Home Makeover Tips & Hints
- Any change you make in your home changes how everything else fits together.Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
Redecorating and redesigning your house is a complex and subtle process. Any change from repositioning a picture to completely rebuilding your kitchen will change how the other elements of your home fit together. Start playfully, making minor, experimental changes to get an idea of what you want. Sometimes, making your house feel like a home can be surprisingly easy. - Use rugs to divide up space and add definition to a room. Center an area rug under a dining room table or coffee table to make it the center of the room. Alternately, use patterned rugs, such as oriental rugs, on expanses of bare floor to warm up the space without cluttering it up. Tack ornate oriental rugs, bear skin rugs or other decorative rugs on the wall as tasteful decorations.
- Sometimes adding a little bit of clash or contrast to a room can quickly change the whole feel for the better. House Beautiful offers a number of tips to freshen a room up by adding an element that doesn't go neatly with the dominant scheme. If you have a room decorated in a traditional style, add a modern piece such as a Lucite chair as an experiment. If you have a very modern room, add something traditional, such as a copper samovar or classical statue. If you have a room with clean, subtle lines, add an animal-print pillow, throw or other element for a touch of the wild.
- Redoing a room can be as simple as clearing out some space. Make use of all the space floor to ceiling by hanging pots on the walls in your kitchen and putting up wall shelves in other rooms. Remove low, wide shelves as you stack your shelving higher to open up space. Get rid of what you can, and store art you are considering getting rid of and furniture you might not need in a spare room or closet to see what the room looks like without it. If you have multiple pairs of chairs, candles, paintings or other items, try getting rid of one item from one or more pairs to see how the room looks without it.
- Mirrors are one of the cheapest and most versatile tools for a home makeover. Add mirrors opposite windows or slightly above, and offset from opposite windows and mirrors to reflect images of the sky, opening up the room. Place small mirrors shaped like circles, squares or other simple geometric shapes along a wall at regular intervals to add visual interest to a room. Cover a whole wall with a mirror to double the apparent depth of a room.
