Category Archives: Decor

Creating a Calming Décor

If your home can be classified as a high energy domain, you might find yourself longing for some quiet moments to create a sense of balance in your home. The secret to achieving that balance could be your home décor. There are some design elements that can bring calmness to a room. Including those elements in your décor could result in some tranquil moments for the whole family.

Color

Specific colors are credited with generating calmness. You can paint a room one of these calming colors or simply create a quiet corner using calming colors. A reading nook or quiet zone in a child’s bedroom is a good place to include calming colors. Blue, sage, gray, mauve and tan would be good color choices for these areas.

Rustic Décor

While you may not want your entire home decorated in rustic décor, there are some elements of this décor style that you can include to create the calmness you desire. A rustic area rug featuring muted colors or dark blue, brown or gray could add serenity to the family room. Leather furniture has the durability to hold up in an active household. It also has an earthy, grounding element that promotes tranquility. Rustic décor often features nature-themed items. Pictures of animals, birds or serene nature scenes can have a calming effect on the whole family.

Accessories

Pillows encourage quietness. Young children like to cuddle up with a pillow while reading or watching TV. Teens and adults are more likely to prefer larger body pillows to relax with. Wall words that encourage everyone to embrace quiet moments could be included in any room of your home. Having books, magazines and quiet games readily available and setting aside a specific time for those activities can help you balance the energy in your home.

Sometimes you have to get creative in order to get your family to slow down. Quiet moments should be something your family enjoys even if they don’t fully understand its benefits. Creating a home environment that encourages quiet time can be beneficial to everyone.

Creative Wallpaper Ideas

We all love to design our home to fit our style and be our little personal haven that both represents our personalities and has us feeling at ease. One of the most important aspects to making your house a home is picking out the right design elements to set-up your house exactly as you pictured it in your mind.

What you do to your walls happens to be one of the most important design decisions when it comes to the interior design of your bedrooms, living rooms, bathroom and even the kitchen. Pick the wrong wall color or pattern, and you will find yourself uncomfortable in the room. On the other hand, make the right decision and watch how every design decision afterwards can match up to the wall, piece by piece.

With that in mind, here are a few creative ideas on how you can use wallpaper in your home!

Create a feature wall

Nothing is more striking in a room than a gorgeous feature wall. Rather than use your wallpaper on every wall, place your favorite wallpaper pattern on a single wall, preferably the wall directly opposite the door. Then, ensure it’s a focal point by using complementary color on the remaining walls – either a solid paint color or solid, pattern-less wallpaper. The approach is especially effective when using a bright, bold pattern and matching it to a softer, calmer color for the other walls. An overview of Graham & Bell Wallpaper shows some great bold pattern designs that would look perfect on a featured wall.

featurewall
Source: BHG

Use a variety of wallpapers on the wall

Instead of using only one wallpaper, go wild and pick out an assortment. You can cut them into squares or other shapes and place them one next to each other, making sure to fully cover the wall and not leaving any blank spaces between the pieces. It’s a fun way to add some variety of shapes, colors and patterns to the wall. Be smart about the color or pattern choices: go too wild or varied and you will create a dizzying wall. It’s preferable to use a particular color palette (for example, blues and greys make for a great combination), or stick to one pattern in different colored wallpaper.

Unexpected style – go horizontal

When wallpaper is hung, it’s usually hung vertically, piece by piece. Think outside the box and do things differently – hang them up horizontally! This will create a completely different look (depending of course, on what pattern you pick). It’s especially neat with wallpaper that has a striped design meant to reach from the floor to the ceiling. Instead, the lined design will move horizontally through the room, creating an attracting division to your wall.

Don’t forget about the ceiling!

Ceilings are often left blank… well, if creativity and impact is what you’re looking for, don’t follow the pattern! Use wallpaper on the ceiling much like you did on the walls. You have a few options in terms of colors and pattern, but it can look very nice to use the same wallpaper as the walls. Alternatively, you can use the same wallpaper pattern in a different color. It looks very chic!

Framed Wallpaper Panels

Sure, you could use wallpaper to cover the entire walls, from bottom to top. But how about taking a more creative approach and using framed wallpaper panels instead? The look creates an interesting aesthetic on the walls, causing a natural balance and order in the room. It’s an eye-catching background that works with furniture and it’s sure to cause an impression. Additionally, it’s a great way to save money by using less wallpaper, without the need to give up on the wallpaper pattern you fell in love with. Creating the panels is easy enough: cut the wallpaper to panels of desired length, find a very large photo frame or have the wallpaper framed professionally, and then hang them up.

framedwallpaper
Source: Good Housekeeping

Christmas ornaments on a budget

christmas lights

Our home may be the simplest in the neighborhood when it comes to Christmas decorations. We have been using the same decorations for several Christmases now. We don’t buy new ones but maximize the ones that are still usable like the Christmas lights we have here. We also have our mini “Belen” atop the entertainment cabinet.

belen

This year, I would like to request the kids to help me decorate our humble home with available scrap materials I’ve been saving. I have lots of folders from press kits and empty small jars. They can be converted to colorful ornaments. I just hope the kids would grant my request.

How about you, did you put up your Christmas decorations already?