Decorate Your Home With A Touch Of Asian Style

There is beauty, elegance and boldness in the Asian style of decorating. For anyone looking to make a great impression with a home that exudes style and demands attention, this is the perfect style. This is a style that is not for those seeking a relaxed atmosphere, but for those that want to delve into the bold and dramatic! The ideas presented in this article will aid you in transforming your home into one that will be the desire of anyone who enters.

This may sound surprising, but Asian décor presents simplicity. The use of furniture and accessories is kept to a minimum in order to eliminate clutter. Visual impact comes greatly relies on the use of bold and dramatic colors in the separate pieces.

Use of Bold, Dramatic Color
The use of the colors red, black, gold and shades of tan, brown and grey is prevalent in Asian décor; this is especially true in Japanese style decorating. Black lacquer is usually used on furniture for that glass like shine. You may use gold on walls and trim.

Incorporating Texture
Asian décor uses plenty of natural textures. Bamboo is of common use in furnishings, window coverings and plant containers. The use of paper surfaces may be included in wall prints, and natural rock adds to the drama. Red and gold tones are usually used on containers which hold bamboo plants.

Oriental Rugs are a Must
You cannot hope to complete the look and style of Asian decor without the addition of oriental rugs! Contrary to many other styles of décor, the Asian style relies heavily on the floor. Whether the floor is covered with an exquisite floral wool rug or a tatami mat, the furnishings are used for complementing and drawing out the colors on the floor.

Other elements that are important to this style of décor are window accents and screens. Covering unattractive spaces or dividing the room can be done simply with the use of a Shoji screen. You can also use it to block a window. Lavishly decorated, screens are an essential aspect of the oriental theme.

The windows themselves are kept basic and plain in order to provide a balance to the unique flooring and furnishings. Windows are often simply accented or covered with bamboo or wooden blinds. Tan, grey or neutral furnishings can be complimented with golden window accents; and for a more Chinese approach, window accents often include tassels.

The drama of Asian décor can also provide serenity and peacefulness. Clutter should always be kept to a minimum, and bold accents along with the natural elements should be used in conjunction. You rooms will appear to be more enticing and dramatic, while keeping a and serene tone at the same time.

The next time you are at an oriental style restaurant, take note of the décor. Finding more examples for this exquisite style of décor is as easy as going online, and like this you will have more ideas on how to use this look in your own home! If you are aiming for elegance, there is no better style of décor than the beautiful and bold Asian style.

About the Writer…
Leon Tuberman has been part of the home furnishings and interior decorating  business for four decades. He owns and manages his family owned furniture store. They offer a huge assortment of solid wood furniture for your living room, home office and dining room that’s built in the Heartland of America. Whether you’re looking for a bookcase for your student loft or a wood chest for your bedroom then they have everything you need.

How To Cozy Up A Large Living Space

Many people love their living or family rooms to be large, but are unhappy when these spaces have a cold or cavernous appearance, particularly when the ceilings are vaulted. While the spaciousness is great, there are ways to make the room feel a little more warm, inviting, and cozy. Above all, you want your home to feel comfortable and welcoming, with an almost intimate appeal that attracts your guests’ attention. There are many ways by which you can break up that large space, making things feel a bit more personal. This articles provides some tips on how to create a room that not only offers interest and appeal but warmth as well.

Arrange Several Furniture Groupings
The easiest way to break up a large room is by grouping your furnishings into different areas, where each serves a purpose. Create a small grouping around an area rug consisting of your sofa, loveseat, recliner, wooden tv stand and tables. Here you have created a wonderful conversation area in which to entertain guests. Avoid arranging your furnishings against the wall, as this usually results in an impersonal look.

You might also want to add another area in the room, one designed for enjoying a good book. To do this, place a rocking chair or recliner near a window, along with a small table, wood bookcase and lamp. If you have the room, consider placing together an additional sofa, television, stereo, and game station to create an area to be used solely for entertainment purposes. All of these and more custom-designed areas are a great way to break the room up by creating smaller, more intimate spaces.

