Modern Home Decorating

Western decor includes cowboy, horse, and even buffalo theme items. Western decor is not limited to the cowboy theme, even though it is extremely popular. Western decor can also include lodge or cabin decor.

Cabin decor includes bear, moose, deer and elk design items, whereas, cabin decor includes trout, pine tree, fishing, oak leaf and duck items.

You don’t have to live in the wild west or even own a horse to surround yourself with western furniture and accessories. Western home decor can convey a western outdoorsy charm and appeal. With western home decor you may comprise an outdoor scene featuring forests, wildlife, horses, and cowboys.

The colors used in western home decor tend to be darker and warmer, reds, oranges, and yellows are used to convey the idea of a western sunset. Many people like the walls in the house to be somewhat of a neutral color. An off-white, light tan, or sand color works well western style decorating since these are subdued earth tone. A few colors that will match the natural landscape are sky-blue, forest green, or dusty rose color.

Another area of western home decor are the rugs. Rugs that go great with the western style are rugs with a southwestern design, sheepskin rugs, and rugs that depict wildlife such as horses or bears.

Some other things you want to consider in western home decor are horseshoes, stars, and plenty of cowboy decor. No western wall would be complete without several old brown tinted photographs.

Country home decor includes candles, sunflowers, wicker, pottery, dried flowers, handmade quilts, and red or blue gingham curtains. Country home decor brings about a warm and cozy atmosphere. Decorative country accents can bring a sense of farm life, family, and a relaxing feel to any room in the house. Using antiques, homemade craft items, and country-style accessories will add charm and character to your home.

Country decor should reflect floral prints, comfy sofas with ruffled skirts. The use of natural wood and products that reflect a natural earthy style portray country living. Natural wood floors, light wood furniture as opposed to dark, or wicker furniture gives off that country charm.

When it comes to the walls, whether using wallpaper or paint, use colors that reflect the country feel. You can even use stencils with flowers or country scenes to bring the country comfort into your home. No country home would be complete without a braided rope rug or a wooden rocking chair with a handmade quilt draped over it.

Another design style much like country home decor is shabby chic. Shabby chic gives that comfortable, worn, old, vintage look. A country shabby chic theme could work well with county accessories that have an antique worn look.

It’s whatever your personal taste is, whether you prefer the traditional ranch style western home decor or the comfortable coziness of country home decor for your home decorating. You can be assured that you will have plenty of accessories to choose from that have the charm and down-home appeal.

Heather Lassetter
http://www.articlesbase.com/interior-design-articles/the-difference-between-western-country-home-decor-1009889.html

Feng Shui helps you create a simple balanced living environment. Learning how to properly organize what surrounds you can improve your life and that is what Feng Shui is about. Decorating with Feng Shui principals involves the movement of energy at a balanced pace. This involves decorating with colors, scent and mirrors.

This practice believes that colors have a strong and individual effect on people. Different shades create different results on people’s mental behavior. Here are some aspects of color that influence your mind. For good luck choose the color red. This would be the perfect color to use for your front doorway. Yellow and purple are considered auspicious and beneficial to one’s moods. For freshness, peace and growth green is the color of choice.

Darker colors can either be relaxing or depressing while lighter shades seem to be uplifting. Decorative orange and brown symbolize health, relationships and knowledge. Colors that promote restorative sleep as well as sexual healing are colors of human skin. This is from very pale white to rich chocolate brown. After deciding on your color scheme you also should harmonize all decorative objects with warm earthy tones.

As well as being used as a decoration, mirrors in Feng Shui are used to attract, move or change the flow of energy. Mirrors can enlarge a space, deflect something, flatten a wall or make a wall disappear. The shapes of mirrors used in Feng Shui are typically round or octagon. Most importantly is that mirrors be whole and complete, not mirror tiles that cut the image into pieces. Mirrors are great placed by front doors and ideal to harmonize the energy in the home.

It is wise to avoid excessive wall lighting but choose full spectrum lighting instead. Candle wall sconces give off nutrients and one of the strongest manifestations of energy. Be sure to buy candles with no toxins. You should always place and keep your designs in a free flowing direction.

The essence of clocks in Feng Shui is the measuring of the passing of time. There are many good areas in the home to display clocks. The kitchen, living room or home office would be the best. It is almost a necessity to have a clock in ones bedroom. Have a battery operated clock verses an electric clock in order to protect your health. For a collection of clocks, display them in a large hallway along the walls to keep the energy flowing in the correct direction.

