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Home Decor is above all a personal choice and really should involve no rules. Whatever floats your boat! However, there are a few pointers here and there that could help streamline your decorating projects.
- Don’t rely on someone else to make the choices for you. Sure, a lot of people do not have the first clue how to go about décor but even if you bring in someone to help, they’re there to help with ideas and concepts. Not to make the ultimate choices for you or worse, to dictate. However bad you may be at the whole décor thing, surely you must know your preferred colours and styles.
- Don’t mix and match too closely. It’s a house and a long term project, not a one day wedding procession. Allow yourself some space to use different colours that balance off each other to create a beautiful harmony. There’s nothing wrong with having a running colour theme in the house but too much of anything is a no no. If you love one colour so much that you just can’t decorate without having it in every nook and cranny, then choose varying shades of it.
- Don’t spend a fortune on trends. These are fickle and will go and leave you with an expensive regret of an interior. Ever bought something because its trendy and everyone seems to have it while at the back of your mind you know you don’t necessarily love it all that? If this be the case with décor, put your money back in your wallet and invest in more settled but still awesome pieces that will surpass trends. Of course some pieces are irresistible but trendy. By all means go for those, just don’t decorate a whole house or room in trends.
- Don’t overcrowd your house with nicknacks and collectibles. I know it’s very tempting because you love them all and have spent money on them but having them falling over each other in one place just goes to make them lose their importance and chance to shine. If they’re too many for the house, store some of them and take them out in shifts as you alternate little aspects of your décor once in a while.
- Don’t buy sofas or carpeting in overly light colours. They may look super awesome in the magazines but they’ll get home and you’ll have a miserable time making mental rules on how not to sit or step on them, squirming silently when your visitors do so, or screaming your head off when your little relatives come visiting and play on them. You’ll be living in a home where you cannot afford to put your feet up after a long day. Save yourself all that trouble and let the light colours be on loose furnishings like curtains and cushion covers which you can have an easier time cleaning.
- When you have a décor project, don’t start with the paint. Second guessing yourself is almost inevitable when decorating your house and paint affords you less chances to take a step back, re-think and re-do. Pick upholstery, drapes, and other smaller aspects of the whole picture and then pick a paint colour to tie that all together. Speaking of paint colours, avoid buying directly after picking from a colour chart. You will pick from the chart all right but a few square centimeters of a colour may not give you the real picture. As a second step, buy the smallest tin of your chosen colour and paint a test wall before investing in gallons for a whole room or house. The few hundred shillings that a small tin costs are well worth it. If you do not want to test on a wall, paint a large cardboard.
