Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Life

Tag: decor tips

  • New Traditional Style

    The New Traditional home trend is making its way into our homes and our hearts. Max Wilker, Style Director at Dotdash Meredith, discusses how the look is all about utilizing what was once old and reimagining it with a fresh new finish or bold print fabric. Traditional styling offers chic layering of classic furniture with contemporary accessories. Wilker states, “It’s about freely mixing decades of furnishings with colors, silhouettes, and proportions all working together for a cohesive look.” Discover how to transform your home below.

    How to achieve the New Traditional style:

    • Find velvet chairs – preferably in a deep, rich tone to anchor the room
    • Create a traditional fireplace
    • Look for pieces with embroidered details
    • Try floral wallpapers
    • Design with gold and brass lighting and accessories
    • Use a mix of wood stains
    • Find a vintage brass mirror
    • Incorporate a traditional wingback chair
    • Use furniture with simple lines and minimal ornamentation
    • Colors to use include deep rich tones of green, blue, purple, and burgundy balances with softer and more neutral hues

     

  • Redefined Farmhouse Style

    Redefined Farmhouse is a very popular home trend, and we can see why. Max Wilker, Style Director at Dotdash Meredith, talks about how this look is a fresh, modern twist on the traditional farmhouse style of the past. “It’s still relaxed and comfortable but has visual cues of clean lines, modern sensibilities, and simplicity, plus hints of industrial,” he stated. Wilker recommends sticking to a neutral color palette with saturated, high-contrast tones partnered with black accents when creating this look in your home. It’s about creating a warm and cozy space full of charm and character while not looking overly rustic or modern. Learn how to transform your home below.

    modern kitchen with arrows and transform tips

    How to achieve the Refined Farmhouse style:

    • Stick to a neutral color palette for an open and airy look
    • Use light and medium-toned woods
    • Say hello to shiplap walls
    • Try to balance the old and new
    • Incorporate industrial or barn-inspired lighting
    • Get an apron-front sink
    • Have clean and smooth lines
    • Add wood beams to the ceiling
    • Use pops of colors sparingly. You can do this with plants and blue hand towels or pillows
    • Add texture, whether with furniture, stone, textured walls, or with fabrics and upholstery
    • Consider matte or brushed finishes
    • Add black accents to create a beautiful contrast

    Shop this look:

  • How to Place Mismatched Furniture to Feng Shui your Home

    Thousands of years ago, Taoism developed a set of spiritualistic practices around the belief that two fluid energies—wind and water (feng and shui)—flowed through homes, buildings, or exterior spaces, contributing to the users’ harmony and success. If you’re wondering how to feng shui your own home, start by designing free flowing energy paths through the careful  arrangement of your buildings, interiors, furnishings, and possessions.

    Combat Clutter

    Clutter is feng shui’s mortal enemy because it means the natural flow paths of chi energy are blocked by tchotchkes and other obstructions. Therefore, decluttering is the first  step in creating feng shui.

    Many things contribute to clutter, but not keeping up with maintenance is the most common cause: for example, simple unattended things like burned-out lightbulbs, malfunctioning appliances, or leaky faucets are all part of household clutter, since they pull your attention away from harmonious thoughts and pursuits.

    Simplify your home’s spaces before delving into cabinets, drawers, and closets and reorganizing them to free them from obstructions. This is a really useful exercise to do first. As you do it, you can physically feel a burden of care lifting as clutter disappears.

    You can also accomplish a spiritual cleansing of inappropriately obstructed chi energy by opening your windows and blowing out your living space for nine minutes (nine) is an auspicious number in feng shui.

    Rearrange Living Spaces

    After cleansing and decluttering, you should begin to rearrange your living space according to the five Taoist elements that underlie the philosophy. For Taoists, the world is divided into five materials which possess definitive qualities of color and shape: earth, metal, water, wood, and fire. The easiest way to introduce good feng shui to your home is by including something to represent each of the five elements in your space.