In this practice they also believe that many different paintings can enhance your surroundings with good health, knowledge, career, family, love, fame and wealth. To promote longevity and good health, hang pictures of deer, peaches, pine trees or bamboo in the east portion of your living room. To enhance the area of wisdom and knowledge, use the colors of yellow or beige. Mountains, crystals and dragon carp symbolize the ascent toward spiritual awareness. For the advancement of your career your home office should be located in the north part of your home. Hang paintings of open fields, flowers and fish.

The color white should be used for the strength of your family bond. Hang images that evoke confidence , courage and inspiration. Fanciful and imaginative images are also appropriate. For true love hang pieces of art that send out love vibrations. Some symbols that convey romance would be of mandarin ducks, love birds and dragons. Fame refers to self respect and inner light. Choose artifacts like snakes, horses or butterflies. They all represent new opportunities, diplomacy and endurance. To depict wealth look for art work that exhumes victory in the face of a competition. Fish is also a symbol of prosperity and endurance.

To truly decorate in this fashion you must compare each element represented by its color in relationship to each other. When you begin to apply the principles of Feng Shui to your home you will be amazed how a few simple changes of color, arrangement and placement can make your home calming and aesthetically pleasing.

Barbara Tobiasz
http://www.articlesbase.com/interior-design-articles/home-decor-with-the-use-of-feng-shui-948486.html

Another year has gone. The industry trade shows are over, and the home improvement shows are starting. Every new year introduces new design trends, and 2007 is no different.

This year has truly introduces some innovative ideas that combine Oriental and retro styles, effervescent colors, and patterns that are guaranteed to create a strong emotional impact on anyone who enters the room. Forget buying a $5 000 chair to impress your boss. This year’s theme is about renewing the ‘hearth and home’ feeling, without actually going back and bringing forward the designs, colors, and motifs of our childhood.

The newest trend is DIY, Do It Yourself. Hand made furniture, accessories, and walls are the ‘new’ sophistication. This year’s decorator does not need to invest in a professional designer to create the room right.

Floral art is important, but it needs to stray away from the bold prints of the English Country style and take on a more Oriental look, full of earth and natural colors, muted pastels, and Oriental shapes or lines.

DYI home decorators need to avoid the temptation of going overboard and create a tropical or Feng Shui design. The new trends can blend some of these factors, but they should never dominate. The focus is on furniture – not art, walls, or lighting.

The most important decorating skill that DYI decorators need to develop is the ability to mineralize. Home decorators who grab this year’s theme and overpower a room, or home, with the one design will have a home that is ‘out of style’ within a year.

The best way to incorporate themes into a home is to choose those elements that speak to your emotions and lifestyle needs. Then, add a few pieces or wall treatments. This lets home designers update their home each year, keeping their home up to date.

Home decorating themes build on each other, year after year. Remember the deep coppers and burnished gold tones from 2005. Take these elements and dry brush a deep plumb over them, or sponge a rich gold brown fabric paint to the trim on drapes, furniture, or lampshades, and you’ve updated your accents and artwork to match the new design.

One way the home owner can bring the 2007 trend to their home is by adding grasscloth to walls, instead of wall paper. This heavy weave type of wallpaper is not for everyone. It looks like colored grass, woven and pasted to wall paper. This means that seams will remain very visible. The lines can overpower a room, so they are best for a smaller area.

If this is too much, then adding wallpaper with a silk sheen and mottled pin stripe, will bring the 2007 theme to a room, without creating a home decorating blunder that is difficult to remove. One way to prevent this is by finding a short wall, and use a single strip to turn the wall segment into a piece of art. This can be done on a full size wall, dividing the wall into strips. However, before doing this, make sure you learn the technique well.

One last tip, never install the ‘Real McCoy’, hand painted silk panel wallpaper. Do not even use the local wall paper company. Phone around and ask for someone who has already installed silk wallpaper. Silk wallpaper is totally unforgiving. It is not sold in rolls but panels. If one panel is ruined, then the whole wall needs to be replaced, at a cost of $1 – 7 000.00.

However, if you wait until March, the market will release paper wallpaper that mimics the Oriental hand painted, or embroidered, designs.

Patricia Taylor
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-improvement-articles/how-to-incorporate-new-trends-into-your-home-103358.html

Moroccan home décor is the answer if you’re wondering how to turn a room into a romantic retreat but you aren’t into frills or pastels. Romance doesn’t have to be all about flowers, ruffles and satin or even about colors like pink or peach. Decorating your room with the rich, deep colors of Morocco will evoke the romantic mood of Moorish Spain, a world where Spanish charm and the mystery of Arabian knights crossed paths ages ago.

