Carpeting Tips for Small Spaces

(NC)-Creating the illusion of a larger area begins with just a few simple tips for anyone challenged with decorating a small space, and wall-to-wall carpet offers the perfect design medium to achieve your goal.

When decorating any space, large or small, start with the floor. To enhance a smaller space choose carpet in a solid colour and smaller pattern. Refined textured loops or subtle cut-and-loop patterned carpet styles are in the popular interior design spotlight today. Especially for a small room, textured carpet provides the illusion of depth and volume. Selecting a carpet in a neutral colour stretches the space. A carpet colour similar to the colour of the walls will help to create the impression of more space. And in the latest carpet styles, "neutral" is far more interesting than yesterday's plain and safe beige. The sophisticated "new neutrals" cover an exceptional range from creamy whites and soothing taupes to warm sand to dove greys and tinted pastels. Not only are there more choices in carpet colours, the style choices are tailored to fit your lifestyle with a vast array of designs in casual, classic or contemporary décor styles.

If you are decorating an open-concept area, a smaller home or modern condo, try to avoid distinct breaks between rooms and keep the floor coverings in a similar colour. By keeping the background of your room or home in a neutral palette, you will have optimum flexibility in your selection of furniture and accessories to add colour and texture without minimizing the illusion of space.

You may change your paint and furnishings over the years but your floor covering is a longer-term investment decision. Today's carpet texture, pattern and colour choices are virtually endless. The carpet you select is an important design element, the foundation to your decor and will set the tone for the entire room.

5 Quick and Easy Ways to Make Small Rooms Feel Bigger!

Decorating small rooms can be quite a challenge, but there are some simple things you can do in a weekend to make the space seem to expand before your eyes!

1. Go buy the largest mirror you can afford, and place it in a focal area of the room, such as over a mantel, or over a sofa. Hang it a little higher than eye level to avoid reflecting clutter if necessary. If you can't afford a large mirror, drop by your discount store and dollar shop and pick up a few smaller ones to create a grouping of mirrors to accomplish the same purpose. I have decorative mirrors in almost every room of my modestly sized home, and when I take them down to paint or clean, I am shocked at how much more closed in the room feels. One mirror adds several visual feet to any room!

2. Don't leave your walls white! I know, that's not what you've always heard. White walls can be difficult to pull off in an interesting way, and they don't expand a room any more than light colors do, so add some personality! Paint your walls a light cool color, such as blue or green. Cool colors fool the eye into thinking the walls are farther away than they really are, while warm colors make walls seem closer. (Most whites used in homes are warm whites.) So bring in that pale blue or green!

3. Change your furniture arrangement. I don't believe there is any one formula that works for every room...some rooms will seem larger with the furniture against the walls, and some will seem large if you float the furniture out into the room. Experiment! If you don't want to spend a whole afternoon rearranging furniture (I know a good chiropractor!) then use graph paper to do it. Assign each square of the paper to 1 square foot. Draw in walls, traffic patterns, and other obstacle such as doors. Then cut out small pieces the size of each piece of furniture. Now you can use your furniture templates to move your furniture around on paper, to find the perfect fit for you, before you move a stick! Keep in mind, you still may want to make a change or two after you get it all into actual place. That's ok, us decorators change our minds too!

4. Remove all accessories that break up the space. This is the case where less is more. If two patterned pillows add the pizzazz you need, then don't add four. Use larger scale accessories instead of many smaller ones. And get rid of clutter! We tend to stop seeing the pile of magazines because we are used to them, try to look at the room with an objective eye. If your kitchen is small, don't store things on the counter, put them behind cupboard doors. Kids toys? Find inexpensive bins that can slide under the end tables, then cover with table cloths. If you don't love it or need it, get rid of it! (Don't keep an accessory out just because it fills space!)

5. This is the most underutilized tip for small rooms of all, but also one of the easiest! Keep all your windows and reflective surfaces sparkling clean! Don't believe me? Try it now, go clean that sliding glass door, then stand back. Looks bigger, doesn't it! Now do the same for the rest of the windows, tv screens, dishwasher fronts, glass over artwork and glass tabletops. The shiny clean surfaces both reflect light (which always brightens and enlarges a room) and creates a smooth surface for your eye to glide over, creating the illusion of more space! It works!

Five easy ways to enlarge the look of any room, and you can do it in an afternoon or a weekend!

Tips For Decorating Your Living Room on a Budget

In most homes, the living room is the place where most of the action happens. This is where you spend time together as a family and entertain your friends. Apart from the bed room, your living room is where you spend the maximum time in your house. It is no wonder then, that all of us want our living rooms to look good and be comfortable. However, with constant wear and tear, our living room starts looking drab, old fashioned and mostly in need of a change for the better. Unfortunately, redecorating even a single room in the house can prove to be extremely costly, and a situation involving redecorating your living room is no different. However, with our tips on redoing your living room, you can easily and quickly freshen up your living room’s decor without spending a huge packet.

Bring Out The Colors: Changing the color scheme of a room is an easy and inexpensive method of redecorating it. Choose a color scheme that is different from what your living room was sporting earlier. In order to give your living room paint a professional feel, mix and match two or three colors, paint one wall a different color or use dark colors for accenting certain portions of the room.

Go Green: Bringing in plants into your living room adds both color and life to the room. Adding greens to a room always makes it look classy and cool. Buy a couple of potted plants and arrange them in a corner of the living room where there is some light. You can also keep your plants in a dark corner and hang a lamp on top. This will not only make sure that your plants live; it will also result in a beautiful corner arrangement.

Add Space: If you wish your living room was larger than what it currently is, but can do nothing much about it, then putting up a couple of mirrors on the wall is the next best thing to breaking down walls. Mirrors add an illusion of added space, and if you do it correctly, you might just end fooling yourself about the actual size of your living room.

Cover Your Floors: Changing your dull or drab floor tiles or carpeting is an extremely expensive move. If you are fed up with your old floor, then buying carpets and multi colored rugs and placing them strategically across your living room will give your living room floor a new lease of life and color at a minimal cost. You can choose from a wide range of floor coverings depending on your budget and the theme of your living room.

Create Your Own Art: One of the cheapest methods of decorating your room is by using art work and decorative pieces that you have created yourself. Even if you are not very artistic, you can easily put together a collage of pictures, leaves or dry flowers that will look appealing once it is framed. You can also frame interesting pieces of fabrics or cushion covers to create a tapestry like wall hanging.

Add To Your Upholstery: While changing all the furniture in your living room, sofas, settees and chairs can be very costly, you can easily get the upholstery changed for a fraction of the price, and your sofas will once again start looking new. If you cannot find someone to do this for you, then you can shop around for throws, shawls and new cushion covers to give your seating space a new look for less.