Use Paint or Wallpaper to Draw the Room In
The general rule of thumb in smaller spaces is to avoid using dark-colored paint. But often, dark paint provides the perfect solution when it comes to high ceilings and very large rooms. If you want to visually bring the ceiling down a bit, consider painting it a dark shade as well. Of course, you always have the option of boldly patterned wallpaper that contains dark shades as well.

Avoid Decorating with Mirrors
Rooms tend to look much larger with mirrors. This is especially true when they’re reflecting light from windows or other light sources. If you feel that you have to have a mirror in the room, then pay attention to where you hang it. A great place would be where it reflects a favorite piece of décor or accent.

Add Lots of Accessories!
If you’re looking to scale a room down, adding lots of accessories such as baskets, pottery, plants, and bookshelves can really help. When you incorporate small- to medium-sized accents, you balance those bigger items like furniture and help reduce the appearance of a large room. If you have a high ceiling, consider placing a potted tree in one corner to balance things out.

Bulk Is Great
If a room is spacious, then bulky large furniture is always an smart choice. Keep the colors dark, and consider using “heavy” looking fabrics such as tapestries. Dark-colored wood is also ideal. You want to stay away from light colors if you can, as they tend to make spaces look larger. Try to stay away from glass-topped tables and the like.

So that’s it in a nutshell—five fabulous ways to visually reduce the size of those spaces that appear cold and uninviting. No matter how large your living room, you should be able to give it a cozy, warm appearance that everyone will admire.

Living Room Design On A Budget

The living room is one of the most used spaces in most homes. This tends to be a favorite room for relaxing, entertaining, and spending time with the family. If you tend to spend a lot of time in your living room, you may want an entirely new look. Fortunately, if you want to change the look of your living room, you don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune. Here are a few inexpensive ways to perk up and renovate your room.

Rearrange the Furniture
By rearranging the furniture, you can achieve a whole new look without spending any money. The best place to start is to find a different focal point for the room and then rearrange things to focus on that new area. You can add a completely new look and flow to the room, and it’s really easy to do. Rearranging doesn’t require any new furniture, but if you’re really looking to mix things up, try adding an inexpensive piece like an end table.

Change the Paint Color on the Walls
Paint is relatively inexpensive but can dramatically change the look of a room. Your best bet is to choose a color that’s already in the room’s color scheme. You can develop a whole new feel for the room by choosing a matching or complementary color. Another option, instead of painting the entire room, is to choose one wall as an accent wall. You can give the room some more interest by painting it an accent color.

Add Inexpensive Accessories to the Furniture
If you’re looking to change the style of a living room, you don’t necessarily have to spend tons of money on accessories for your furniture. You might even be able to gather some inexpensive accessories from different areas of your home, including vases and baskets, decorative pillows, throws, flower arrangements, candles, and lamps. The simple placement of new decorative pillows on a couch can create a totally different style. Changing your neutral couch from a country to a contemporary style is as easy as adding different pillows to it. If you have oak end tables and mission bookshelves in the room, you can add candles and baskets to mix up the décor.

Change the Window Treatments
You can completely change the look with different window treatments, which may allow different amounts of light to enter the room. Window treatments also allow you to change the color, patterns, and type of material easily. Another option is to add other window treatments to the existing ones. For instance, you could add a fabric valance to a window that already has blinds.

If you don’t have a lot of money to spend but you want to change the look of your living room, with a little resourcefulness and creativity you can come up with a new style. Follow these tips, and the next time you host a gathering at your home, your friends and family may not even recognize the room.

How To Find An Interior Designer

Homeowners hire interior decorators to decorate and style their home for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they dont feel creative enough, or maybe they just dont have the time to put forth the proper effort. Whatever your reason for hiring an interior decorator, you need to be sure you find someone who best fits your style and vision for your home. If youre not sure where to begin, here are some tips to finding a qualified interior decorator for your home to get you started.