Moroccan home décor features rich, jewel-tone colors with lots of depth, including red, green, blue, gold, silver and amber. You’ll find these colors in everything from the intricately carved and painted furniture to the beautifully faceted glass and wrought iron lamps, as well as hand-woven rugs called kilims.

Moroccan furnishings also have lots of textural interest. The rugs have varying length of wool pile, the bed linens, wall hangings and pillows are richly embroidered with silk threads and the furniture is deeply carved. The tactile feel of everything is sensual and delight to the senses, adding to the romantic feel of any room that includes Moroccan pieces. It’s this wonderful combination of rich texture, color and detail that makes Moroccan home décor so romantic. It looks and feels luxurious and, and luxury is always romantic.

Romantic Moroccan Accents

Kilims, or Moroccan rugs, are one of the easiest ways to add a touch of romance to a room. These colorful rugs can change the entire look of a room, bringing in some much needed color and warming up a wood or tile floor. A quality kilim can also be the starting point for every other element in your room.

Kilims are handmade in the mountains of Morocco by women who have passed down the skill of weaving them for generations. The rugs are rich in color and feature a variety of geometric patterns. Imagine lounging on one of these soft, thick wool rugs in front of the fireplace or simply snuggling on it while watching television in the evening.

Nothing sets the mood in a room more than lighting, and Moroccan lighting options definitely say, “Romance.” You can choose wall sconces, table lamps or hanging lanterns for your room that are imported from Morocco; they will all provide soft, filtered mood lighting.

Moroccan lanterns and wall sconces feature elaborately detailed metal work that mimics the appearance of lace and is inset with stained glass, giving off warm, colored light in shades of amber, green and red. Using Moroccan lights such as these for indirect lighting instead of harsh, direct light provides a warmer, more intimate feeling in your room, which is perfect for romance.

Ottomans, also sometimes called poufs, are those wonderful, overstuffed stools that made come from Morocco that are made of hand-stitched leather. Unlike the plain, sturdy varieties you see in most furniture stores, Moroccan versions are made of glove-soft, buttery leather and elaborately embroidered with contrasting threads in lacy patterns. They invite lounging, and are truly works of art for any room. Moroccan home décor wouldn’t be complete without tucking an embroidered leather ottoman into a corner for a bit of romantic lingering in the evenings.

Yes, you can turn your room into a romantic getaway without any sign of flowers, ruffles or pink. Simply take a short trip to a more exotic location for romance by way of Moroccan home décor.

Andy West
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-improvement-articles/moroccan-home-deacutecor-romance-with-an-exotic-touch-111929.html

Pink and Red in Decorating

Pink and Red are HOT colors for decorating again this year, from the palest peachy-pink to brightest scarlet. This excites me because pink is one of my favorite colors! I love pink and have pink in various shades and intensities throughout my home. What I like about pink is that, depending on the shade, it can be soft and delicate or bold and bright. Pink can be soothing or energizing. It is a color that is quite versatile and mixes well with many other colors.

I’m not one to encourage being overly concerned about decorating trends, as they are fickle and could be quite costly to keep up with. I do, however, believe we should be aware of what they are from season to season and how we can interject some bits and pieces of current trends into our decor without going overboard or over budget. I believe our homes should be a reflection of our own personalities and styles. A home that evolves over time and is filled with furnishings and accessories that we love is a home that will nurture us and fit our lifestyle. When we continue that process of evolution by adding a few accessories seasonally that reflect a touch of the current trend we keep our homes fresh and interesting.

How do you interject pink and red into your home, especially if those aren’t “your colors”?

There are a few easy options:*A piece of artwork that incorporates your primary color scheme with a few touches of pink and/or red is a great way to current décor with a trend color.

*Pillows are another great way to add pops of color. If selecting a pillow in a solid pink or red is too daring for you, find pillows that have touches of those colors mixed with other colors that you already have in your room.

* A large vase or urn on a bookshelf or mantel is another great option.

*Don’t overlook the impact that flowers can have in bringing a fresh look to your rooms, real or permanent.

* Decorative plates displayed on a shelf or mantel can be functional and trendy.

Look around and keep an open mind, you’ll be surprised at what you can find that will bring a fresh look into your rooms for the new season. Pick up a few home magazines, check out a few websites, think outside the box and before you know it you’ll find a few unique ways to “freshen up” without changing everything or breaking the bank.

