One of the most rewarding things to do after you’ve bought your home is to decorate it, making it truly the home of your dreams. As with any major project, decorating your home requires some research and more than a little planning. A little patience at the beginning and you set yourself up not only for a great looking home but one that you can continually enhance through the years without your home ever becoming a hodgepodge of styles and ideas.
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Starting Well
Resist the temptation to rush out to the stores or go online to buy bits of furniture straight away. Fun as it may be, you’ll first want to establish an overall style for the home and do a bit of planning as to what the home will be when you’ve finished your overall decorating.
Establish a Style and Theme
Here’s where you’re going to have to put in a lot of serious thought. You have to think not only about how you currently live but how you would like to. When you decorate your home ask yourself: Do you want your home to be hyper-functional and geared towards making all parts of your home life as efficient and convenient as possible or would you rather it was more relaxed? The difference between the 2 could decide if your home has a cooler, more minimalist design and style or if it’s warmer and cozier.
Often it will be a balance between the two. Then you’ll want to incorporate a style or theme to the home so that there is a sense of cohesion and the home feels like one place, well put together, not a jumble of competing rooms that can disorient those who live there.
When it comes to style, there’s a range of different choices. Would you like your place to be more modern or contemporary? Perhaps you prefer something more transitional or you’re dead set on creating a farmhouse-style home.
- Modern
The features that typify a modern style are clean lines and strong geometry. It’s punctuated with an emphasis on strong vertical and horizontal features but it keeps these features mostly unadorned and unfussy. With a modern concept, there is a move to eliminate anything unnecessary and anything which could suggest opulence and luxury.
Materials tend to be natural and colors are neutral, again to move away from anything too loud and overly designed.
The most recognizable feature of modern styling is an open floor plan. Kitchens and living rooms can merge into one space but be separated by features such as a dining table which denotes the beginning of a kitchen area. As much as possible, walls and barriers have been eliminated allowing for huge amounts of sunlight to penetrate the parts of the home areas which are shared.
Of course, bedrooms and bathrooms are still private spaces but most home activities can be conducted in a shared manner, meaning that in an open space, the kids can be watching TV while you cook, or if you’re lucky, then the other way round.
- Minimalist
A minimalist style is one that strips the home of any unnecessary clutter, keeping the space as clear and functional as it can be. The idea is to create a space where you have only what you need to live comfortably and efficiently.
A minimalist home has lots of open space, and often there are only a few items of decoration, sometimes only one in each room. The idea is to put quality over quantity, instead of many pieces adorning the home, you can have a few standouts and highly focused pieces.
The benefits of such a style are simplicity and cleanliness. An uncluttered house can help you achieve a more uncluttered perspective on your whole lifestyle. There is indeed a very strong intentional relationship between a minimalist home and the state of mind you wish to have. It is unapologetically Zen. Done well, it can help you live a less stressful life which comes with the benefit of having a home that is very easy to clean and manage.
This style lends itself very well if you live alone or with one other person. Although it is possible, it’s quite challenging living what many would consider a typical family life complete with children when you have a minimalist house. As any parent with young kids knows, having kids means a plethora of toys and other items often strewn around the house. You may have the discipline and desire to live in a minimalist home but that will mean everyone else in the family will have to as well.
- Farmhouse
This style is very popular as it is great for modern living and provides comfort along with eye-catching style. As the name suggests, the Farmhouse style is about easy comfort and natural rhythms. Think of a family with friends enjoying a barbeque on a generously sized porch or in a back garden and you have a typical image of farmhouse comfort.
Large rooms are well decorated and well equipped. Kitchens should have a range of seen appliances and equipment, this is very different from modern or minimalist homes which would either want to get rid of your array of kitchen tools or hide them in some storage piece flush with the wall. With Farmhouse style, feel free to hang a large piece of meat to dry-age from a kitchen rack.
If you have the space and you have the family members, a farmhouse is perfect for traditional and modern living.
There are many other styles. Often, how you decorate your home will be by blending different styles to suit your lifestyle. Don’t forget, it’s not always about what’s best for you now. It’s also about how you would like to live. If you find you’d like to live a less hectic and cluttered lifestyle, adopting some minimalist ideas could help you find a better balance.
Decorating Each Room
Each room has its own characteristics but you should at least attempt to keep the same theme of the overall decor running through each room. If you have too many different styles as you transition from one room to the next it could feel jarring and somewhat uncomfortable.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have different styles in the house but don’t go overboard and make each room a completely different style and theme from the others.
The Living Room
Las Vegas is blessed with almost all-year sunshine and it would be a shame not to take advantage of that and get as much of that natural light into your living room. Large windows would be great to do this, or if this is not in keeping with the architecture and style of the house, then many well-placed ones will do.
A large mirror goes exceptionally well in most living rooms. In a large living room, it adds light and a sense of even more space; a smaller living room benefits greatly from a large mirror.
Even open space floor plans should have a focal point or a few depending on the size. For many living rooms, this will be the main seating area. Unless you’re going for a minimal feel, the bigger and cozier the sofa, the better, however, don’t get a sofa that is so large that it overpowers the room. The larger the living room space, the more options you have. As best you can, try to make the chairs and the sofa talk to each other, meaning get them facing each other. When your house is full and people are occupying the seats you want them to be able to talk and interact naturally without them having to turn their heads or sit at awkward angles.
