Decorating wonders

There are several ways to decorate your holiday home which run from no cost at all to moderate expense. To update a room at no expense at all, little is needed but imagination and a free weekend.

The first place you can start decorating from is the porch. You can decorate it with vintage tables and cushions, mosaic items like vase and cans, bird tea cups, small fountains, racks for placing decorative items, colorful carpets, and flowers. You can add padded cubes having bright colored designed or plain fabric to match the color of the room.

A room in which the heavy items are all on one side of the room, almost feels as though the floor tilts. Once you have a feel for balance you can start to create a harmonious holiday home.

It can be designed in a number of ways including Straight, Curved, Cathedral and Conservatory. You can decorate the Straight sunrooms properly to convert it into a patio room with wooden beams and aluminum exterior and interior finish.

One thing that you should remember is that a bedroom is one place that you should be able to fully relax. Without the right style and balance, it may look cluttered and it can affect the way that you sleep. Also, the furniture needs to be arranged the right way as well to create that great look. If the bedroom looks like any of the other rooms in the house or cluttered, it will keep your mind distracted from relaxing and sleeping.

Move the furniture around and try different arrangements until you have one that works. Once the practical set-up is done, look at the room from different angles. If the room is out of balance use color and accessories, plants and pictures, groups of like objects, light and volume to create an illusion of balance.

Take a good look at your window treatments. Are they a bit outdated? Frequently they can be updated by simplifying them. If you have several layers, strip them down to one-sheers or a scarf or a valence. Make sure these are laundered or cleaned. When you hang them back up, drape them differently-either pull them back if they covered the window before or the opposite.

Try grouping the accessories on your mantels and tabletops. Balance the entertainment center on one side of the fireplace with a tall plant or group of plants on the other. Avoid having the tops of everything at the same height. You might as well draw a line around your room. Repeat the color of the chair in pillows, throws, lampshades or the matting around a group of pictures. You really will be amazed at the difference it makes.

Take a good look at your room and your major pieces of furniture. Can they be rearranged to give a fresh impression? If not, brush, clean and fluff everything.

Next, look at your pictures, lamps and accessories. Group your pictures. Prop one or two on the mantel instead of hanging them on the walls. Eliminate 1/3 of the things you have sitting around and arrange the rest in groups. Put higher watt bulbs in your lamps. You will be surprised how ‘new’ your room looks.

At very little expense, you can do the following. Buy any or all of the following: new lampshades, new window valences, tiebacks, throws and throw pillows, small area rugs to bring in new colors and patterns, a mirror to replace a picture, candles in inexpensive glass or metal candlesticks, dried flowers to tuck onto the tops of picture frames, round mirrors on the tabletops with accessories arranged on them and any natural thing. Add plants. The new halogen lights, which can be placed on the floor to highlight a plant or piece of furniture, are great and have safety features in case they are knocked over.

If you want to go to a little more expense, paint the walls in a new updated color. If your walls are light, go darker. If they are a darker shade go lighter. Be sure the color is not too bright to work with your furniture. Furniture which is slightly faded looks good with soft colors. With bright or primary colors, it just can look old.

As always, use your eyes before you make any decisions. It is amazing the ideas you can come up with just by putting a chair in a corner and taking a fresh look at the room.

If you have the clear colors you can accent with white, red, turquoise, bright yellow, lime green or marine blue. You can use whichever colors complement your color scheme. Stay away from the softer summer shades, they will fade with the stronger light and disappear in your brightly colored room. If your rooms are the more subdued and softer shades, go with light coral, buttery yellow, aqua, lavender and celadon.

There is a good selection of colors, available in sheer draperies, curtains, pillows, accessories and accent pieces and will blend with your existing color scheme.

Architectural details such as columns, pieces of pediment or cornice can be used to hide an ugly heat duct or an awkwardly placed outlet. If they are set slightly out from a wall and grouped they won't block the airflow.

Fabric is affordable and useful. You don't need to be a seamstress. Iron on fusion tape is available for non-sewers. Fabric can be stapled on screens. It can be draped over a table to add color and incidentally create a hiding place underneath where storage is needed.

Finally, lucite or plexiglass can be used to make airy shelving for books, plants and collectibles. It can be rested on bricks, pavers, columns or even fabric covered cartons. Cut to size on a cocktail or end table, it can be used to cover a picture montage or an interesting fabric.

Does your room have a focal point? This can be anything which you would normally use to form a furniture grouping. It can be a fireplace, a window with a great view or the only place the TV can be hooked up. If you don’t have a focal point, it is easy to create one; anything that draws the eye such as a picture, wall hanging, architectural detail. It can also be a grouping; a collection of plants or pictures on the wall. If your room has more than one focal point, a TV and a fireplace, for example, it will be necessary to ‘weight’ one to make it the primary focal point. Focal points do not have to be on the wall. It is quite all right in a living room area to group your furniture around a central cocktail table.

In choosing a color scheme you will want to consider several things. Is the room used in the daytime or night? Are your rooms large or small? In new buildings particularly, are the floors covered in beige carpeting and are the walls all white? Do you have the option of painting them?

A 3-color scheme is usually the easiest to work with if you are lacking experience. Monochromatic rooms, although very beautiful when done correctly, require a very good eye for color. If you doubt this, go to a paint store and see how many colors of beige are available. For those who don’t have a good sense of which colors work well together, choose a color you really love, and then track down a color wheel. This will help you choose your other 2 colors.

Contrasting colors give a bolder look, complementary colors a calmer one. Intense colors are more exciting, soft colors more relaxing. You can also choose your colors from a favorite painting, a piece of tapestry, pottery or china. If you have upholstered pieces which you either can’t or don’t want to replace, they have to be considered part of your color scheme.

Once you have chosen your palette, use it for the entire apartment or house. This doesn’t mean every room must be the same. If you keep your colors throughout you give yourself the flexibility of moving chairs and cushions from one room to the next. Assign a dominant color to each room. For instance, if your scheme is pale blue, pale green and lavender, choose one of those colors for the dominant color in each room and accessorize with the other two. You will still have the freedom to move things about, but the space will be more interesting to live in.

Unifying your holiday home by color is important, but you can further a sense of flow by using a theme or style. A style can be a type of furniture; Country Pine, or Victorian, Colonial, Modern or Retro. It can also be a certain look; country, contemporary or Japanese, for example. If you decided on an eclectic mix of furniture styles, your colors will be your unifier.