Thursday, March 29, 2007

4 Color Ideas For Painting A Home

Paint colors can really do wonders to one's house. The truth is, it can revitalize a home's surface, from the ceilings to the walls and the exterior. However, it is also a fact that choosing among the thousands of available colors for house painting can make one's mind go numb.

The home painting ideas that will be tackled here is different compared to the others. Here, you would know the four very vital ideas in home painting. These are the hue, intensity, temperature and value.

Why are they vital? It's very simple, these four home painting ideas would serve as the key for one to create a wonderful combinations for his home painting.

The four key ideas for home painting:

1. Hue

This is actually a synonym of the term color. Therefore, all colors are hues. Normally, hue refers to prime colors' combinations along with diverse values as well as intensities.

2. Intensity

This is term used when judging the colors' brightness. Intensity can only be either bright if not dull. When you perceive the color as light, medium or dark, it is the value that you are evaluating.

3. Temperature

Colors usually come with warmness and coolness. For instance, red and yellow are considered as warm. Meanwhile, blue and lime are known to be cool. The color beige though is referred to as a neutral color, the mixture of warm and cool.

Finding the right color temperature will eventually assist in setting the mood in the rooms of one's house. And this will have a vital part in affecting his views of the space.

4. Value

This pertains to the color's lightness and darkness. The term value is actually synonymous to tint, tone and shade. Therefore, the added amount of colors white, gray, and black to a pure color is being determined by value. This will later be judged whether it is light colored, medium, or dark.

How to Get a Contemporary Look in Your Home

A home with a contemporary look features bright, airy and sophisticated living spaces that revel in all things current and chic, yet still offers quiet escape and comfort.

Contemporary design derives much of its boldness from pairing neutral colors, black and white with a restrained, artistic use of brighter colors. With a muted background of furniture, drapes, rugs and walls, carefully chosen colors will pop with dramatic results. For instance, consider leaving walls neutral except for one painted in your favorite vibrant hue. Because the Contemporary style stresses a minimalist approach, you can also use color to define areas and add pizzazz, such as painting a door or ceiling.

Keep floors basic with pale wood, vinyl, laminate or tile. Friends of the environment can use reclaimed wood for this type of flooring. Rugs should be a solid color or adorned with geometric patterns. If you want a more natural approach, hardy sisal and jute rugs are a popular trend.

There are two ways to approach lighting within the contemporary room. One way is to make the light, rather than the fixture, the focus. Accomplish this by placing spotlights out of sight, leaving their bright shafts of light to slant across walls for theatric effect. This is particularly useful for highlighting a favorite painting or photograph. If you want to focus attention of plants or sculptures, consider placing lights underneath your target, for a fresh uplight effect that casts shadow and adds interesting depth to the room. Another way to explore your lighting possibilities is to let the fixtures function as art and accessories. Along with chandeliers and pendants, track and recessed lighting contributes an artsy, streamlined feel to ceilings and is a popular trend in contemporary design.

For the most part, use neutral-toned furniture to unify your look. Lines should be smooth and geometric and free of carvings and decorative frills. Cotton, jute, wool and linen are all ideal fabrics for upholstery and comfortable to recline against. As ecological awareness reaches new levels, the contemporary furniture market is crafting more and more pieces from recycled items or sustainable lumber, like the items found on the GREENCulture furniture site. Woods like beech, birch and pine are used, with plywood and medium density fiberboards gaining recognition as easy-to-clean, low maintenance alternatives to solid woods. Other contemporary materials commonly found in this furniture style include steel, glass, plastics and stone.

With contemporary interiors, resist the urge to fill open space with more accessories. The open space is an accessory that is crucial to creating an airy, structural environment in keeping with contemporary design’s minimalist look. Accents should be spare and include textured drapes and textiles that lack busy or fluid patterns. For this reason, sticking with two-tones is a safe bet. Apply this to any flower arrangements you plan to use, including placing a few bold and big blooms in glass vases and avoiding intricate bundles of buds. If you want to supply plush comfort to your deep seated chairs and sofas, throw on a few pillows in solid colors that retain a geometric shape.

