If you’ve ever strolled through a luxurious display home and envied the casual elegance of the interior design, you may be surprised to know that look is achievable in any room, in any home. Better still, unlike home staging which can cost around $4,000 for a temporary four-week hire, with a little ingenuity, styling your own home can be done for a fraction of the cost – and you get to keep the furnishings!
To achieve a designer look, there are a few areas which are key to success. Get the essentials right and the rest takes care of itself. Every room, from Buckingham Palace to a most modest bungalow, is basically just four walls with light entering at various angles. How we work with those walls and that light is where the magic lies…
Lighting logic
Gloom is the home-renovators natural enemy. Even if you are updating an elegant library with oak wood panelling, exploiting both natural and artificial light is crucial to creating an ambient, sophisticated atmosphere.
Controlling the entry of light through stylish window treatments has never been easier or more affordable. Online suppliers of blind and curtains allow you access to a wide range of chic, quality curtains, all at your fingertips and the overhead savings are passed on to you!
Tips for infusing modern elegance into a home through natural and artificial light are:
- Avoid busy, heavy curtaining with dated swags.
- Select curtains and blinds in complementary colours which are slightly darker than your walls.
- To soften dark flooring, select lighter window treatments to lift and brighten.
- Ensure curtains are long enough and plentiful for the size of the window. Even expensive curtains can look cheap if they are too small or too short for a window.
- Opt for downlights in the main living areas, as traditional light fixtures can look dated.
- Modern floor lamps imbue a soft and stylish glow to a room and can be placed to highlight positive aspects of a room or draw the eye away from negative spaces.
Creating a perfect base
If your home still has dated, floral carpets from the last century, no amount of paint or polish is going to detract from the poor first impression this makes. Before calling in the carpet companies, it may be worth taking a peek under the carpet in the main living areas, in the hope that hidden treasure, in the form of floorboards, lay beneath. Polished floorboards are one of the single most sought after features by homebuyers.
If you aren’t lucky enough to find floorboards under the carpet, engineered wood can make a nice alternative; more affordable than hardwood and far more luxurious than laminate panels (floating floor).
If all else fails, consider an area rug in a neutral colour.
Colour corrections
Achieving a modern, colourful interior is one of the most tricky things facing DIY decorators. Paint which looks gorgeous in shop lighting has a nasty habit of changing completely once it is in your home.
Your walls will form the basis of your home’s colour palette, from which everything else branches. The hottest interior design trends are:
- Soft grey paired with crisp white trim. It may seem counterintuitive but unlike some creams and yellows, grey can actually brighten a room rather than sap light from it.
- Feature walls. Experiment with candy stripes to create a slick, contemporary feel throughout the home or autumn tones to evoke a relaxed, rustic feel. Bedrooms look superb with a muted, feature wall paired with stylish lamps and artwork.
Furnishings
As a visit to any display home will prove, the modern home interior is a mixture of muted, complementary colours combined with splashes of colour in the form of feature walls, sophisticated artwork or strategically placed soft furnishings.
Contemporary furniture should have simple, straight lines. Choose sofas with legs, for smaller rooms as this creates depth and draws the eye outwards to increase feelings of space. Remember to avoid clutter. Each piece of furniture and soft furnishings should have a positive impact on the overall effect of the room.
There is a myriad of online resources to help get your creative juices flowing. Start with a plan of how you would like your home to look and then visit sites such as eBay, Gumtree and online marketplaces to draw together a look which will be uniquely your own and delightfully contemporary.