Archive for August, 2008

What You Need To Help Organize Your Interior Decorating Ideas

Here are the items that you need to help organize your interior decorating ideas and to complete your interior decorating project file:

• Pens and Paper – There’s nothing more frustrating than finding a perfect paint or carpet and not being able to write down the particulars for ordering them. Have several pens and pencils tucked in your file and a pad of paper or spiral notebook for taking notes. You may want to make notes of a furniture arrangement, trim detail, or window treatment that you see.
• Tape Measure – Try to find a lightweight measuring tape if you can, as a builder’s tape measure can get heavy if you’re carrying it around all day. A 10-foot tape is usually fine for shopping trips, but you’ll want a 25-foot measuring tape to measure rooms, windows, and ceiling heights.
• Floor Plan – If you’re doing a room decorating project or a whole-house remodel, you’ll need a drawing of the rooms with measurements. A scaled drawing on graph paper is most useful, but you can have a simple sketch for a smaller project.
• Photos of Your Room – Even if you can’t stand how your room looks now, take some “before” pictures. Get all the angles and details. These will be helpful when you’re working on your plan or when you need to talk to a salesperson about your project. They’ll help remind you of details as you’re working.
• Calendar – As you proceed with your project, you’ll undoubtedly have schedules to keep. Note when the floors will be measured for carpet, when the plumber is coming, or when you have a date with the painter. You can use your personal daily planner if you have one or keep one separate just for your decorating projects.
  Just be sure to have it with you!
• Magazine Photos – Magazines are a great source of decorating inspiration. If you see a color you like, a fabric print that is just what you love, or an arrangement of accessories that would work in your space, tear the page out and keep it in your decorating file.
• Samples of Fabrics, Colors, and Flooring – As you shop; you’ll want to collect samples of carpet, tiles, flooring, fabrics, and paint chips. The more you have in your Decorating File, the easier it will be to put your project together when you get home. Add more samples with every shopping trip. You may not be replacing everything in the room you’re decorating. Be sure to take a sample of anything that is staying in your room, including carpeting, upholstery fabric, paint samples, tile, or wood.
• Phone List – Have a handy list of phone numbers for your carpet man, plumber, painter, upholsterer, or contractor. Keep the list in your Decorating File for easy reference.
• Scissors and Tape – When you find the perfect paint chips, you might want to tape them together with fabrics you’ve chosen. Also put together fabric samples and carpet tufts.
• Envelopes or Zip-Lock Bags – You never know when you might find some small piece of information, color, or pattern that could get lost if put in the bottom of a tote. Have a few plain #10 envelopes or zip-lock plastic bags in your Decorating File.
• Post-It Notes – Simple post-it notes are great for marking pages that you don’t want to lose in a book or magazine. Or use them to mark possible choices in a wallpaper book. If you’re looking at paint chips, block off shades that you don’t want, using a post-it note.
• Color Board – Once you’ve made all your choices, put together a color board. Use a piece of mat board, foam core, or cardboard, cut to fit into your decorating file. Paint the board in the color of your chosen wall paint or just leave it white.

You’ll find that it’s fun to put together an Interior Decorating Project File for your decorating projects. It’s a useful tool to keep you organized.

Now that you at least have some idea of where you want to be with your new decorating project, you may be worried about how you will afford what you need.  Don’t worry!  You can still have a celebrity room with an everyday budget. 

Organizing Your Interior Decorating Ideas

When you’re getting ready to begin a decorating or remodeling project it’s a great idea to get everything together. And keep it together! Any building, remodeling, or decorating project will be easier if you get organized before you start with an interior decorating project file.

Your interior decorating project file will hold everything you’ll need to coordinate the project. Include carpet samples, fabric cuttings, paint samples, floor plans, wallpaper cuttings, photos, and pictures of inspiration rooms. Having everything in one place will help the job go more smoothly from conception to completion.

You can choose any style of file you want. The choice is yours. A small canvas tote bag, briefcase, notebook with file pockets, expanding envelope, or file box works well. Be sure you select a container that will be easy to carry from store to home and large enough for all your items.

Probably the most convenient way to keep everything together, and your hands free, is in a tote bag with shoulder handles. Interior pockets are helpful, too. Be sure to have a container for pens, your cell phone, tape measure, scissors, and tape.

Place an expanding folder with pockets and divider tabs into the tote. These pockets will keep projects and items separated and organized. You can keep several projects separate by labeling the folders for each.

You’ll save time by having everything together wherever you go. Instead of wondering whether a paint chip coordinates with a fabric swatch, you’ll know right away.

If you’re shopping for a lamp, you’ll know if the lamp shade is the right color.

If you happen on a wonderful flea market, you won’t have to pass up a great bargain on an antique bureau because you don’t know if it will fit in your space. With everything together:  colors, fabrics, measurements, and ideas,– you’ll always be ready!

As you work on a project, you’ll think of things that would be helpful to have in your own interior decorating project file. The most important thing to remember about an interior decorating project file is that you should have it with you at all times.

The 6 Basic Elements Of Interior Design

There are 6 basic elements used in all aspects of interior design and decorating.   If you correctly incorporate all or most of these elements you will have created a beautiful and functional room. 

