Every home is different and shaped by a homeowners distinct taste. Creating your home’s interior layout in your own image gives you licence to express yourself and experiment. Here we will explain some of the essential methods to transform your home, both inside and out!

Reasons to Redecorate

• The choice of colour matched with an adequate style gives your home a renewed vibrancy and a new lease of life.
• A change of your surroundings can alleviate your mood and make your home more welcoming to visitors.
• Can improve the re-sell value of your home due to the investment on display, also for future potential buyers the benefits of an already aesthetically pleasing room are enticing.
• Re-designing a room can create additional floor and wall space through repositioning or removing of furniture, giving more capabilities to capitalise on and shape the room in your image.
• Try out that style you always wanted to, express yourself and explore your artistic licence in the safety of your own home where nobody can judge your taste.
• Home improvement can add value to your property.

Interior Decorating

Deciding the style of the room sets a preliminary for all assets that follow, furniture, paint and room decor is shaped by the chosen style.

How To Choose Your Style

1. Explore

Inspiration for interior design can stem from all manner of places, utilising what you already own first may give you some hints of what your style is. Exploring your home and identifying areas or furniture that spike intrigue or promote warm feelings should be noted. Collecting what interests you should provide some clarity on any specific colours, design that create a positive reaction from you.

2. Hunt For Inspiration

Whether while at your friends for drinks or at the local museum it would be an idea to take note of the designs and styles that peak your interest. Through this you can eliminate what you don’t like and take portions of what you do. Slowly but surely you should formulate a list of selections you admire.

3. Research

The internet has an abundance of style ideas to help you with your home, with Instagram and Pinterest being especially useful in accruing ideas. Creating a mood board of ideas you like can help create a picture of how to design rooms of your home.

4. Create Your Own Style

Ultimately taking inspiration from the recognised pre-set styles can aid in the creation of your own style. Mixing styles is commonplace, utilising what takes your fancy is key.

Recognised Interior Design Styles

• Traditional – Classic inspiration, usually wood furnishings, neutral colour palette
• Transitional – An essence of elegance while classic, spotlight on furniture
• Modern – Smooth surfaces, minimal decor, muted colours
• Eclectic – Inspiration is to stand out, old and new blend, neutral colours, few bold pieces of furniture as statements in the room
• Contemporary – Present day style, simple design layout, mix of multiple styles with a modern finish, easily adaptable, neutral palettes
• Coastal – Hints of blue and beige, replicate coastal environment, light furniture and decor designed to replicate outdoor environment more than inside
• Shabby Chic – Retro style, vintage furniture combined with modern touches

Choosing The Correct Paint is Fundamental

Selecting the correct paint is the most immediate way to transform your room. Changing the colour of the room is the most cost effective and will take less time to plan than a full restructure. The colour of the room sets the atmosphere and creates a precedent for potential furniture selections to match.

Painting Mood

In decorating a room certain colours give off a certain tone, these should match with the correct rooms your decorating to create flow and match the energy of those specific areas of the home. For example, the bedroom needs to resonate with peaceful and relaxing tones. Examples of colours that set tones will be listed below, adhering to these will create the desired mood you seek.

Warmer Colours

• Red – raises a room’s energy through senses of anger or passion, typically red would be used in the living room or dining room to increase the atmosphere.
• Orange – promotes movement and activity, this colour should be used for a room for leisure or exercise.
• Yellow – evokes feelings of joy and jubilation, resembles sunnier times and promotes warmth, can be used in numerous areas of the home including the living room, bathroom and kitchen in order to lament feelings of happiness in places where people concentrate.

Cooler Colours

• Blue – Calming and relaxing, this colour condones feelings of relaxation of coastal shores or blue skies. This colour can be used in the bedroom or bathroom to aid in the winding down process.
• Green – Similar to blue provides a rested feel, lowers blood pressure and alleviates stress.

Neutral Colours

• Brown and Beige – Elegance and adds a sense of tradition, breeds warmth in all areas of the home, can be utilised universally across the house.
• Grey – Sleek and modern colour, this conveys the owner’s stylistic attributes, can be altered using tones to create a more gothic approach or post modern feel alternatively using lighter and darker tones. Can be used in any room.
• White – Brings light to the room and creates the illusion of more space. When used across the house creates a lighter effect especially pertinent to houses in warmer climates.
• Black – Used in abundance will darken your room, black is advised to be used on trims rather than covering the whole wall. Can be used in modern style rooms that promote an edgy chic style.

Different shades of colour can also drastically impact the tone of a room, a slight shift in shade can change the way a room is perceived. Any shade of paint can be created using a paint mixer which allows limitless options for painting your designated room.

Exterior Decorating

Exterior decorating can be slightly more straight forward than interior decorating. Whether you are planning to transform an outdoor space or give the front of your home a much needed makeover, the results can be superb! Here are a few of our favourite ways to decorate the outside of your home.

Exterior Walls

Painting the exterior walls of your property is extremely popular at the moment and for good reason. There is nothing quite like a freshly painted masonry or rendered wall at transforming a house.

There are a number of options when it comes to exterior colours, but here are our favourites:

• White – white exterior walls are clean, crisp and modern. White houses are very popular at the moment due to this, although some are put off by the susceptibility for them to show dirt. A top tip here is to use a waterproof masonry paint that will prevent the walls from discolouring from moisture and will actually clean itself as the dirt runs off with rainwater.
• Black – a less popular choice, but just as effective, black masonry when used on a contemporary property is bold but undelayable beautiful.
• Get colourful! – masonry paint is widely available in any colour you want, whether orange, red, blue or green. Why not be brave and add a colour to your home that will make it completely unique?

The Garden

Around the garden there are countless ways to get creative with paint, here are a few of our suggestions:

• Fences – garden fences are an easy, DIY friendly project to take on, where you simply can’t go wrong.
• UPVC – windows and doors can be painted using a good quality multi-surface paint, allowing you to transform that tired and quite simply boring white UPVC. Currently anthracite grey is hugely popular in the UK as it completely modernises UPVC on any style of property.
• Furniture – upcycling harden furniture is a fun project for anyone to undertake. Whether a garden chair, table or a flower bed, get your paint brush, find a colour you love and start painting.

Summary

Experimenting with your home is a natural process. Don’t feel constrained to stick to certain styles or motifs, the best way to find the perfect fit for your home is trial and error. Before undertaking any tasks make sure to do extensive research and as previously mentioned, find what you like!