Don’t make the mistake of pushing sofas against the wall. While in some instances where the room is very small it becomes a necessity, it will often make the room look odd. Moving furniture away from the walls actually has the effect of making the room look fuller and bigger.
The Kitchen
The kitchen has been enjoying a strong revival over the last few years. There was a time over a couple of decades ago when the kitchen had lost its prominence in the home as TV dinners, delivery, and eating out took hold. Now kitchens are once again seen as the heart of the home and since open plans are so much more popular, they are an integral part of the main room adjoining the living room.
If you have the space, a kitchen island is a wonderful feature. It’s an additional place where you and the family can eat a light meal or where the adults can sit in the evening to unwind with a few drinks. It’s also a great place to prepare food and get everyone involved in preparing meals for the whole family.
If you can adjoin your kitchen to an outdoor area you not only add great aesthetics, you increase functionality. Popular in Asia is the outdoor kitchen, where the more serious and heavy cooking food preparation is done. If this is beyond your requirements, then simply having easy access to Al Fresco dining makes it worthwhile. When you’re thinking about how to decorate your home in Las Vegas, take into consideration how to utilize the wonderful outdoors and the weather.
Bedroom and Bathrooms
Bedrooms and bathrooms are the most private places in our home. Unless your bedroom doubles as an office and even then, it should be clutter free and designed to induce a relaxed state. This does not mean its sole purpose is for you to sleep, you should be able to just read or simply enjoy quiet time there.
Of course, you can paint the bedroom any color you like, some prefer light and bright greens that make waking up feel fresh and invigorating or you could go for rich deep blues that make the nights and evenings more luxurious and opulent. Nothing is really wrong. However, it might be an idea to avoid particularly sharp or intense colors like bright red. These are colors that do little to create a restful environment. Equally an all-black room can be overly intense.
Bathrooms allow for a little more creative freedom when it comes to paint color. Many go with light blues and greens but there’s nothing to stop you from going for something more energizing than relaxing. Depending on the size and arrangement of your bathroom an ochre color or other rich orange could go perfectly. This would mirror very well the desert of Nevada and could add a nice contrast with the rest of the house. However, like many bold moves, it should be considered carefully, especially if you’re not planning to stay too long in the house. Not every buyer is going to enjoy such a color scheme.
Regardless of the color scheme, a bathroom needs to have furnishings and furniture that make using the bathroom a joy to use. If the plumbing is not quite right such as low water pressure, get that fixed first. The cosmetics and beautification of the room can come after, first, the bathroom has to work impeccably before you can start making it delightful to use.
Complementing Each Room Over Time
Decorating a home is an ongoing process. You should be able to add pieces over time, for example if you’ve traveled somewhere and want to incorporate a tasteful piece of memorabilia from the location. However, you can only add and enrich if you have a base theme and style which small additions will enrich.
If you start by going out collecting disparate pieces of different styles, you will likely have a home that feels as if it’s put together by a committee and the items in your home will not complement each other. Having a base style will also be great for helping you be more selective when you shop. It’ll be easier to say no to an item, regardless of how lovely it may be, because you’ll know that it just won’t go anywhere in your home.
Implementing New Technology
Smart technology is becoming a bigger part of our lives and our homes. The Internet of Things (iot) is here and will only become more prevalent in homes. It’ll allow greater control of how we enjoy our home lives, making the navigation of entertainment systems easier such as voice-controlled content selection. It can monitor and control our energy usage and can even help keep us healthy. This is already possible with Voice Assistants such as Alexa from Amazon, Siri by Apple, and Google Assistant.
Smart technology in the home is becoming an increasingly appealing feature as more millennials and younger people are becoming homeowners. For those looking to sell in the near future, installing some tech now would not only be beneficial to you, but it’ll also help when it comes to selling the property.
Preparing for a House Sale
If selling your home in a couple of years is on your mind but you would still like to decorate for yourself, keep in mind the decor that will be most appealing to the largest volume of buyers.
This will mean making much of the paint colors in the home neutral with bedrooms of gentle hues of blues and greens and living rooms off whites, beiges and light colors.
There are a raft of tips to improve the resale value of your home but one of the best return on investments (ROI) you can make is painting your door black. How much can it add to a sale? There are different amounts quoted online, from $1,000 all the way up to $6,000 so it’s difficult to put an exact amount on ROI. However, with so much information suggesting that it can at the least improve your price, even if only by a thousand it’s worth doing. Especially, as it will only cost around $400 to paint a new door.
If you’d like to talk more about how best to decorate your home, especially if you have selling in mind, feel free to contact me Loralee Wood. As part of Coldwell Baker I rank in the top 3 individual agents for Nevada and I’ve been helping people, including many military families find and sell their homes. I’m a Realtor who really wants to know about your goals, expectations, and dreams.
Call me at 702.419.3212 or leave me a message at loralee(dotted)wood(at)cbvegas(dotted)com and let’s begin your journey together.
