Home Décor: How to Decorate Like a Pro

DIY / Home Improvement

You want to decorate or redecorate your home, but you know you cannot afford a professional. That’s okay, because many people have found ways to get it done themselves. And you don’t have to spend a great deal of money, either.

Here in this article, we’ll show you five ways you can decorate like a pro. Hopefully, you’ll find something you can put to use.

  1. What Do You Like?

The very first thing you should do before setting out to become your own decorator, is to figure out what you like. Whether it’s furniture, lighting, accessories, get a feel for how you would decorate your home.

We’re also assuming here that you have already determined the budget for your decorating adventure. If you haven’t done so, now is a good time to start.

With the budget figured out, now you can get out and invest in the items that you like.

  1. Use Area Rugs Where You Can

If you’re planning to arrange furniture with a focus on an area of the room, consider arranging your items over an area rug. This will help the arrangement appear more unified.

Area rug sizes vary by room, so choose carefully. You don’t want the rug to be too small or too big for the room.

Another rug idea is to use a long runner, a couple feet wide and several feet long. These can be great for traffic, especially near your front door, and can add a little punch of color.

  1. “This House Will Be In Order!”

Order is always “in order” in a household. Keeping your home organized really enhances the decorative things you do. Some of your decorative choices could actually double as storage items as well.

If you have clutter, get rid of it. Anything you don’t need or haven’t used in a year or more, get rid of it, or store it out of the way.

If you have something you don’t want to throw away, but someone else can use, give it to them. You want the focus to be on your décor, not the items taking up the extra space.

  1. “Plant” Your Décor

Plants can do a lot for a room. They can add some color, especially in the case of flowers, but anything green will do – just don’t overdo it. Plants will also put oxygen into the room as well.

In your kitchen, you can do something a bit different, although it makes sense. You might have fresh herbs in the kitchen anyway, so arrange them in some decorative fashion.

  1. See the Light

Lighting is a very important part of your décor as well. Lighting can highlight certain areas of your home. Using a dimmer switch with your lighting choice can help you adjust to any “mood” like you might do in your dining room.

Lighting is not limited to electric light, however. Bringing in natural light is always a good idea if it can be done. The most common way to do this is to add a skylight – sometimes more than one.

Summary

So figure what you like, adopt decorator ways through the use of area rugs, organization, plants and lighting. You will soon be decorating your home like a real pro!

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Choosing the Right Doors for Your Home

DIY / Home Improvement

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If you want your house to look perfect, attention to detail is important. Often, it is the little things that most people neglect that make the biggest difference.

Internal door styling really matters

Surprisingly, many people never replace their internal doors, which is a real shame because doing so can make huge difference to the overall look of your home. For example, old style panel or pine doors are all it takes to ruin the look of a room that is decorated in a minimalist style, which brings us to our first door-buying tip.

Style matters. The new doors you buy really must fit in with the way you decorate your home.

Quality is important

It is also important to buy good quality doors, after all the chances are you are going to be keeping them for at least a decade.

Buying cheap doors usually works out to be a false economy. They tend to fall apart, after just a couple of years use. Often this is because the layers of materials used to make them are held together by inferior glue, that starts to deteriorate when exposed to the changes in temperature that occur in every home.

Practical considerations

It is important to choose doors that are right for the job. For example, if you live in a noisy home it makes sense to invest a bit of extra money in buying heavy-duty doors that will keep most of the noise in the room.

For a bathroom, you will need a door that is made to cope with high levels of humidity and dampness. Using a lightweight door that is not made for the purpose, could lead to your having to change it after a couple of years because the moisture has got in, and warped it.

For a dark, and dingy, room you may want to look for a door that has a glass panel built in. Doing this will ensure that as much natural light as possible is let in. However, this type of door may not be a good idea in a house where there are young children, or elderly people who are not very steady on their feet. In those homes, the glass would represent a safety hazard.

Hanging them properly

However, buying the best doors for the job is only half of the story. Once your doors arrive, it is important to take the time to hang them properly.

Most people already own the necessary tools to do the job, but not everyone has the necessary skill to hang their own doors. This video shows you how easy it is to hand a door on an existing door jam. Our suggestion is that you watch it, and use it to work out whether you can handle hanging your own doors, or would be better off asking a professional to do it for you.

Our last tip is to make sure that you maintain your doors well. Wiping the handles every week and quickly going over the rest of the door, and frame, each month will keep them looking good for many years to come.

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