Who doesn’t want a home that leaves their guests awestruck? A living space with perfect lighting, furniture, walls, colors, and proportions is still a dream of many homeowners. However, professional interior designers and organizers can be costly, and not something you might want to invest in.
The good news is that you can step-up your home decor game yourself without any expert assistance. By tweaking elements like wall color, furniture placement, lighting, and wall art, you can make your home look instantly better and more welcoming. Besides, it requires little to no investment. So, you can give your house a design update without straining your budget.
Let’s dive straight into the 11 DIY home decor tips to make your living space look better and more attractive.
Content Summary
1. It all starts with the front door
Your house’s front door makes the first impression, and you should want it to be great. Get creative and give your door a bright, fun, glossy color. Red is known to be a lucky color in many cultures. It resembles “welcome” and “safety.” Orange and yellow are the other shades gaining huge popularity. Both colors reflect warmth and joy. So, get rid of your outdated front door by putting some nice color on it.
2. Keep the wall colors subtle
Walls consume a significant amount of space in your home. Using heavy, block colors like red, green, blue, etc. can cause jarring transitions though there are exceptions. If you have a small house, you can get experimental with heavy wall colors as long as you have the right color of furniture to match it. But if you have a big, multi-story house, stick to light and neutral colors.
Moreover, lighter walls provide more decorating flexibility as you can easily switch up your accessories. So, stick to colors like white beige, or light gray. If you have two small rooms adjacent to each other, painting them the same light hue can make them look larger. And if you don’t want them to look the same, adding a paint strip in one or the other room can cause a subtle variation.
3. Your sofa and chair should complement each other
Think of the last time you visited a hotel. How was the lobby designed? Was the furniture arranged in groupings? Did it look attractive and invites conversation? You can aim for a similar sense of intimacy and balance in your living room area.
A conversation area can be H-shaped or U-shaped. In a U-shaped seating area, a sofa and two chairs face each other at each end of the central table. In the H-shaped area, a sofa is kept directly across from two chairs, with the table in the middle. Don’t make the mistake of pushing all furniture against the walls. You might think it’ll make your room look bigger, but in reality, placing your furniture away from walls makes it look bigger.
4. Let the natural light in your kitchen
When dressing windows, look for functionality and not just design and elegance. Your house needs sunshine, especially in the kitchen area. Sheer paired windows with full-length panels could be the ideal pick. And if your home gets a lot of sunlight, opt for lighter shades that’ll not fade.
5. Have at least one mirror in every room
Of course, you don’t want your house to look like a mirror maze. But mirrors bounce the light around the room, and they can make space feel brighter. However, placing a mirror in the wrong spot can be worse than not having one at all. The key is to put mirrors on walls perpendicular to windows and not directly across from them. If you place a mirror opposite a window, it will bounce back the light out of the window.
6. Put some artwork to your walls
Putting your best artwork on walls can instantly elevate the look of your interior. But, hanging the art too high on the wall can be ridiculous-looking. Your picture should hang at eye level. If you are too tall or short, call another person and average your heights.
Also, keep the scale in mind. If your wall is large, go for an oversized piece or multiple smaller pieces. If you choose smaller pictures, don’t hang them too far apart. 2-4 inches between adjacent items looks the best. And if your wall is small, go for one, medium-sized piece of art.
7. Layer your lighting
The lighting can make or break the interior of your home. No matter how good your artwork is or how well you’ve placed your furniture, if your lighting is not good, your home interior will suck.
Every room should have three types of lighting:
Ambient: Comes with ceiling fixtures and provides overall illumination
Task: Often found over a reading nook or kitchen island
Accent: Decorative and highlighting, like artwork
For the living room, opt for at least 3 watts per square foot. A good idea is to place uplights or torchiere in the corner. It will cast a glow on the ceiling, making the room look bigger and brighter.
8. Anchor rugs under furniture
In your living room, the rug should define the seating area. All the four legs of the sofa, chairs, and table should fit on it. If your rug is small, aim for at least front two legs of the sofa and chairs. In general, you should go for an 8 x 10 or 9 x 12 feet rug in living rooms. A smaller rug size might make look everything out of scale.
9. Raise the ceiling (using visual tricks)
If your ceilings are low, paint them white to make space seem less claustrophobic. You can trick your eyes into thinking the room is taller by hanging curtains higher than the windows. In general, curtain panels measure 84 or 96 inches, so you can go about 3 inches above the window casing.
Going beyond that can make the length too short. But if you want to hang them even higher, you’ll need to order custom drapes. You can also make your room seem taller by leaning a mirror against the walls.
Pro tip: You can go for vertical striped panels. The lines on these panels can visually elongate your walls.
10. The Cinderalla Treatment
Got a dated fixture that doesn’t go with your existing home decor? You can reinvent them with inexpensive spray paint and refinishing kit. For example, if you have a 1970s brass chandelier, you can give it a new life with a quick coat of satin-nickel or hammered-bronze spray paint.
You can even revive your outdated kitchen cabinets from new hardware and a few coats of white paint. And if you have Formica countertops, a counter-coating, stone-like product can make even the most miserable counters look fresh.
11. Call in a pro
If you’ve been living in your house for a long time, you tend to overlook the mess. Sometimes, you need a new perspective and a fresh pair of eyes to detect the flaws. You can hire a professional interior designer or organizer to have a look at your home interior. They can help you tackle closets and bookshelves, which experts believe are often overpacked with more stuff than they should hold.
Conclusion
As you can see, you can take small steps to make your dream home look like one. And if all of it seems overwhelming, proceed step by step. For instance, if your house needs a complete interior makeover, begin with the walls. Choose the right color and pattern for the walls of your rooms. Then, get the right furniture. If you already have furniture, paint it as per the color of your wall. Also, don’t forget the U-shaped and H-shaped arrangements. Lastly, make sure the lighting of your home is right.