Ask Friends and Family for Referrals
A great way to find a qualified interior decorator is to ask the people you know and trust for a referral. This way you can know what type of work to expectsince the professional has already worked with someone you know. When asking for a referral from friends and family, you just need to be sure you ask the right questions that will help you decide if the person is right for you. You might want to ask how long the project took, how many problems there were, and if the overall end result was a success.

Look at Online Review Websites
Online review websites provide a great resource for finding a qualified decorator for your home, despite the fact that you may not know the people who are actually posting the reviews. Use the online reviews to make a preliminary list of interior decorators. Then you can make phone calls to the various businesses and begin to narrow things down. Do remember, however, that you cant always trust what you read on these websites. Thats why its important to conduct phone interviews with each decorator to narrow down your list of possibilities.

Utilize Referral Services
You should be able to find several different referral services over the Internet that will refer interior decorators. Each of the different services will offer some sort of method of matching you up with an interior decorator. Along with review websites, this is a great starting point for getting together a list of potential decorators.

You also want to go to the American Society of Interior Decorators to find members who live in your area whom you can also add to your list.

See Out Interior Decorators Work
You might be able to find an interior decorator whose style you like by viewing their work at model homes and decorating shows. Most building contractors, for example, will hire an interior decorator to come and stage a model home. Thus, this is a great way to find a decorator and see their work at the same time. All you have to do is ask the contractor or sales agent who created the dcor plan and then seek that person out. Another idea is to look at the expo centers in and around your city to see if there are any home expos coming up in the near future. At this type of venue, youll be able to see the decorators work as well as talk to them about specific projects.

Hiring an interior decorator doesnt have to be a difficult process. Getting good referrals from people you know makes the whole process of finding a qualified interior decorator much easier.

About the Writer…
Leon Tuberman has been part of the home furnishings and interior design business for 40 years. He owns and manages a popular furniture store in Los Angeles. They offer a huge assortment of solid wood furniture for your living room, home office and dining room that’s built in the Heartland of America. Whether you’re looking for a oak coffee table for your family room or a oak dresser for your master bedroom then they have everything you need.

5 Simple Ways for Budget Kitchen Makeover

Is your kitchen falling out-of-date? If it is there are some simple and inexpensive ways for you to renew its look without having to waste tons of money on refreshing the kitchen. Though you may be stuck with your kitchen’s floor plan you can always accentuate the positive and spruce up the kitchen that you have, and unless you have thousands of dollars to completely re-model the kitchen this is something you will have to do.

Add New Cabinet Hardware
Though it sounds very simple, a lot can be accomplished by simply adding new cabinet hardware. If you decide to add new cabinet handles you will notice that it can turn your ordinary cabinets in something with more style. Consider silver or brushed nickel handles if you are deciding to do with a contemporary look.

Cabinet pulls have a great price range, varying from $.50 a pull, to $20 a pull. Take into account all the pieces of hardware that will be needed and remember to set your budget.

A Fresh Coat of Paint in the Kitchen
The cost of paint isn’t too steep, especially when working will minimal wall areas. Even a kitchen with wallpaper can be instantly changed, though it might take a little extra time.

Your cabinets should be complimented by the colors you use for painting. Repainting or staining your cabinets can be an option as well if you really don’t like their color. Decide on painting the ceiling, especially if there are yellow grease marks on it.

Freshen Up Your Kitchen: Add Some Green
The kitchen space can really be freshened up with the simple addition of flower arrangements or plants. The use of a single plant on a cabinet or in the corner of the room will be good enough without cluttering the space. Plants can be a waste of money if they aren’t taken care of, so care for them on a daily basis if you decide to use them.

New Light Fixture
New light can be brought to the kitchen for an instant update. While the price on light fixtures can widely vary, you are likely to find one for your kitchen that is under $100.

Recessed fluorescent lighting, is definitely something that you would want to change if you have it. Try not to keep to your old style of lighting, instead try something new like a tracking light that will give you the light you need in places like the stove. A new design element can be added along with new light from the light fixtures.