    Earth, for example is brown, orange, and yellow and comes in flat or square shapes. A dark rug in the middle of the room should provide sufficient earth element for your space. Metal is represented by white, gray, or metallic colors with spherical, round shapes, like a large circular porcelain bowl. Water, interestingly, is represented as black, or very dark blues, with curvy, wavy shapes like furled or blowing dark blue curtains in front of a patio door. Fire, of course, is represented by red colors, in triangular shapes like stems of red Japanese maple leaves on the mantel or in a vase.

    Since your home is a shared space, you need to take careful consideration with the placement of your furniture. A large living room encourages chi energy to pass freely in and around the room. The room should be large enough to accommodate the entire family and guests comfortably. There must be a comfortable seat for each member of the household, and for this reason the furniture arranged in a space with good feng shui is often mismatched. Each person in the home should feel welcome and accommodated, and his or her tastes should be reflected in the piece of furniture best suited for them.

    Furniture Placement is Essential

    Where you place furniture impacts the way the chi energy enters and moves around the room. Never place furniture in natural pathways through the room. This type of placement will block chi energy, cause it to become stagnant, and create negative energy.  The furniture should be arranged to invite conversation and interaction with your chairs and couches facing each other and no one sitting with their back to the door.

    The most significant piece of furniture in any living room is the couch. It should rest against a solid wall. Nonetheless, a popular western furniture arrangement is to place a sectional couch in the middle of the room without wall support. This floating should be avoided since it permits and encourages instability in your family’s life, work, wealth, health, and relationships. You can easily test the intuitive truth of this design principle by sitting on a couch against the wall before sitting on one set in the middle of the room. With each arrangement come different feelings. Chances are you feel safe and secure when sitting on the couch against the wall, while the one set in the middle of the room leaves you feeling vulnerable and uneasy, as though you need (constantly) to look behind you. Geomancy or feng shui is an ancient design system that produces unified pleasing interiors with reduced clutter and obstructions. Use these design ideas to provide unity and integrity to your living space. Creating good feng shui might not connect you to universal chi, but it leads to health and happiness. It’s only a short stretch from there to good fortune.

  • How to Decorate a Master Bedroom – Creating a Peaceful Oasis

    It’s possible one of the reasons you’re not sleeping as much as you should is that you haven’t invested enough time or thought in how to furnish or style your bedroom. Here are some tips on how to decorate a master bedroom to create a peaceful oasis you can retreat to at the end of the day.

    Paint the master bedroom a color you find soothing

    When choosing a color, remember that it’s not going to be seen in natural light very often. That may mean going a shade or two lighter if you’ve picked a darker color. Think about your bed linens and the color range they’re in. While black and white high-contrast subway tiles work well in bathrooms and kitchens, try to choose a color palette for the master bedroom that incorporates different shades of the same color and save the accents and “pops” of color for throw pillows, decorative objects, artwork, and plants.

    Digitally declutter

    While we all unwind in different ways, there seems to be consensus that digital devices hinder the process. Consider performing a digital declutter of your bedroom, removing everything from televisions to digital clock radios. You may still need to set an alarm to wake up, but if you use your cell phone’s alarm with the ringer turned off, you won’t really need another alarm clock. Try to ban computers from the master bedroom entirely. If you really want to watch TV in bed, invest in an armoire with doors that close so you don’t have to look at it when it’s not in use.

    Consider investing in a four-poster bed or an upholstered headboard

    Regardless of your decorating style, there are four-poster beds that can work in both modern and traditional bedrooms. Whether you choose to add curtains or not, a four-poster gives you a visual sense of isolation that makes the bed seem like a sanctuary.

    If you read in bed, an upholstered headboard can make a world of difference to your comfort, too.

    Follow the rule of threes

    Keep decorative items to a minimum in your master bedroom and follow the rule of threes. Dresser and nightstand tops can easily become very cluttered. If you love pottery or glassware, collect three different pieces and arrange them on a dresser. Bonus points if the decorative items are also functional—small jars in which you can stash earrings, tie pins, or loose change, seagrass baskets that can hold scarves, or boxes of different materials and materials.

