Interior stylist Emma Blomfield provides her top five tips to make your house feel like a home without breaking the bank. Careful planning allows you to add character and cosiness to your space and keeps you on track budget wise.
1 – REFRESH YOUR WALL PAINT
If you’re happy with the bones of your home but you’ve grown tired of your colour scheme think about a fresh coat of paint for your walls, trims and doors. You’ll be surprised how much impact that has on your mood. You may fall in love with your home all over again! New paint for the front of the house also spruces things up and adds to the street appeal.
2 – CHANGE THE SMALL ACCENTS
You would be surprised how much impact the smaller elements in a room have on the room as a whole. Think about updating the scatter cushions on your sofa, installing new curtains or even purchasing new lamp shades for floor lamps and table lamps. Add some new decorative items such as trays for your coffee table, items or a new colourful vase for your shelf.
3 – REASSESS YOUR COLOURS
Has your home fallen into a drab colourless space? Then it’s time to spruce it up and make it feel cosier, and spruce up your own mood. Colour has profound effects on us, so take the change in seasons as the opportunity to reassess a colour palette for your living or bedroom space. Opt for 3-5 new colours to work with the larger neutral pieces in the space like sofas and dining tables. These don’t need to be five completely different colours, you could choose to use navy blue as your statement colour and then three varying blue tones to tie back in.
4 – ARTWORK BRINGS THE ROOM TO LIFE
Don’t forget the walls! The bedhead takes up a significant portion of the wall space in a bedroom so it’s usually a better idea to avoid hanging something above the bedhead, especially if your ceilings are low, but no doubt you’ll have another wall in the bedroom that’s crying out for some love. For the living room the wall above your sofa is prime real estate for artwork and helps to anchor the sofa to the wall visually.
5 – BRINGING THE OUTSIDE IN
Indoor plants are making a comeback in a big way. Whether that’s because our homes are getting smaller in the city areas of our country and we are sacrificing backyards, or if we are all craving a bit of nature and its benefits indoors I don’t know, but what I do know is adding some greenery to your home is definitely on trend. (Not like your mum’s maiden hair fern she had in the 80’s in a wicker cane hanging basket!). Not a green thumb? Never fear, there are plenty of fab faux options on the market.
Emma Blomfield is an entrepreneur, stylist and author who has creatively reframed the interior design industry, with her pragmatic, innovative solutions to living in style at any stage of your life. Emma published her first book ‘Home’ in 2018. To read more about Emma and The Decorating School, visit emmablomfield.com