Put Your China on Display
Why not put any china that you have hidden away to good use by putting it on display. Try taking a cabinet door off the hinge and replacing it with a glass door. Arrange your china in a way that shows it off in a cabinet will help to grab attention. Lining a wall with china is another option, as long as you remember to keep it fastened so that it doesn’t fall off.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money updating your kitchen. All you need is a little creativity and the resources that you have to add style to your kitchen.

For the past 25 years Avo Barsoumian has helped home owners with their home flooring and interior design needs. He owns and operates a home flooring company in Pasadena. The carry the best in elegant hardwood flooring, beautiful laminate flooring and plush carpeting. So whether you’re looking for cheap laminate flooring for your new condo or wood flooring to makeover your older house then Carpet Wagon carries everything you need.

Using Different Color Schemes to Decorate

One thing that tends to overwhelm homeowners is choosing a color scheme for a room. The thing about choosing a color scheme is figuring out other potential colors to incorporate into the design once youve settled on a main color. So how do you go about figuring out a color scheme? One of the best guides for this is the color wheel.

What Is the Color Wheel?
The first person to start using the color wheel was Sir Isaac Newton, who came up with this after performing an experiment with a prism. What he discovered was that pure white light had a wide spectrum of reflective colors. This spectrum of colors, known as the color wheel, has been used ever since for decorating and classifying colors.

The Classification of Colors Using the Color Wheel
The color wheel is made up of three categories of color.
1. The primary colors consist of red, yellow, and blue.
2. Next are the secondary colors, or orange, green, and violet. The primary colors are mixed together to create these colors.
3. The colors red-orange, yellow-orange, blue-green, and yellow-green make up the tertiary colors. You combine the primary colors with the secondary colors next to them to create these colors.

Monochromatic Color Scheme Explained
A monochromatic color scheme is just like it sounds. You are pretty much going to be picking one single color and using only that color for the entire room. The key to this color scheme is to use varying shades, from light to dark, of that color. You can also use white in the color scheme, which will help break up the color.

Analogous Color Scheme Explained
When you use an analogous color scheme, you incorporate anywhere from two to six different colors into the dcor. You want to use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Consider the color red, for example. You might choose orange or purple as the accent colors, being that they are the colors next to red on the wheel. Its a good idea to choose your main color first. Then you can look at accent color options.

Complementary Color Scheme Explained
One of the most popular decorating color schemes is the complementary color scheme. Essentially, you begin with a main color (such as yellow or red) and then go directly across to color wheel to find its complementary color. If you go with yellow, for instance, than you would look to the purple family for its complement. The family of pinks would complement the color green. This can always be played with a little bit. Try mixing the family of colors: it could be green and pink, or it could be green and red.

Triad Color Scheme Explained
Another very popular design for homeowners is the triad color scheme. In this case, you use a three-color combination that on the color wheel forms a triangle together. One triad combination would be orange, green, and purple. Choose one of these colors as your main color and use the others for accents. Or you might use two of them as the primary colors and then accent with the third.

Whatever color scheme you decide to go with, keep in mind that black and white are neutrals and can be added to any colors without disrupting the color scheme too much. Play around with the color wheel and the different types of color schemes discussed here. With a little exploration, you should be able to come up with some great choices for the rooms in your home.

About the Writer…
Leon Tuberman has been in the furniture and interior decorating industry for 4 decades. He owns and manages his family owned furniture store. They offer a huge assortment of solid wood furniture for your living room, home office and dining room that’s built in the Heartland of America. Whether you’re looking for a wood dining room table for your formal dining room or a night stands for your bedroom then they carry everything you need.

Get Your Home Ready For Summer With These Few Interior Decorating Tips

Have you ever been to someone’s house who loves to decorate for each and every season, whether it’s Christmas, summer, or even St. Patrick’s Day? You may be thinking, ‘how on earth do they find the time for all this?’ or ‘I wish I could find the time to make my home match the changing seasons!’ You may be surprised to learn that changing your home decor to match whatever season it may be is much simpler than you ever though, all it takes is a few quick changes or additions.