Balance
There are two types of balance – symmetrical and asymmetrical.  Perfect symmetry is like the human body – two eyes, two arms etc.  Symmetrical balance is typically very formal.  Asymmetry, on the other hand, refers to an imbalance, perhaps two candlesticks of slightly different sizes placed next to each other.  Asymmetry is used to add visual motion and excitement to a space, and therefore it is considered a more informal way of decorating.  

Balance also refers to the weight of different objects in a room.  This can be the actual weight and size of furniture – such as a large entertainment centre; or it can be visual weight – a patterned or very bold color upholstered piece appears to take up more space than a solid or neutral colored one.  If there is too much weight on one side of a room, the arrangement will feel awkward and uninviting.

Color
The human eye can see more than 16 million colors.  To simplify your paint choices look at your favorite piece of art, a rug or the upholstery fabric.  Choose your colors based on that item using the “60-30-10 rule”.

For example – your favorite painting contains blue, yellow and cream.  You might then choose yellow walls (60%), a blue sofa (30%) and a cream accent cushion (10%).

Focal Point
A focal point is the centre of interest – usually the part of the room that our eye is naturally drawn to when we first enter.  If you don’t have an existing architectural detail – such as a fireplace or large bay window – you can create a focal point by strategically hanging your art or by creatively displaying some accessories on a bookshelf.  Once you have determined or created a focal point in your room, simply arrange your conversation area around it. 

Harmony
This does NOT mean that everything should match.  It simply means that the furniture, art and accessories compliment each other in some way.

Scale and Proportion
The size of pieces relative to one another and the size of the space is their SCALE.  Large, ornate pieces will not look right in a very small room, just as small contemporary pieces will be lost in an oversized space with vaulted ceilings.  And more importantly, the size variance of different pieces within a room should be somewhat related. 

Texture
Texture is the one element that can instantly add interest to a monochromatic color scheme.  Should you choose to decorate an entire room in one color – mocha perhaps – it will be easy to add some visually interesting texture.  Linen window shades and leather pillows can be found in the same color range but each has a very different look and feel.

You may have never put a lot of thought into these elements, but when they are put together in a room, they will enhance the room ad make it beautiful!

Taking on an interior design project can be a huge undertaking.  Don’t let your vision become compromised.  Start by getting organized.

Interior Decorating Using Cool Earth Tones

Cool earth tones are a range of colors achieved by mixing white, or pigments from the cool side of the spectrum such as blue and green, with the basic earth colors. Think of cool stone and slate floors, or the washed creams, gray, and pale sand of a seashore on a winter morning, to get the feel of the colors. They create a soothing but elegant ambience of natural beauty in your interior decorating scheme.

Beige, putty, cream, and parchment all make perfect background settings, so the range of paints and papers that falls into this category is enormous. If you choose to paint rather than wallpaper, a number of translucent washes of different colors from this range will give a more natural finish than a flat latex; in earlier times these colors were full of natural impurities and so had interesting variations of shade and depth. You can either continue the same tones throughout the room, or use the walls as a canvas against which to set a richer series of colors.

If you’re using this palette alone in your interior decorating, it’s important to avoid bland, featureless expanses. Texture, pattern, and detail are vital factors and occur naturally in many of the items that you may choose to include in this type of scheme. For rustic earthy textures, use greeny gold rush matting, jute webbing, rough sandstone, and textured weave linens and cottons. Stone busts and urns, limed wood, or reclaimed bleached pine furniture all give character and interest to your decor.

You can also add interest with strong patterns which don’t tend to dominate because the colors are so muted. Look for bold ethnic designs for fabrics and wall hangings, or densely patterned floral or leafy wallpapers in pale olive, straw and mushroom tones. Important details will count for more in this subtle setting – bone buttons, steely gray upholstery studs, a rough twist of raffia around a recycled glass jar all reinforce the picture but break up the sheer planes of color.

Interior Decorating – Getting Ideas

The easiest way to find your interior decorating style is to start collecting ideas. Flip through interior decorating magazines or home improvement websites and collect pictures of things that catch your eye like a particular sofa style, a really cool lamp, a wall color, window treatments, a fabric, or maybe just the feeling that the whole room gives you. Make notes right on the pages so you remember why you saved it.

Also, start collecting samples of existing fabrics or colors that are going to stay in the room. For instance, say you’re not changing the carpeting and you want to keep your grandmother’s side chair. See if you can clip a little bit of extra fabric off the chair where you won’t see it. Clip a small square of the carpeting out of a closet. If it’s a painted piece, you can use paint chips from your local paint store to match it as closely as possible and have those with you.

You will also want to take measurements of the room and any furniture that is staying. If you can, make a simple floor plan to scale for reference. And finally, take photos of the room and any of the pieces you will be keeping.

Now as you collect all these samples and notes you will need to organize them in a way that makes sense for you; either by room, or by idea such as furniture ideas, lighting, colors, fabrics, or window treatments. Then keep them in your car so when you are out shopping you won’t have to make another trip back home to see if it’s the right color, size, or if it will “go”. Interior Decorators always have samples with them when they shop.

As you start to collect a fair amount of items you will start to see a pattern or similarity in what you like. And a style, that you didn’t think you had, will soon emerge.

Maybe you want to look through an interior decorating magazine to find a style that appeals to you.  That’s fine if you want to copy that style, just be sure that it will work in your house.