Home Theater Decorating Tips For Comfort And Function

A home theater needs to be functional before it's anything else. Those who have put in the expense to build a "theater" in their home need to be sure the sound and visual and placement of seating is just right before they'll delve into decorating, but when that time comes, there are some tips to add to the room aesthetically without taking away any of the functionality.

A room of this sort is bound to have floor speakers, and speakers that surround your peripherals and centrally located speakers for both the front and back of the sitting area. In some of the newer homes or the more expensive remodels, some, if not all, of these speakers may be placed in the walls of the home. Yet usually the floor speakers will remain out and near the television. The tops of which may be a prime opportunity for knickknacks when decorating. There may be shelving on the walls in this room for speakers or for remote controls. Those shelves are also a great place for decorative touches.

A typical theater room is designed something like this: The television is centrally located either mounted on the wall or standing just in front of it. There are floor speakers on either side of the television and another smaller speaker centrally located above the TV. There will be more speakers either mounted or on stands placed on either side of the seating area and one more speaker centrally located behind the seating area. Finally, there will be a special speaker called a subwoofer placed somewhere to the side of the seating area. The seating area is located around what some refer to as the "sweet spot" because during the action scenes in intense movies when the music swells, the vibrations of that sound are felt in the seating area. All of this is necessary for the functionality of the theater room. What's left is what you have to decorate.

In order to keep the functionality of a theater room, you must realize that the room needs to be dark. This is no room for growing plants or bright colors painted on the wall. Rich earthy tones will work here. Along with this, keep knickknacks to a minimum. This room is for viewing the television, not your china collection. Do not place fragile things in this room. There will be much vibration in this room and that may cause a fragile item to fall from its perch and break. Keep your décor simple here. Use rugs to add color to the room and hang pictures to add depth to the walls. Do not clutter up this room with much more than this.

Before anything else, a home theater needs to be functional. If you'll also entertain in this room, keep your décor to a minimum and use unbreakable items. Add color through the means discussed above and be okay with a sparsely decorated room. It will provide much enjoyment and sometimes simple really is best.

Decorating A Traditional Living Room

With a home's living room traditionally being the gathering place for the family, ensuring that it has a comfortable and relaxing atmosphere is fairly important. Not only will good decor go a long way to making any visitors feel comfortable, it also enables everyday family members to quite happily spend a lot of time in it. If you feel that your own living room is lacking a little spark, the good news is that it's reasonably inexpensive to decorate a traditional living room and transform it from something bland into something far more stylish.

The first thing to do is give it a fresh coat of paint. Many people overlook the importance of changing your surroundings from time to time. Not only does it prevent you from stagnating in the same atmosphere, it also gives you a sense of achievement and the resulting sense of satisfaction within yourself. Bright colors are a good choice here, since the living room is normally the one with the most windows and sunlight. A yellow or similar happy color is a good starting point.

Once you have chosen the color you're happy with and repainted the walls, the next thing to do is look at your existing furniture. This doesn't mean you need to necessarily buy a new three piece suite, or spend excessive amounts of money on new coffee tables or similar. The great thing about decorating a living room is that you can keep within traditional styling and merely update a little. So, if you have a wooden coffee table, for instance, sand it down and give it a different color varnish or wood stain. The effect will be immediate, and it's very inexpensive.

Decorating a traditional living room calls for time tested and trusted designs in furniture so even your years old sofa can be made-over. If it's made of material, you can now buy bespoke fabrics and have them measured to fit, and in the space of a few hours, you have a completely new sofa that you yourself have had a part in designing. Once again, going for more natural, cream-colored materials can offer a living room a whole new perspective.

Consider changing your light fittings too. It's more than likely that your light switches are the same as the ones when you first moved into the property. Therefore, drop in to your local DIY or hardware store and treat yourself to a more stylish brass or dimmer-effect switch system. Once installed, they will bring out your new paintwork even more.

If you have the room and enjoy reading, think about putting a bookshelf into place as well. Not only does this help fill some space if you're out of ideas, it also gives off the impression of a family who enjoy spending quiet, yet quality, time together, perhaps discussing the latest book they are reading. At the end of the day, the choices are limitless – the only thing you need to remember when decorating your traditional living room is to express your own personality, as this is where you'll be spending many an hour.