When it comes to interior decorating, it is no surprise everyone has their own taste and style, which is good…we wouldn’t want to walk into numerous homes and have them all looking the same, that would be boring! No matter what your style or taste is, you can brighten up your home for the summer months with a few easy steps.

1. Consider adding a few coat of light paint to your walls. If you don’t want to paint a large room like the living room, think of painting the bathroom or dining room…something smaller, but that still gets used often. Lighter shades of blue, yellow, and green are wonderful colors for the summer.

2. Instead of painting, you could put up some wallpaper in fun summer prints. Something as simple as stripes can really make a home look seasonal. Imagine a beautiful light blue and white striped wallpaper with white furnishings all around such as end tables, a coffee table, and perhaps even white wicker furniture. You could add some beautiful ivory seashells to large glass bowls and throw various shades of light blue pillows on the chairs and couches. Add in more color with complimentary colors such as light green and yellow.

3. Even if you don’t want to go through the trouble of painting or wallpapering, you can still add those extra accessories to make the room really look summery. As mentioned above, seashells are always a great option or anything that reminds you of the beach. Flowers are also always in style, pick some bright and vibrant flowers for a more fun feel.

4. Another quick way to transform your home to a summer paradise is by adding wonderful smelling candles or other fragrances. Lighting candles throughout the entire house will fill it with beautiful tropical smells or fresh clean ones, whichever you prefer.

5. Lastly, consider your lighting. Summer lighting should be dim, soft, and inviting. Consider a new, white lampshade for your current lamp or buy a new lamp with lots of white and light accents that match your room. Add a low wattage light bulb to the lamp, and voila!

With these few interior decorating tips, you can transform your home, or just a single room, into a beautiful summer sanctuary. Just keep in mind, light colors such as white, light blues, greens, or yellows; summery accessories such as seashells; wonderful ‘summer’ smelling candles, and soft lighting.

Isabella Austen is a homely person who enjoys quiet nights in front of a cozy fire with a blanket, her cat, and a great book. She has spent her life immersed in literature, both reading and writing. Her mind is always teeming with prodigious ideas for her next great work. Isabella is also very active in interior decorating. You will always find her home filled with the next greatest trends and looking absolutely miraculous. She is the epitome of a great designer with vast knowledge, experience, and superb taste.

3 Simple Ways to Paint Your Walls

Besides buying wood dressers for your bedroom or an elegant wood filing cabinet for your home office, you can also quickly and easily add style to any room in your home by using any of several painting techniques on your walls. By using these techniques, you can easily make a DIY paint job look professional.

Before you embark on any type of painting on your walls, you need to be sure you are prepared. The walls need to be prepped by filling in any cracks or holes and taping off the trim and windows with blue painter’s tape, and you need to gather all your supplies together. You will also need to pick up the special tools you will need for these techniques.

Rag Painting Technique
With this technique, no paint brushes or rollers are used. Instead, you use a simple rag (such as an old t-shirt or any type of cotton rag) to apply the paint. The result is a marbled effect on your walls.

To apply this rag painting technique:

Dip your rag into the container of paint, shaking off the excess.

Dab the rag onto the wall, taking care to apply the paint in whatever pattern you’ve chosen. But be sure not to spread out the pattern too much.

If you want to get really creative, try applying a darker base color first and then rag on a lighter color on top of it.

Sponge Painting Technique

It’s easy to give a wall both depth and interest using this particular painting technique. Before you begin, you will need to apply a base color to the wall.

To paint with sponges:

First dip a regular sponge or sea sponge into the paint or glaze you’ve selected.

Dab the sponge in a random pattern, working your way from the outside of the wall in.

You can either choose to only do one wall in the room or complete all the walls in the room using this sponging technique.

