Have you ever had the urge, the desire, to change something in your home?
We put a lot of effort into our home – the looks, the design, the colour, the finishes. And for some reason, it never feels done.
Nothing is more deflating then when your home, that you worked so hard to get just right, starts to feel stale and boring. This has nothing to do with your design or your tastes. It’s a natural feeling that happens when you see the same thing over and over again. Enter the urge to renovate.
Just because I say it’s OK to get the urge to change things around the home from time-to-time, doesn’t mean you HAVE to go out and spend money. In fact, you would be surprised at what you can do with the things you already have in your home.
Rearrange Your Furniture
You don’t have to go out and buy a whole new furniture set to give your space a fresh look. Sometimes, all it takes is a new arrangement.
Rearranging your existing furniture will give you a completely different perspective. Try your couch on a different wall or away from the wall all together. Too often we think that a couch must be against a wall but by pulling it away from a wall, in a large room especially, it can actually make the room feel cozier. It may even give you space to create a secondary usable area.
Take a look around your home for pieces in other rooms that you could add or swap-out. Swapping out a chair from one room to the other, even if it’s the only thing you changed in the room, give the room a fresh and new feel.
If you have a smaller room, try reducing the number of pieces you have in the room. Reducing the number of pieces will make the room feel bigger and lighter. Sometimes a good purge is all any of us need to feel a difference.
Go To The Archives
We all have those rooms – the back of the basement, a crawl space or closet or maybe a storage locker. It’s that place where things get put when they have been replaced with something new. In our home we lovingly call this The Archives.
If you have held onto them, there must be a reason. Whether they didn’t fit the design you were working towards or they have sentimental value, you still have them and it might be time for them to come out of retirement.
Take a look at what you have in those storage rooms and go in there with an open mind. Look for different ways you could use the things in there. Maybe a change in colour will make them work in your new design scheme or maybe it can be used in a totally difference way. For example, a once operational item like a milk bottle from the 1920’s could now be a decorative item on a shelf. Let your creativity run and think outside the box.
Refresh Your Photos
Capturing those precious memories are all to easy nowadays but how often do you print off those photos? I, for one, rarely get around to doing it. ‘m looking at one now with photo from my Ireland trip…in 2013.
Changing out photos in your home is a simple thing and yet it is something that we are often just too busy to do. Photo’s can get stale and, even more so, outdated! Taking some time to go through and update your family photos around the home will give your home decor a refresh. It’s also a great way to keep those memories present!
If you are more on top of this than I am and you photos are new, try moving them around. Try changing up the display or the order on the wall. Something as small as changing the order in which an object is displayed will catch the eye and make it think, “something is different”. That sensation of something being different is how you create a feeling of fresh and new in the home, even when it really isn’t.
Elevate a Focal Point
In most rooms, you’ll have a natural focal wall. A wall where the seating for the room is either up against or faces. In a family room, this is probably the wall the TV is on. And chances are, this wall is the same paint colour as the other walls in the room. But what if it wasn’t?
You don’t have to repaint the entire room to get a different look. But if you take one wall and do something different to it, that will be enough drama to make a statement. The smallest change will give the room a completely new feeling. For example, a different paint colour or wallpaper.
Pick a wall and paint it a different colour. Do you have some leftover paint from another room? This is a great way to use that up, plus, since it’s a colour you have already used in the home, the room will be coherent with the rest of the home.
Change Up Your Displays
Again, changing the order of things in the home will play tricks on your mind. You could move a little knickknacks that you picked up on your last vacation from the left side of a shelf to the right and your eye will register something as being “different”.
To give your home a refresh, change the displays on shelves, bookcases or mantels. Your family will re-notice items they forget about, making the display new and exciting again.
Just like anything else, your home can get stale and boring. You see the same things day in and day out. It get repetitive.
Too often we think that we need to buy something new or do a drastic renovation in order to get that excitement feeling that comes along with the new and fresh. However, in many cases, all you need to do is rework what you already have to make if feel new again.
If you have any questions on home design, please send us an email at designhelp@designonthemind.com