    Green it up

    Plants (and water) are what makes a room an oasis. While you’re not likely to be able to keep a date palm alive in a master bedroom, adding a big plant gives you not only visual interest and a huge shot of green, but the oxygen plants produce at night can help you sleep better. Since you’re probably going to have the curtains or blinds closed most of the time in your master bedroom, consider plants that thrive in low or diffused light, like peace lilies.

    Add a seating area

    Depending on how big your master bedroom is, you may be able to create a seating area with a couple of chairs and a small table, or build a window seat (with storage for extra blankets and pillows, out-of-season clothes, or board games) so you can watch the world go by on rainy days or read a book. If your room isn’t big enough, a blanket box or sturdy storage ottoman at the foot of the bed will work, as will an armless slipper chair in a corner.

    Invest in window coverings that work for you

    You may want to consider investing in both curtains and blinds or heavy lined drapes to keep light out. That goes for natural light and the sun’s tendency to poke through eastern exposures long before you actually want to wake up, as well as street lights whose glare might make getting to sleep harder.

    Splurge on your bed linens

    Good sheets may be the best investment you can make when decorating a master bedroom. Quality cotton sheets won’t pill and they start to feel like silk after multiple washings. Rather than choosing sheets with busy patterns, consider buying only plain colors, sheets with satin stripes, or very small patterns, and save the patterns and textures for your throw pillows, which are meant to be decorative.

    Ultimately, how you choose to decorate a master bedroom is up to you. Now that you’re an adult and “go to your room!” is no longer a punishment, your master bedroom décor should reflect that while ensuring you get the kind of rest you need.

  • Fall Décor Trends with Interior Design Pro Jennifer Adams

    With fall just around the corner, it’s the perfect excuse to update your home décor and welcome the new season in style. To effortlessly transition your home, here are some of the best décor trends to try.

    Bring Nature Indoors

    Taking inspiration from Mother Nature, bring the natural, lush beauty of the outdoors into your home with houseplants. They make great decorating accents by adding color and character, and they help create a flow between your indoor and outdoor spaces. With the variety of species, sizes and shapes, you have an array of choices that fit your needs and style. Additionally, plants purify the air and produce a calming effect. They’re the perfect natural mood-enhancer!

    Flower Power

    From patterns on wallpaper, curtains and upholstery to fresh bouquets dotting your tabletops, flowers are a gorgeous way to uplift any room. Like houseplants, flowers are a great accent, adding a splash of color and giving your space a finished look. With a myriad of options to choose from, you can go bold with a bright, colorful bouquet on your dining room table, and grace your entry table with an elegant monochrome arrangement that welcomes you home every day.

    Natural Wood

    Continuing with the theme of bringing nature indoors, you can’t go wrong with fine natural wood pieces like tables, stools, chairs, shelves and accessories. The idea is to allow the natural wood grains and tones take center stage. This trend also includes unfinished or distressed wood furniture like a rustic farmhouse kitchen table or dining room table.

    Earthy Tones

    As for a color palette, think earthy tones. Rich shades of brown, green, and blue are excellent choices, as well as soft whites that evoke sand dunes, pale wood, and natural linen. The idea is to create a soothing sanctuary to retreat and relax in. Don’t forget to add those pops of color, too—a burst of red, yellow or orange will enliven the space and your senses.

    Soft and Curvy

    From circular lampshades to round accent pillows to curvy sofas and armchairs, it’s all about soft lines. When you look around nature, curves rule—whether it’s the graceful curve of a flower’s petal, the delicate spiral of a seashell or the hardy roundness of a tree trunk. Similarly, incorporating curves into your home décor creates an elegant, fresh and inviting space with a natural flair.

    Looking to add some of these trends to your home? Click the banner below and subscribe to the blog to enter to win $1000 during the Fall for Your Home Sweepstakes.

