good quality table and chairs that are not plastic. If you are more inclined to relax outside and lay under the sun while reading a book. A variety of lounge furniture is more your style. Reclining chairs, lounge chairs, folding chairs and benches would be a handsome addition to any outdoor area.

Once that new furniture is in place it is time to accessorize. Decorate your outdoor room the way you would indoors. Some of the most popular and satisfying additions are potted plants and flowers. Or, consider some brightly colored dinnerware and glasses to entertain guests. Candles are also a good way to cast a soft glow when you are dinning outside.

Now your outdoor area is furnished and accessorized. It is time to enjoy the spring breeze and nature around you. Sit down and relax, drink your ice tea, a glass of chilled beer and enjoy yourself in the cozy comfort of your beautiful garden or lawn.

TRUST YOUR TASTE

One important thing to remember while planning an Interior Decorating Project is always trust yourself. Know that you are the best judge of what you want in your house, be it style or colour or furniture. You have to make the ultimate choice.

Always collect the interior designs you like or saw in a magazine and keep it safely. It can be used later on when you plan to renovate your home and then you will exactly know what you want without going through a tedious job of picking a design in case your are not sure of what you want.

Sometimes interior designing could be as easy as flipping the furniture from one place to another or adding a touch of a different colour to a room with pillows, fabrics, or flowers. Another easy way to change a look is if you have a bookcase that usually holds books, remove the books and put baskets, candles, and dishes in the bookcase instead. Candles are also a new fresh idea. Candles are being manufactured in many shapes and sizes and add a glow to any room.

Thus designing your home simply needs a little bit of time and some innovative ideas and then you can really change the entire look of your home.

funguy

Ghazala, please post source.

fallenpieta

Too long to read so I am skipping it.

Maniac

Matybe she wrote it herself

funguy

The time difference between her posts is 12 seconds. Unless she wrote it in Word and then copy and paste, it is Einsteinly impossible. She is proving Einstein's Theory of Relativity wrong.

Qrius

That's a very interesting article. Thanks Ghazala.

I would really appreciate if this article can be moved to lifestyle 2 because it goes well with that forum's theme..and it will be much easier for me to go back and find this article there as compared to here. Thanks.

Faisal

Not to argue who wrote it, but she can't post within 12 seconds either. That is against Gupshup's Law too. Einstein's Theory of Relativity bhi paani bharti hai in front of GS Law.

sparkle_dust786

hey - where did u get all that info from ^^?
Thanks, its very helpful, i've been lookin for it for ages!
i cudnt find any proper advice/tips for our first new home.