Terri Ramsey Beavers Furniture is an investment, so you want to make sure that you choose the right piece for your home. No matter your budget or how big or small your home is, furniture can make a big difference in your space, and you need to choose carefully if you want to walk away satisfied with your interior design work.
Choosing the right size and color is the first step to achieving that “homely” feeling, but before that, you should make sure you choose the right furniture based on your personal style and lifestyle. But how do you make that easy, especially if you need to figure out what your personal style is?
Aesthetics
Let us start with the most important thing: the aesthetics. Many people have specific aesthetics that they tend to prefer, from traditional and contemporary to gothic and cottagecore. All of these involve their own specific interior design and home improvement concepts but are also freely adaptable, allowing you to draw from whatever styles you like the most and create your own unique aesthetics.
You want to look at your furniture in terms of the colors, sizes, and styles you like and what type of materials you prefer to work with. Aesthetic is important because it will help determine the style you end up focusing on – the more you know about your ideal home design, the easier it becomes to pursue that goal.
Aesthetics generally determine your choice of fabrics and materials for your home, which is where I will move on to next. While you can always break away from any specific conventions to try and create your own style, they are still important baselines that can be useful if you are trying to develop a nice-looking space by yourself.
Colors
One specific concept that a lot of people use to describe the aesthetics of various things is color theory. Color theory is important for mixing different tones and shades, which often becomes very relevant if you are trying to recreate a specific aesthetic for your own home.
For example, traditional styles usually involve a lot of earthy colors, like brown and green. These blend well together, but they might not mesh as well with some purple decorations, at least not without some very careful forethought.
You should also keep an eye out for colors that do not fall in the primary palette. These often have the biggest impact on how a space ends up looking since even the smallest change in tone can alter the way that you perceive a specific room in your home.
If all else fails, black, white, and grey serve as effective neutral colors. These can be a great foundation to build off, especially if you are still trying to think of an ideal aesthetic to target and do not want to commit to anything that might backfire on you later.
Materials
The next major concept you need to consider when thinking about the design of a room is what materials you want to use. For example, heavy use of wood is very common in traditional styles, whereas more contemporary designs either use painted wood or hide the wooden pieces under synthetic materials instead.
Also, it is worth noting that materials such as leather and marble do not always fit into every space. Marble might not be ideal for a living room, but it can be incorporated into other areas, such as a dining area or kitchen. Do not hyper-focus on using specific materials if they would not fit with how you are planning to use the room: style should always be secondary to function.
Of course, materials might also work differently in different places. Untreated wood may not be best for a bathroom that gets very humid, and you might not want hard floors in a place where you do a lot of exercise. Think about how you will use each space before you commit to any design decisions that might come back to haunt you once the project is done.
Also, the specific materials used in your home are a very important part of its overall look. For example, using different types of marble and wood is going to dramatically change the look of your home’s interior. You might technically be using marble and wood either way, but that does not mean that each individual type of marble or wood is going to offer the same look.
Furniture
One popular way to furnish a room is by choosing one piece of furniture to really focus on. By concentrating on one element, the design of the room can be simplified, and you can streamline your own design process rather than being stuck with too many choices.
For example, the couch might be the focal point in a traditional living room. Since this tends to be in the middle of the room, you can design the rest of the space around it, using it as a starting point for your own interior design work.
It may sound strange, but the furniture that is going to define your space is not necessarily the most expensive. It is the pieces that reflect your style and match your aesthetic tastes or provide the most obvious functionality that will matter most. Again, a couch is a great example since it is the part of the living room that is usually the largest and sees the most frequent use.
Furniture is not always the easiest part of the interior design process. You will often have to put a lot of thought into exactly what your space should look like once furnished. It is not as easy as just choosing a sofa and filling the rest of the room with decorative items. You have got to think about exactly what the furniture in the room does and how it fits into the overall scheme of the room.
Handling furniture item-by-item can be a good option, but it is often easier to just look online for inspiration. Sites like Homes Direct 365 offer plenty of furniture options, allowing you to get some great ideas for aesthetics while also seeing plenty of options that could serve as a focal point of your newly-redecorated room.