  • Coordinating Your Garden to Your Home

    While architects have often noted that landscape architecture has lagged the modernist building movement since the late 1930s, these days, there’s consensus that your garden should, if not match, at least coordinate with your home.

    An English country garden may work just as well with a Cape Cod style home as it does with a thatched Tudor cottage. However, it really doesn’t suit a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired angular home with clean lines and lots of glass.

    Try to match your garden’s style to your home when it comes to size, color, and style for a clean, comforting appearance.

    Big custom made luxury house with nicely trimmed and landscaped front yard

    Size

    If you’ve got a tiny little porch, don’t flank your home’s entryway with massive flower pot sentinels. That will only emphasize how small your porch is. Similarly, if your front yard is the size of a pocket handkerchief, perhaps bursts of color from small petaled trailing plants like lobelia are a better idea than a hibiscus bush. Save the big, showy flowers for those you can train to grow on a trellis against the house, like a clematis.

    If, on the other hand, you’ve got a huge front yard, you may want to create interest by designing winding pathways that delineate different kinds of gardens: flower from herb, annual from perennial, rose garden from mixed flowers, Zen garden from rock garden. Also, you’ll want to scale up the size of your plants as well. If you’re working with a big space, you can invest in plants like hostas and hydrangeas, which will grow and grow and grow until you cut them back.

    Try to scale the size of your plantings to the size of your home. If tiny and perfect works for your house, it’ll work for your garden too. Make sure, if you have a small home on a small lot, that you keep both evergreen and deciduous trees trimmed. Letting them get too tall isn’t just an aesthetic faux pas, it can be dangerous, given the severity of many storm events.

    home with nicely trimmed and landscaped front yard

    Color

    Repeating your home’s paint colors in your garden’s foliage or flowers is one way to link interior and exterior. Think of the house color as the flower painting’s backdrop. You can echo your home’s color scheme, or you can choose contrasting colors to make your garden pop.

    The easiest house colors to integrate with foliage are, of course, greens and browns. But you can use your garden flowers to both amplify and contrast with your home’s exterior wall color.

    White has a commanding presence in a garden, and some landscape gardeners think it should be used with care, to create a focal point or unite a space. Trim and roof colors should be repeated throughout a garden, with white or off-white plantings as accents or unifying elements with any house that has white or cream in its paint scheme.

    modern house with matching style garden

    Style

    The warm texture of a red brick house with gingerbread trim and deep overhangs calls for one kind of garden and a specific range of plants, while the neutral concrete and glass angles of a modern, custom-built home would look silly adorned with petunias.

    If you’ve bought a heritage home, honor its stature with traditional and vintage garden designs. Make use of arbors and hanging baskets on the porch. Flank a colonial style home’s front door with large planters bursting with trailing flowers. Create a rose or hydrangea or French herb garden. Build a latticework gazebo.

    Landscape architects suggest using foliage as building blocks with modern design, and some of the best examples of this are of rectangular planters filled with wild and spikey decorative grasses. The abundance, movement, and deep true colors of the grasses provide contrast to the neutral color scheme. They also supply texture, movement, and a wildness that works well with a very precise and sometimes coldly confrontational architectural style.

    Modern architecture lends itself very well to xeriscaping, and once a xeriscape lawn has been designed and planted, it matches the spirit of modern architecture: clean lines, low maintenance, and a lack of ornamentation. Vertical gardens and green walls work very well with modern architecture too, providing a shot of color and free form design, adding a bit of warmth and interest to hard edges. Planning, planting, nurturing, and appreciating your garden should be a voyage of exploration and discovery, something you perfect over the course of years. Don’t be afraid to try new colors, plants, and accessories to see what works and what doesn’t. Most importantly, don’t forget that gardening can be a year-long passion. After all, the important work gets done in winter: planning, poring over seed catalogues, and researching patio stones, water treatments, wind chimes, and lawn furniture.