Color Washing Technique

This painting technique adds a subtle finish to your walls that gives the appearance of floating color. This is a great technique to use if you have a wall with several flaws you want to cover up. This technique is a little more time consuming, however. Layers must be built up in order to get the full effect of the color wash.

To apply color washes:

You first need to paint the wall with your base color and then wait for it to completely dry.

Using a slightly different color or a complementary color, then come back and paint another layer once it’s dry.

This layer should be painted using only a paint brush. Apply the paint in all different directions, going over your strokes, so that the base color shows through in random areas.

More than one layer can be done in this way, if you want another color to show on the walls as well.

These painting techniques work wonderfully in any room, from the kitchen to the bedroom. Not only do they instantly add style, but they are a great way to perk up any room.

Coloring Theory when Decorating

By analyzing your home’s colors, you can find decorating solutions to create a mood that complements your personality.

Designer Color Lesson
Confused about color? The color wheel offers the easiest way to visualize how different hues relate to each other. Traditionally, artists have defined the three primary colors as red, yellow, and blue, the theory being that it is from these colors that all the others on the wheel can be mixed. While technically this is true, an artist actually is unable to derive a pure green or purple from the primaries. The intensity of the mixed color won’t equal that of the original colors.

When choosing a color scheme, however, you need only be aware that purple relates to both red and blue, and green derives from yellow and blue. These relationships insure that the colors will harmonize with each other.

Reading the Wheel
The color wheel generally displays the pure hues of colors, such as red, blue, and green. However, in your home more likely you’re going to be using tints (lighter values) and tones, also known as shades (darker values). When painting the bedroom, for instance, you probably won’t use an intense pure green. Rather, you’ll probably go with either a soft sage or a deep hunter green.

Pair together colors that lie opposite each other on the wheel. These complementary colors will make each other appear more vivid. Hues next to each other are analogous, which means they always look good together because they share a common hue. Any three equally spaced colors on the wheel are known as triads and yield a lively yet balanced color combination. Be sure to let only one color dominate, though. Use the other two in lesser amounts or as accents to avoid a scheme that feels jarring.

Stir Emotions Using Warm and Cool
You can easily identify warm and cool hues using the color wheel. The half of the color wheel that extends from red to yellow-green is considered warm, which means the colors are stimulating and advancing. Giving these hues the description of warm reflects emotional associations such as the sun looks yellow, or fire is orange and red. But the warm designation actually has a basis in physiology. The eye cannot simultaneously focus on both the red and purple ends of the spectrum, so to solve this it perceives red to be nearer or advancing and purple to be farther or receding. On the cool side of the wheel, the colors generally appear to recede. Cool colors work well in a smaller room, which will benefit from visually opening up the walls with a receding color such as blue, green, or purple.

Following are a couple of tips for working with warm and cool hues. Warm color schemes always need a dollop of a cool hue. This helps things to feel well-rounded and complete think of a green plant in a yellow room. Likewise, a cool scheme needs a jolt of warmth to liven it up. Thus for a room done in blue and white, a shot of red will really perk things up. Green and purple go with any color scheme, since they either advance or recede depending on the context. For this reason, some interior designers actually consider them neutrals.

Discerning Value
It is not only the specific hues that are attractive (red, blue-green, orange) but also particular values of those hues (pink, teal, terra-cotta). When you’re talking about values, you’re referring to the lightness or darkness of a color. The addition of white to any hue will lighten its value; by adding black or umber (a blackish brown), the value is darkened. So for the color blue, the colors sky blue and robin’s-egg blue are both considered light values, whereas navy and cobalt are dark values.

Balancing with Accents
Light and medium values live most comfortably with each other. But beware: light-value schemes can be boring. To avoid this, include an accent of a darker value. For instance, in a room decorated in light blue and light yellow, a touch of navy or cobalt blue will ground the scheme and give it depth.

Understanding Intensity
Another important aspect of color is its intensity or saturation. The pure hue represents a color’s most intense or saturated expression. By adding that hue’s complement, you create a muddied version of the color that’s softer, more muted, and less intense.

