Furniture & Your Room

(1)How To  make a room look bigger is to shove everything against a wall.  Not true.  All that does is make an open space in the middle.  The small size of this open space forces the eye to recognize how small the room really is.

Instead you can fool the eye.  Place your furniture in little groups within the room.  Place each sofa or chair a few feet out-away from the wall.  This creates the perception of space.  All of these ideas fit together seamlessly.  So you will hear bits and pieces mentioned in connection with other concepts.

For example: If you group your circle to create conversation "nooks", with walk-ways in between, your home will seem larger and more spacious.  

(2)You have never been told this.  But each room or area in a room has a purpose.  If one area is to be a dining nook, another a reading nook and still another an area to sleep or exercise, you have choices.

Placing your furniture to take advantage of the best view or focal point will make your room roomier.  Each of these nooks has a purpose and a viewpoint. Decide which viewpoint is the dominant one in each room.  Then adjust everything in the room to reflect this focal point.

3) How to mix of furniture styles.  You can mix your furniture by function.  Choose what style goes with each "nook" function.  Then group them together.  For example: If you are creating a coffee, tea and breakfast nook, you don't use the stuffed chairs or the sofa in that area.

However, you can mix all kinds of furniture together in a "family room" setting. 

4) How to make one room look like two rooms is easier than it sounds. You can create "walls" or barriers within a room.  Effectively turns one space into two.

5) How to create nooks and areas within a space: One way is to use hanging plants to form a barrier or privacy wall.  Covering cardboard boxes with attractive paper and stacked them to form a wall around a "nook" area is another.  Students in College often have a lot of milk crates when stacked can turn a cave-like room into a homey space with multiple "nooks."

Dividing Areas In Your Room

1) How to use interesting objects to create new spaces:  Hanging beads cost very little but offer a screening effect, you might try plants and greenery or build bookcases or light shelves.  Knickknacks and pictures on the shelves block the line of sight too.

2) How to create a wall to hang a variety of pictures, mirrors and other hanging objects on.
Depending on what you have in your collections they can be used to create an eye-catching, color filled wall.  Rather than let the eye see flat paint. Use items of clothing like hats and scarves or mirrors and mobiles. Whatever the theme of the color scheme of the wall you want to make might be.

Lighting & Your Room

Using  inexpensive "can" shaped lights placed on the floor they will provide your nook areas with "indirect" lighting.  Placed behind a sofa or chair these floor lights bounce light off an existing or created wall.  Thus lighting each "nook" without blinding or over-powering you. 

This will truly set your room off from all others.  Nobody thinks to make their room larger with light.  Or to warm an area with light.  Or to create emotion and comfort with colored light.

1) How to use natural colors you will not tire of:  There are certain natural colors that allow you variety. If you choose a white or eggshell or light green or light blue paint for your walls, several things happen.

    A.  Very light colors make your room look bigger and brighter.
    B.  Natural colors allow you to change the accessories in your room, replace the carpet or have your stuffed furniture replaced without painting again.

2) How to Change A Room Into "Home" using soft, warm, easy on the eye natural colors: 
Just as women use colored paper, a scarf, a plant, a desk lamp with a green shade to make their work space theirs...you can do the same.  But you have more to work with.  A light green or Kacki paint and earth tones for the carpet and accessories calm the spirit and relax the eye. Green plants help too.  The brown of wood furniture goes with anything you want to mix in.

3) How to arrange candles, flowers, objects to create an interesting and beautiful vision:
Lights, bulbs, candles and flame draw the eye.  By using tiny Christmas lights it pulls the eye in one area of your home. You may want to combine your wall mirror and some candles, a poster or your doll collection and some collectibles on a wall and corner.  A window display with 5 dolls looking in the same direction can be compelling.  A few homes made mobiles from the ceiling. 

Your Room Accessories 

1) How to purchase room accessories to create a warm, creative environment:  In your breakfast or coffee nook:  Put up some hooks to hang a few pots and pans.  In between print out your favorite recipes on colored paper.  Cut large photos of your favorite meals or foods and arrange them between the handing pans and recipes. Voila.  You have a nook that reflects you and your food and your taste in color too.

2) How to quickly change the look entirely by simply changing the room accessories:
If the wall paint and carpeting is a neutral color all you have to do is change the area carpets that might sit on top of your neutral wall to wall carpeting (or), your area carpets might be sitting directly on a hard wood floor.  By changing your area carpets, curtains, window shades and decorative pillows you can create a completely different accessorizing color and change the entire look of a room.