  • Discover Beautiful Dining Table Decor Ideas for Every Season

    So many of our dining table decor ideas involve bringing the outdoors in, as if to assert some kind of connection between our consumption and its creation. More often than not, seasonal dining table decor reflects this theme. We use pumpkins or smaller gourds, twine leaves and garlic braids with twigs for harvest. We cut pine boughs and dip their cones in gold paint and splash some holly and ivy around for the winter holidays. We continue the trend with greenery for spring and cut fresh flowers in summer.

    There’s no end to found-in-nature objects you can use to jumpstart dining table décor brainstorming. To move beyond the ordinary, here are a few non-traditional suggestions.

    High contrast for winter

    Since the three functional elements of a dining room are its chairs, lighting and the table itself, why not focus on two elements at once and make your centerpiece the most food- and mood-flattering light source you can find? After all, it is in the winter when we rely most on artificial lighting to boost our spirits.

    Whether your table is round, square or rectangular, the centerpiece should be your dining room’s pièce de résistance, the object that draws the eye to the table before your guests’ gaze radiates outwards.

    The classic approach is, of course, candelabra—a single, large fixture centered on the table, or a series at intervals. Instead, try taking an eclectic approach: if your dining room is modern or functional, find the most elaborate, massive, rococo bronze candelabra available and pose it on a damask brocade table runner with gold tassels. The contrast between your sleek teak or glass table will startle and intrigue.

    If your dining room is traditional, go another route and invest in something modern and Calder-esque—a candelabra made from copper plumbing fittings, clean, geometric metal shapes or simple, black staggered cubes of variegated height.

    Clean and green for spring

    When the days start to get longer, it’s time to time to strip the table and let its lovely lines and textures speak for themselves. Get rid of your layered-linen approach and switch them out for placemats and a runner. Alternatively, try a long, narrow mirror on a rectangular table to shine and reflect light from new angles.

    Spring is all about seizing the day and ending our hibernation, as well as spending time outdoors for longer and longer each day. Make it easier to migrate to the patio or deck by using a round, square or rectangular tray as your dining table centerpiece. This makes it easier to grab when you realize it really is warm enough to have coffee or dessert outdoors.

    Try also to sneak more than one shade of green into your dining room: a series of small succulents, the palest of green linen napkins or some startling chartreuse placemats. Think beets and asparagus, snowdrops and lilacs when choosing your table linens.

    Light and airy for summer

    Summer is all about fresh, and your dining room decor should reflect that. It’s a time for linen and lace, not brocade and velvet. Let your table decorations reflect that sentiment and get rid of heavy tablecloths in favor of light and airy fabrics and bold, bright colors. If they make you think of corn and watermelon and fresh peas, they’re a perfect choice. Consider also translucent fabrics paired with white linens.

    Still want to bring the outdoors in? Use an herb garden as your table’s centerpiece and keep some kitchen shears handy so you can make the rounds just as dinner is served. You can welcome guests to your table as you sprinkle a few fresh-cut chives, a basil leaf or two, or a fresh sprig of rosemary, coriander or parsley on each plate.

    Invest in a few great fruit bowls that are also conversation pieces and lead with a fresh fruit dessert centerpiece—mangos, berries and cherries for a summery feel.

    Spare and bare for fall

    Most fall dining decor themes reflect the abundance of the harvest season, with its russets, taupes, ochres and rich, dark greens. Try taking a minimalist approach to fall dining decor. The falling leaves expose a tree’s true form, and decor that reflects structure can be dramatic. Take advantage of the changing angles of light to feature a series of small wood sculptures as centerpieces. Choose ones that look good from all angles and contain depths of color: marble, granite or wood. Or try a large round metal piece that both reflects and absorbs light. Embrace the stark and don’t be afraid of high-contrast color choices. Rather than black and white, though, think tan and gray.

    Just as what we eat changes from season to season, the way we eat changes too. Try to create a dining experience you can customize to reflect the rhythm of the season.