Moving into your first home is a liberating, watershed moment in your life. After you’ve unpacked your college futon and your roommate’s attempt at fine art, it’s time to devise a strategy for transforming your empty shell of a house into an inviting home. Here are some ideas for making it work:
Look for the most recent decorating trends
Home decor trends change all the time. Colors and decorating styles change from year to year. It is an opportunity to renew our home design and express our changing societal ideals. And how have the trends evolved this year? We anticipate a slew of innovative interior design trends 2022 that will spruce up our living spaces. In 2021, we saw a lot of neutral colours. However, expect a lot of vibrant colours this year. There will be a lot of bright and vibrant colours making headlines, whether in accent designs or the overall colour palette. However, this does not rule out the use of neutral colours. People will definitely use neutral and earthy colours, but there will be a lot of vibrant oranges, greens, and yellows as well.
Clear out the old place
Get ahead of the game by starting this process even before you make an offer on a new place. This crucial first step will not only make packing up your current residence easier, but it will also put you miles ahead during move-in. Be brave and get rid of anywhere from 25% to 50% of your old stuff: wobbly furniture in the attic, broken appliances in the garage, and questionable accessories you received as gifts. This is an excellent opportunity to start over. Reduce your accumulated possessions to a bare minimum. Have a garage sale, an eBay auction, or donate it to charity. You’ll be surprised at how much you won’t miss.
Begin with the bedroom
After all, it’s where you’ll spend nearly a third of your time when you’re at home. If you’re on a tight budget, start with new bedding, but don’t skimp on the thread count! Buy the best you can afford in this category — it makes a huge difference. If you have a little extra cash, paint the bedroom walls to match your new bedding. More money in your pocket? Window treatments should be coordinated. Early risers should choose a lighter colour palette and more translucent treatments. Night owls who prefer to sleep in will likely be more satisfied with darker tones and heavier coverings that block out the light. Buy that bed you’ve always wanted if you’re really ready to splurge. And choose wisely. It should reflect your personality, fit comfortably in your room, and last for years.
Don’t purchase everything at once
Before making any major purchases, live in your new home for at least two months. How you intend to use the house and how you actually live in it are frequently two different things. Perhaps the $5,000 you planned to spend on bathroom renovations isn’t as important as beefing up the kitchen and dining area for maximum entertaining purposes. And you might discover that the loveseat in the living room would work much better in your master bedroom, and the chaise in the master bedroom would work better in the den.
Resist the urge to compete
Retailers love to spread the myth that everything has to match. They would prefer that you buy everything in sets, but don’t! A few pieces with similar styling are fine, but any more and your home will have the lifeless, generic appearance of a furniture showroom. Make sure your personal style shines through, which is unlikely to be bland, beige, or boring. The proportion, scale, and balance of your furniture and accessories within each room should be your top priority. Put five pieces of oversized lounge furniture in a 15×5 den with an 8-foot ceiling. It will resemble a clown car. In contrast, cramming a 20×30 room with a soaring 12-foot ceiling with only a low buffet and a delicate, round dining table for four will look equally awkward and unsatisfying.
Color should be used to tie everything together
Don’t be concerned if you moved into your first home with furniture from the 1960s to the present. Unifying through colour is the simplest and most cost-effective way to solve this seemingly insurmountable problem. Assume you have a sofa that shares only one thing with the rest of the furniture in your living room: a tiny bit of the fabric’s colour is the same as the less dominant colour in the rest of the room’s upholstery. Solution? Play up the similarity by making it the unifying wall colour in your living room. If that sounds like too much work, look for curtains, rugs, or accessories in this common colour and see how the pieces begin to complement each other.
Solve practical problems on a budget
If your kitchen cabinets are drab, for example, paint them and replace the hardware. Installing overly decorative (and expensive) cabinet hardware on cheaply fabricated woodwork will look out of place, and the money could be better spent elsewhere. Simply changing the lighting in the bathroom can instantly improve the room’s appearance. If you discover traditional incandescent R-type lamps in your new home, swap them out for the less “yellow” PAR-type bulbs. Installing dimmer switches to keep light levels low for a midnight bathroom break or to create a romantic mood for bubble baths for two is another low-cost solution with a big payoff.