To create a calm, restrained mood that’s subtle and serene, go with a low-intensity color. For a more energetic mood, go with a higher-intensity (or more saturated) color, which can feel dynamic or richly elegant, depending on the specific colors and the style of your furnishings.

Equal Partners: Achieving Color Balance
Balance is a key component of any successful color scheme. Strong colors need strong partners, and this applies to both value and intensity. For example, if you choose navy blue for your wall, it will demand an equally intense yellow or red to create a balanced scheme.

Keep your intensities equal or nearly equal. A saturated red calls for an equally intense green or yellow-green. But for a muted red-orange or lower intensity, you’ll need a muted yellow-green. Colors of different intensities that are paired together create a feeling of being out of balance.

About the Author…
Leon Tuberman has been in the furniture and interior design industry for 4 decades. He owns and operates his family owned furniture store. They offer a huge assortment of solid wood furniture for your living room, bedroom and dining room that’s built in the Heartland of America. Are you searching for a solid wood bed for your master bedroom or a wood file cabinet for your home office then they probably have everything you need.

Decorating 101: Shabby Chic Style

Are you one of those people who absolutely loves the antique look of worn oak furniture, but you just don’t have the budget to redecorate your home at this time? Don’t go out and buy pricey antiques to achieve the look you’re going for. Shabby chic décor will give your home a similar atmosphere and won’t cost you a bundle of money. This style creates a cozy, relaxed, and romantic feel. In a shabby chic décor, you can almost feel the soft, warm breeze floating across the room.

Soft and Sensuous
The feminine look of light and white-washed décor of shabby chic is a look many people love, particularly women. In this décor, furniture looks just a little worn around the edges, and curtains of muted pastels blend softly with the rest of the room.

Look for fabrics that are satiny, nubby, or anything in between. You can create even more interest by using ultra-smooth satins and nubby textures together.

The older an accessory looks, the better, in shabby chic décor. After all, this style is supposed to looked relaxed, comfortable, and a bit old-fashioned. Don’t worry if you currently have furnishing that are more modern; you won’t have to go out and buy all new. For instance, you can transform your coffee and end tables by sanding off the finish, painting them an antique white color, and then lightly sanding those edges and other areas on the tables that would naturally wear. Then, voila! You’ve created a shabby chic look without having to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on new tables.

Elegance on a Budget
A shabby chic décor is the perfect choice for those working within a budget who want to create a relaxed elegant look. What’s nice about shabby chic is that you can often find the perfect accent or accessory like a mission coffee table at a flea market. The old saying goes that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” and this couldn’t be any truer than with shabby chic decorating.

In a shabby chic style, slip covers are almost a necessity. With an antique white slip cover on your sofa, you can add mismatched throw pillows that are similar in color but differ in terms of texture and pattern. For instance, as long as the colors are complementary, a satiny floral and a nubby plaid can make a stunning combination.

The Finishing Touches
Once you’ve figured out the furnishings, then it’s time to accessorize. Fortunately, shabby chic makes this super easy as well. For instance, flowers and greenery are staples in shabby chic décor. If you have flowers in your garden, you can gather some there; otherwise, buy a few fresh ones at the market. Then find an old-looking vase for your wood dining table to throw them in. But don’t try to arrange them perfectly, as you want them to look a little thrown together. This is the essence of shabby chic: a look that’s elegant and relaxed but not too perfect.

You can also get creative with the lighting. Antique-looking chandeliers and candle holders can be the perfect accent for this décor. Lamp shades might be decorated with glass or crystal beads, which will add to the antique look. Another great fit is lamp shades that are painted. Anything that looks as if it came from another era will fit perfectly with this look.

For a style all your own that won’t break your budget, shabby chic may be just what you’re looking for. This is a style that combines elements of light, openness, airiness, relaxation, romance, elegance, AND the feminine all in one! With shabby chic, you can create an original look that you can enjoy with total ease and comfort.