Professional home stagers understand how to highlight your home’s assets, conceal its flaws, and make it appealing to nearly everyone. We spoke with several professionals across the country to get their advice on how to update the rooms in your home without breaking the bank.
10 DIY Home Decorating Tips
1. Set The Tone at The Front Door
If you want to make a good first impression, paint the front door a bright, glossy colour. “Red is a lucky color in many cultures,” says Lara Allen-Brett, a stager based in New Jersey. A red door meant “welcome” to weary travelers in early America, and it represents a safe haven in churches.
According to San Francisco-based stager Christopher Breining, two other colors that are gaining popularity are orange and yellow. Both are associated with happiness and warmth. An outdated screen door should be removed. Remove it or replace it with a storm door with full-length glass that can be replaced with a screened panel.
2. Paint Wall Colors Light and Neutral
Stick to beige or grey colors, especially on the first floor, where flow is essential. “You want to avoid abrupt transitions,” says Breining. Neutral walls provide the most decorating versatility, allowing you to easily change out your accessories.
Furthermore, if you have two small rooms next to each other, painting them the same neutral color makes them feel larger. Allen-Brett recommends looking at a paint strip and moving up or down a shade or two for a subtle variation from room to room.
3. Living Area: Make Sure Your Sofa Talks to Your Chairs
Consider a nice hotel lobby, where the furniture is arranged in groups that encourage conversation. Aim for a similar sense of balance and intimacy when placing furniture in your living room.
“A U-shaped conversation area with a sofa and two chairs facing each other at each end of the coffee table, or an H-shaped conversation area with a sofa directly across from two chairs and a coffee table in the middle, is ideal,” says Michelle Lynne, a Dallas-based stager.
One common error to avoid is pushing all of the furniture up against the walls. “People do that because they believe it will make their room appear larger, but in reality, moving the furniture away from the walls makes the room feel larger,” she explains.
4. Let The Sun Shine In Your Kitchen
“A naked bank of windows is preferable to an ugly one when it comes to heavy, outdated drapes,” Lynne says. Window treatments should ideally be both functional and elegant: Consider sheers with full-length panels.
If your room gets a lot of sunlight, choose light, non-fading colors. Cotton, linen, and silk blends are the most popular lightweight fabrics for panels because they hang well. For more tips and guides on home improvement tips, visit Jscottsmith.com.
5. Hang at Least One Mirror in Every Room
“Mirrors can make a room feel brighter by reflecting light around the room,” says Breining. However, putting one in the wrong place can be nearly as bad as not having one at all.
Place mirrors perpendicular to windows rather than directly across from them. Hanging a mirror directly opposite a window can actually reflect the light back out.
6. Scale Artwork to Your Wall
“Few things look more ridiculous than hanging dinky little art too high on the wall,” says Breining. The center of a picture should be at eye level. If one person is short and the other is tall, their heights should be averaged.
Consider scale as well; if you have a large wall, go big with one oversize piece or group smaller pieces gallery-style. For the latter, keep the pictures close together; 2 to 4 inches between items is usually sufficient.
7. Layer Your Lighting
Every room should have three types of lighting: ambient, which provides overall illumination and is often provided by ceiling fixtures; task, which is often found over a kitchen island or a reading nook; and accent, which is more decorative and is often used to highlight the artwork.
A living room should have at least 3 watts (42 lumens) per square foot of lighting. Breining swears by one visual trick: using uplights. “Placing a canister uplight or a torchiere in a corner will cast a glow on the ceiling, making a room appear larger,” he explains.
8. Anchor Rugs Under Furniture Feet
For an area rug, follow these basic guidelines: “All four legs of the sofa and chairs in a furniture grouping should fit on it in a living room; the rug should define the seating area,” says Breining. “At the very least, it should support the front two legs of the sofa and chairs,” he adds.
Even modestly sized living rooms usually necessitate an 8-by-10-foot or 9-by-12-foot rug to adequately accommodate a seating area. When the rug size is too small, everything looks out of proportion.
9. Call in a Pro to Declutter
The longer you live in a house, the less you notice the mess. Sometimes a new set of eyes is required. You can hire an organizer for a few hours (prices range from $35 to $150 per hour, depending on where you live) to tackle bookshelves and closets, which stagers say are frequently crammed with twice as much stuff as they should.
Breining recommends reducing what’s on your shelves by half. Then, alternate horizontal stacks of books with vertical rows of decorative objects such as bowls or vases.
10. Use Visual Tricks to Raise The Ceiling
If your ceilings are low, paint them white to make the room feel more spacious. Allen-Brett recommends hanging curtains higher than the windows to fool your eyes into thinking the room is taller. Most standard curtain panels are 84 or 96 inches long, allowing you to extend the length about 3 inches above the window casing before it becomes too short.
You’ll need to order custom drapes if you want to hang them higher. Do you like patterned panels? Try vertical stripes to visually lengthen your walls. A large mirror leaning against a wall can also make a room appear taller.