Tips For Stress Free Girl's Bedroom Design

Whenever you make the decision to redecorate a room, it can take days and weeks before you actually decide on the color and a design you're happy with. Decorating a girl's bedroom, however, opens up even more problems, especially if the girl in question is a teenager. Thankfully, there are a lot of ways that you can make the often-thankless task of girls bedroom design easier.

If you're the parent of a young girl, then the first thing you should do is discuss her ideas. Although it's your house, it is her bedroom after all, and she still needs to feel comfortable in what is essentially her haven. So if she likes a lot of cuddly toys, incorporate soft cushions into the final bedroom design. Work the color scheme around her favorite posters, whether it's of bands or celebrities, so that you have an all-encompassing mix of your choice and hers.

It's also a great idea to work with what she already has in her bedroom. Remember, this room is the equivalent of a comfort room for the girl, so any new bedroom design should try having a happy mix of the old and the new. Simply spruce up existing furniture with little touches here and there. If she has a favorite dresser or desk, for instance, use of stencils to transfer various shapes onto the frame can make a huge difference in appearance. A little board for writing notes or simply doodling on can be a good personalized addition.

ONe thing you need to be careful about with girls bedroom design is when the girl is slightly older. Like anyone, a girl will change her mind as to what she likes one moment to the next, especially if she's approaching her teenage years. That fairy-themed design that you initially helped her make may not seem as cute and adorable now that she's turning into a young woman, so make sure that any design you settle on for a girl's bedroom is reasonably future-proof.

A good approach is to make the room fairly neutral, and then changes can be made along the way. Making any design temporary or easily changeable is relatively easy, yet can still add a touch of style to the overall feel. Rugs are a good way of filling a room yet are also easy to remove should they need to be. Drapes and furniture throws are another excellent method of changing the look of a girl's bedroom, but their very design also means they can be changed quickly and effortlessly for a different look altogether.

At the end of the day, as with any room, redecorating a girl's bedroom can be a strenuous and time-consuming project. However, with just a little forward planning and discussion of ideas, girls bedroom design can be a pleasant task for both parent and daughter.

Home Interior Decorating For Beginners

When you first get started on home interior decorating, it is a good idea to have at least some notion of the kind of color scheme you might like. That is not to say that you can’t change your mind while you are working out a plan. It is much better to change at this stage than when you already have the paint on the walls.

Good, well thought out interior decorating can add balance to a room and bring out its best features. Interior decorating should form the background for the way you choose to live in your home. If you’ve got a lot of books then it stands to reason that you will want plenty of good shelving. Plain wood shelves look best for this but if you already have some and they are beginning to look past their prime then play safe and paint them white. Think about the lighting in a room because this can enhance or detract from its overall design.

If you are not sure what color to use then play it safe and go for a neutral cream or magnolia – you can brighten it up with your soft furnishings and well placed lamps and ornaments. Many homes are a hodge-podge of furniture and decorating styles. If you replace furniture try to bear in mind the particular effects or style that you are trying to achieve. A well-chosen and well-placed piece can totally alter the look of a room.

Home interior decorating covers many aspects of the tasks. A lot depends on how much time you have to spare and what your budget is – whether you just want to spruce up a room or give it a whole new look. It is surprising for instance what new bath mats and towels do for a bathroom. Try sprucing up your room with some new cushions and perhaps a mirror or two. Move the furniture around and add feature wall paper on one wall – make sure that it tones in with the existing color scheme and you’ll be surprised how much style this can give to a room.

Perhaps the kitchen is your bete noir? If it is you can do a lot with some new blinds and lampshades. Try some potted plants on the window ledge this can brighten most kitchens. If the paint-work really is past its prime then you need to decide whether you need a whole new paint job or whether you can get away with touching up the doors and base boards. If your bedroom needs a face-lift then try some new bed covers and toning curtains. Add a few cushions to your bed and you immediately have a more luxurious look.

 

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