Interior Decorating – Home Staging

Archive for January, 2008

Babies, babies, babies-yes the topic of this article is based on interior design for nurseries. The new arrival of a baby brings a time of thankfulness and joy into all parents’ lives. It also brings to mind an important question: where will the nursery be?!? Once the actual space has been decided upon, the next concern will be color scheme and furniture. Before you make all of your choices concerning the new arrival’s bedroom quarters, keep these important tips in mind.

To begin with, the gender of a baby may influence the color scheme used in the room and this will not be something that will be able to be determined right away so either neutral colors should be used or the painting of the walls and purchasing of the accessories should be prolonged. Keep in mind not to wait too long if it is your intention to paint the room. You will want to be sure to allow any noxious fumes time to disperse before bringing baby home and actually using the nursery. The safety of the child should be one of the main elements involved in the planning of interior design for nurseries. Keep this aspect in mind as you make every choice involved with your design.

Fortunately for the early birds, the traditional ‘pink for girls and blue for boys’ theme is not the happening thing in interior design for nurseries these days. Sure, pink is still associated with girls and blue is still normally in tune with boys design but the strict adherence to these rules is no longer the norm. A complimentary mixture of these colors is the basis of most contemporary designs. There is no reason to limit the possibilities of colors used in interior design for nurseries based on old traditions. Exposure to color in the nursery is your baby’s first environmental experience and it has been confirmed by doctors and scientists alike that this exposure aids in your baby’s development.

Stenciling is a method that has been and still is very popular in interior design for nurseries. Almost any of your neighborhood crafting stores should have a sizeable supply of stencil designs that you can easily use to create a ceiling-level or mid-level border around your baby’s nursery. If you are feeling a little more ambitious, there are many more intricate nursery themed designs that you can purchase in stores or even online that will require a little more time but produce astonishingly impressive designs. If this is still too little work for you, then go all out and create your own stencil patterns by sketching them first onto mat board and then cutting them out with an Exacto knife.

Once your walls are complete, it is time to begin making decisions on the furniture for the room. If you have heirloom baby furniture, let me make a suggestion. Don’t use it. Keep this furniture for display purposes and purchase new furniture. I make this suggestion for two reasons. First of all, baby furniture that was made prior to the 1960’s did not have to adhere to any safety regulations. While your father’s philosophy of ‘they don’t make ‘em like this anymore’ might apply to cars, it does not seem like excellent advice concerning children’s furniture. Secondly, even if the furniture were safe, there is a good possibility that it will be damaged or broken during use. The best bet in any case would be to save these treasures to pass along to your child when they are older and to invest in a new set of furniture for use in your interior design for nurseries.

After the major choices of furniture that cater to the new arrival’s needs have been made, it is important to remember to include a space for mom or dad to sit during those sleepless nights! Rather then purchasing another traditional yet impractical item for the nursery, try considering your alternatives to the long-backed, hard wooden rocker. A comfortable alternate choice might be a spacious, comfortable recliner. You will appreciate this advice at four o’clock one morning as you roll over and try to envision how you would feel sleeping in a rocker around then.

Accessories can make interior design for nurseries come together in a wonderful, and useable way. Never focus on the visual aspect of an accessory for a nursery before you consider its usefulness. You will find out soon that practical items such as diaper holders, changing tables, and so forth are much more appreciated then aesthetic items such as ceramics or stuffed animals. The purchase of stuffed animals brings forth another important safety issue. Be sure not to purchase items with small parts or pieces on them which the baby can choke on.

Once all of the necessary and useable accessories have been purchased for the baby’s room, then feel free to go out and invest in some purely decorative items which you can treasure at a future time. This is, after all, a time you will remember and cherish for the rest of your life.

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When decorating or making decorating decisions for new homes, it is important to remember that your major decisions could affect decorating choices for quite a long period of time. Commitment to bold or unusual color treatments before you have actually had the opportunity to consider how such changes will coordinate with your furniture placement is not very advisable in this type of situation. In any case, the best advice you could receive while planning interior design for new homes is to make mediocre, undramatic design choices to begin that you can alter at a later time if you choose to do so.

This may seem like very unusual advice concerning interior design for new homes especially coming from someone who is working within the design industry—but there is good explanation for this reasoning. A large, open space without viewing or visualizing any furniture content within that space is quite easy to get a little carried away with while making structural changes. Also, keep in mind that by using very bold or dramatic designer interior colors on the walls you might be closing off your future alternative color choices to those that will cover the bright color therefore eliminating any possibility of using neutral colors without major restructuring of wall surfaces.

Wallpaper is another such choice that you might reconsider using while building interior design for new homes. Again, removing wallpaper and resurfacing the surface is often times quite a headache that can be avoided by using other alternatives for creative wall finishing. A great alternative for wallpaper that adds a great texture to the wall surfaces would be a finishing technique such as faux finishing, sponging, or stenciling. These choices (and many more like them) offer you a variety of substitutes that are equally appealing and much easier to change then more permanent solutions such as wallpaper. If you absolutely must have wallpaper in any of the rooms, try using a border to achieve the look you’re going for instead of covering the entire wall surface.

When painting walls, if you apply a few well known interior design tips and tricks to your method, you will be pleasantly surprised in the overall effects when complete. For example, brighten up small or dark rooms with light wall colors. Add character and direction to larger areas by defining them with contrasting colors and textures. Bold or stark color panels can also provide a defining feature to an area that you can showcase wall pieces on when you are ready to accessorize.

Once the walls have been treated in your new home, the next item on the agenda while planning interior design for new homes would be dynamic placement of your hanging accessories such as mirrors, pictures, and art. Do not over clutter walls. Make good choices and place such items in key places by establishing focal points or presentation areas that will flatter the rest of your design.

Interior design for new homes can be a tricky process. There is a good possibility that the area pertained in your new home will be slightly larger or smaller then the space in your previous home. It is this reason that planning placement and theme of each space in your new home is so vitally important to successful interior design of new homes. Be sure to measure widths of furniture and doorways before moving day comes in order to avoid hassle while getting the furniture into your new living space. Take careful notice of any moving activity that occurs into and around your new home. Careless moving errors can disfigure floors and walls and create flaws in your new house before you have even begun living there.

Placement of furniture in new homes is one of the key aspects of unique interior design for new homes. The old philosophy of creating larger spaces (this is seen especially in living areas and rec rooms) by lining the furniture along the walls is true at times although at other times (again, especially in recreational-type rooms), dividing the room into two separate spaces by positioning furniture towards separate focal points therefore adding space and versatility to the area as well as enlarging it.

The most important matter of concern when designing or planning interior design for new homes is to build an environment that caters to the individuals living there. Creating a space that is accommodating to each person’s lifestyles is the general principle of new home design.

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