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Tips for Home Designing and Decorating

The rail and post displayed to the left were once plain and drab white; as were all the rails, posts, ceilings, and walls in my home. Despite multi-level and slanting ceilings, high arched doorways, and curving second story rails, the dingy white color these items were painted left lots to be desired. Using a few easy designing and decorating tricks, I turned the entire stair railing into a "conversational piece" visitors can't help but compliment!

Oak is my favorite wood when it's tinted with a near golden tone. Cabinets of this color, in my opinion, give homes bright country looks. Since my kitchen cabinets are oak, I chose to match them with country oak high gloss paint and to use the paint on my staircase handrails, rail baseboards, and posts. I used the same color to paint wall and ceiling molding; to create a picture frame effect at the front entrance, and to add color to a few other places around my home. As for the staircase baluster rails, I used a high gloss winter white paint that resists fading.

Another reason I wanted to paint the handrail oak colored rather than upgrade the white it previously bore was that I wanted to assure dirty hands sliding up and down the rail wouldn't soil it in a few lousy months. I like painting, but not that much.

The flat tops capping the main rail posts were too plain and boring for me. I’m more the flamboyant type, and where I come from, staircases posts are equipped with ball-tops that sit on layers of squared sections of wood. Since these postal tops can be found at home improvement stores that sell molding,  I bought four, one for each of my posts and stained them with oak tinted sealant to protect them, to bring out their coloring, and to make them shine.

The point of all this is that prior to figuring out a plan to overhaul my boring stair rails and posts, I believed they’d have to be replaced if I were ever to be satisfied with them. After enacting my plan to spruce them up, however, I discovered I couldn’t have been happier with the end results. That was years ago. Today I still love my rails and posts and they have never required repainting.

Here, I must say that upgrading the stair rails was relatively inexpensive, fun, and rewarding. This brings me to the point of this zone.

Decorating a home can be fun, rewarding, and considerably less expensive when homeowners and renters complete the tasks themselves. Moreover, since many home owners and apartment dwellers have either been directly impacted by, or have concerns over becoming impacted by the global financial crisis, many are not currently in the market to spend money on hiring decorators. This is all quite understandable, but it doesn’t mean homes shouldn’t be castles.

Therefore, this zone will strive to offer decorating tips, ideas, and useful information to newcomers entering the home interior decorating world. It will also aspire to grant old hats seeking new ideas a place to look for them.

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Creating A Mood

Shades and use of color, texture, and pattern all play roles in creating moods for individual rooms and are capable of making statements throughout a home. Improper coordination of these medium may leave individual rooms and major household areas with mixed-up tacky looking appearances.

Creating household moods requires decorators to determine what they want a room to say and then attempt to bring that statement out using color, pattern, and texture. If a girl likes the ballet, for instance, and she wants pink ballerina dancer wallpaper on her wall, it wouldn't make sense to adorn her bed with red heart designed linen, or to hang blue and yellow polka dotted curtains from her windows. The red would clash with the pink and the hearts would provide no complement for the polka dots.

Whereas soft pastel coloring encourages relaxed jubilant moods, deeper brighter coloring bends toward active exciting moods. Likewise, working toward the blue direction of the color spectrum promotes quiet relaxation while working toward the red end of the spectrum increases a feel of activity and excitement.

Plain colored walls, linen, and flooring tend to

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be quieter and more relaxing than patterned walls, linen, and flooring. Using two or more patterns can be tricky if color and design are ignored and when one or both patterns fail to coordinate with main mood making colors.

Texture is important because having too many features such as, furniture, flooring, bedding, curtains, and other decorating items in a room all provide the same texture tends to be less intriguing than when two or more textures are used. Rooms lacking textural contrasts, for examples, rooms full of shiny things, rooms full of dull things, and rooms full of smooth things could favor relaxation where alertness is desired or favor alertness where relaxation is desired. Therefore, rooms decorated with metal chairs, glass tables, sleek shiny floor tiles, satin curtains, and brass chandeliers, instilling feels of excitement and exhilaration, may avert folks looking to relax from being able to do so. Read more about using texture successfully HERE.

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There comes a time in everyone’s life when we outgrow posters on our walls and are looking for more refined wall décor.  Or, we move into our first place away from home and want to show pride in our accomplishment by reflecting it in the décor.  However, many of us shy away from experimenting with wall art and fine art because we do not know exactly how to do it, or are intimidated because we think price tags may be too big. Fine arts paintings are... Read more

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