A little creativity can go a long way. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on redecorating and overhauling your house. If you hire a decorator and have an unlimited budget, you can be living in the palace of your dreams. Unfortunately, we don’t all have that kind of money, so what can we do to make that palace of our dreams on a budget? Well, there are lots of things, but the first and foremost is to remember your creativity and think outside of the box. For example, one of the tricks that businesses use for decoration is giving it an industrial feel. Painting the pipes and leave them exposed, open brickwork, etc. Basically, someone with a bit of imagination asked themselves how they could make a factory look modern and cool and spend as little as possible. Now, it’s more common than not to see that style. So the trick is, see what you can use or reuse and think outside of the box to make your home something awesome.
Less stuff
Decorating is one of those areas where more is less. Get rid of the clutter. Just like in art, where there is white space that you leave blank, there are areas that you do not need to fill in a house. Make the furnishings sparse, but the pieces you put in, make them count.
Sweat the small stuff
The devils in the details as they say. Become detail oriented. That spot on the wall that doesn’t bother you as it’s been there years? That’s needs to go. When you are taking decoration to the next level, you need to become detailed about it. Even if people make fun of you, it doesn’t matter, the final result will be magnificent.
Search ideas
Spend time looking online and in magazines. Look at designs and design tricks that you love and then repeat them in your house. Obviously, you can’t match things perfectly always. If their room is huge and yours is small, you aren’t going to be able to match it. But you can get ideas that way and make it fit with what you have.
Creative paint
Paint is one of the easiest ways to make a huge difference in a place. You can get creative and texture it, you can splatter it. You can do many things to make it a bit different than just painting the walls eggshell white.
Relief
A relief is from the old days, and means a raised pattern on the wall or ceiling. You can usually see them at the top of the walls around the room or in the center of a ceiling in high end places. These were usually from palaces or the most expensive places. You can do this as well without having to pay the same. There are companies that make plastic ones that you can just attach to the wall and paint over, it is a great way to add luxury without the price.
Curtains
Use oversized curtains. Luxury places generally have larger windows, and if you don’t have them, you can fake it. Put curtains in that are larger than the windows you have. With the outsides edges well above and wider than your windows.
Rugs
Rugs can also give a place an amazingly expensive look. A good rug can also cost a fortune, but if you look around a bit, you can often find some very nice ones that are not that expensive and have a great look.
Comfort
Something that a lot of people tend to forget about when they decorate, is comfort. This is where you live, you need to enjoy it. We know many people that make a living room or front room beautiful and never actually sit in it. When guests come they still don’t sit in it as they are uncomfortable as they don’t want to mess it up. This is ridiculous. Make the place beautiful and inviting, make people want to spend time there, otherwise what is the point.
Wall art
Wall art a great for making a place special, but do not put in boring art. Put things you love and enjoy. If you can’t find anything that does it for you, you can always search the web for pictures that you like, and then have them printed and framed. Make it special to you, not like something that you got from a hotel.
Pillows
You can never have too many cool looking pillows. You can change the room drastically by just changing the pillows. You can buy pillow covers and just change them as the mood suits you or the season. A sofa full of Santa pillows just makes us smile.
Lighting
Lighting can make a break a place. This is one where you should get some professional advice. You can put in track lighting, but if it’s not emphasizing a part of the room that needs it, there is no real reason to do it. Use lighting as if it was art, not just to make the room lighter.
Local school
Something we have done in the past is contact a local school that has an art department, or one that has interior decoration classes. You can offer a prize for the best design for your home, and get a lot of great ideas for very little. You can probably also hire the winners to do a lot of the work.
It might take a little work and thought up-front to make your home the palace of your dreams, but it is well worth it. A little time up-front can give you years of pleasure and enjoyment. Your home should not just be somewhere you sleep and eat, like a hotel, it should be somewhere that you can come to and relax. It should be your oasis where you can recover from the stresses of the day. It can be done without spending a lot of money, you just have to be a bit creative. If you don’t have the creative bone, then we would suggest getting someone to help, or searching in a lot of magazines. The trip is often as much fun as the destination, happy decorating.