By the way…my newly painted pink dining room is a hit with….if can you believe it….men….I’m not kidding….almost every man, of varying ages, that has visited us since the room was painted, including a cable repair guy and the furnace service guy (both young enough to be my sons) have commented (unsolicited) that they love the dining room! Who knew? So, which is it for you? Pink? Red? or both?

Copyright 2009 Kathleen Ellis

For more romantic and elegant lifestyle ideas I’d like to invite you to sign up for my free bi-weekly newsletter at www.kathleenellis.blogspot.com. Twice a month you’ll receive easy, elegant and romantic ideas for decorating, entertaining and living the romantic life.

Kathleen Ellis
http://www.articlesbase.com/interior-design-articles/colors-of-romance-735941.html

been slowly working on re-doing my trailer’s living room. I’m going with shades of brown/tan and dark red theme. I uploaded some new photos to my photobucket album showing a new entertainment center and some new pillows. Got to thinking about colors and I wondered how much it mattered if the colors matched? (for instance in my case, the maroon pillows on my loveseat aren’t exactly the same shade as what’s on the edge of my bar and when buying new curtains they likely won’t be the same exact color either)….so my question is then, does it matter if the colors aren’t exact matches?

photobucket pictures:

http://s130.photobucket.com/albums/p278/georgew84/trailer/

Gina, thanks for the reply; it doesn’t bother me that they don’t match, I just wondered if that was a no-no when it comes to decorating.

It’s never good when everything matches! If it concerns you…go to a fabric store and find a fabric that has ALL the shades and use it for floor and couch pillows! That will tie it all together. Do this last…it’ll work!

Setting out to decorate a new home or redecorating your current abode without a plan can be like driving around an unfamiliar city without a map—you may end up somewhere, but it’s probably not where you wanted go and you may have no idea how you got there. And you may just end up somewhere pretty ugly. Formulating a plan, however, can be a difficult task. Thumbing through home and furniture magazines often just leads to little more than an increased risk of paper cuts, and watching the countless home decorating “reality” shows, while sometimes entertaining, rarely results in an epiphanous (no, its not a word) moment. Actually, according to dictionary.com, it is a word, so take your red squiggly underline and shove it, Microsoft. Anyways…oh yeah, having a plan. This plan I speak of, doesn’t have to be a 10-page manifesto or even a loose outline, in fact, it doesn’t really have to be put in writing. I say, let your personality be your guide.

As hokey and simple as that may sound, it works. Too many people decorate their homes to please or impress others. Unless you’re a close friend or relative or Martha Stewart, this is just ridiculous (I‘ve heard she can be a little harsh). Remember, you live in your home, not them. Let your home be a reflection of yourself by choosing colors, furniture, and accessories that show your personality, as deranged and anti-social as that may be.

Many people with bright, vivacious personalities like bright, vivacious colors. Go figure. But these gregarious individuals often temper this when it comes to decorating their homes. You don’t have to make your home look like Rainbow Brite (for those not in the know, she’s a brightly colored 80’s cartoon character) threw up all over the place to inject your personality. Pick a few colors and stick to them. As with most decorating schemes, bright colors work well when set against light, muted ones, like shades of white or beige. Paint your walls these muted colors and then go crazy adorning them with brightly colored artwork and accessories. Same thing goes for furniture. Back away from the teal couch and the orange upholstered chair. Look for boring colors and then add your personality in the form of pillows and throw blankets. If these tips still don’t allow you to fully express how wild and crazy you are, experiment with your bedroom decor. You’ll offend less people that way.

On the other side of the coin we have the more straight-laced, conservative types. Bright colors give these people headaches, as do the aforementioned people who like bright colors. But what these plodding individuals lack in personality they more than make up for with grace and sophistication, and this should come through in their home decor. Whether your style preference is contemporary, traditional, or somewhere in the middle, you can create a look that personifies you and at the same time is decidedly un-boring. Furniture and lighting isn’t the difference-maker here, it’s the accessories and decorations you should focus on. Artwork and other embellishments such as plants, knick-knacks on shelves, and framed photos can breathe life into rooms with less color. And speaking of color, you can still make a statement without fuchsia walls or a red leather sofa. The trick is to mix in lights and darks to create contrasts wherever you can. Use black and charcoal against whites and light grays or experiment with the many shades of brown, from light tans to deep, dark chocolate brown.

Jim Allen
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-improvement-articles/let-your-personality-color-your-home-decor-159365.html