12 Interior Design Tips for Your Home
Updated: Feb. 24, 2022With a little know-how, you can play up your home's strengths for a space that will rival any home design magazine spread. Here are 12 interior design tips you can try today.
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Interior Design Tips: Hang Artwork the Right Way
Take interior design tips from art galleries and hang your artwork at eye level. A good rule of thumb is to measure 57 inches from the ground, which is the average human eye level.
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Interior Design Tips: Use Furnishings as a Paint Color Guide
Use your favorite piece of furniture, curtains or rug as a guide in choosing the right paint colors. And if your favorite rug has hints of red in it, play up that red, whether it's on all the walls or contained to an accent wall. If your favorite couch is turquoise, try a contrasting color such as orange or yellow. Also, consider wall stencils for painting. It's an easy (and inexpensive!) way to create interest in a room.
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Interior Design Tips: Don't Go Overboard on Themes
When it comes to themed spaces—such as the rustic cabin look—here's some interior design tips: resist the urge to go overboard since it will lack originality. Instead, stick to a theme with paint colors and minimal pieces of artwork and collectibles to complete the look.
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Interior Design Tips: Layer Lighting
Don't rely on overhead lights for all your lighting needs. Instead, find one central lighting fixture for the space, and supplement with lamps and wall sconces. Important interior design tips are to create layers of light that create interest throughout the room instead of putting the spotlight in just one area.
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Interior Design Tips: Hang a Mirror
Mirrors not only add interest to a room, but make the space look bigger and brighter. Hang mirrors on walls that are perpendicular to windows so the light will bounce off them.
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Interior Design Tips: Be Careful with Collectibles
Just because you bought a great piece of art on vacation or have your grandmother's favorite painting, that doesn't mean you must hang it if it doesn't work in the space. If your space has a minimalist black and white theme, a new piece of art with muted colors may not work. Instead, find a different part of the home to show it off in.
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Interior Design Tips: Invite Conversation
Arrange furniture in a way that will naturally invite conversation. For example, place two chairs across from a sofa with a coffee table in the middle. And more interior design tips: Avoid is to have all the furniture pushed against the walls, which can make the room feel too large and uninviting.
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Interior Design Tips: Know How to Use an Area Rug
Here's more interior design tips for using area rugs in the living room: Make sure all four legs of the sofa and chairs in a grouping can fit on it. And you can put just the two front legs of the furniture on the rug if needed. If you use a rug that's too small, the room's scale will look off.
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Interior Design Tips: Clear the Clutter
There's no home design that encourages clutter, so finding a clutter-busting plan is essential. Try mixing horizontal stacks of books among vertical rows and using decorative bins and baskets to store mail, keys, pens and magazines.
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Interior Design Tips: Add Texture
If your entire room is one color, adding texture is crucial. Try adding a velvet piece of furniture, silk curtains, wicker baskets and a wood bookshelf. And avoid using all one type of furniture—such as a leather couch, leather chairs and a leather ottoman—as too much of one thing will make your space look too uniform.
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Interior Design Tips: Add Something Green
There's a good chance there will be a houseplant or vase of flowers in just about every home design photo you see. Plants and flowers are an easy way to add color to a room. And try easy-to-grow plants, such as succulents which work well in a terrarium.
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Interior Design Tips: Pile on the Pillows
Pillows are a quick and inexpensive interior design idea to dress up older furniture and add style to a room. So try pillows in contrasting colors and textures, and go with at least four pillows, as just two can look skimpy on a sofa.
Originally Published: November 27, 2019
