Creative Tips For Your Home

Below are some great tips on how to use paint in your home décor. If you are looking for a quick and cost effective way to change the look and feel of your home, try one of these!

Sources: styleathome.com, elledecor.com

• Choose a colour that reflects your individual style and personality. Creative, social types are drawn to dusky blues, spicy reds, and lime greens, designed to captivate your attention. Traditionalists looking to create a contemporary space may go for earthy greens and taupes. And if you are an introvert who wants to make their first foray into accent colours, you can’t go wrong with pale pastels, such as light pinks, blues, and yellows that make the smallest of spaces pop.
• Make sure you have the right finishes. Flat or matte paints don't reflect light, so they hide imperfect walls better than higher-sheen paints (such as eggshell, semigloss, or high-gloss). However, the smoother the finish, the easier it is to wipe dirt and grit out of cracks and crevices. Flat paints allow moisture to penetrate the walls, and that can result in a mold or mildew problem, so it’s best to use them in low-humidity areas such as bedrooms, living rooms, and hallways. Keeping that in mind, use semigloss paints in bathrooms and kitchens or any other high-humidity area.
• Paint the ceiling! Make a tight space seem larger and airier by using the paint a shade or two lighter than your wall colour or create a more intimate space by painting the ceiling a darker colour.
• For a modern effect try painting the walls and trim the same colour. Use a flat paint for the walls and a semi-gloss for the trim.
• Add a splash of colour to neutral walls by selecting zones on a wall or ceiling and painting them a different, often contrasting, colour from the main wall. This technique is known as colour blocking.
• Create a fun mural, like clouds or the night sky, on the ceiling. This is a great way to decorate with paint in a child’s room, nursery or family room.
• Feature a wall at one end of a hallway by painting it a contrasting, dramatic colour; that will serve to visually bring it forward.

A home’s exterior plays a large part in how the world, or at least neighbours and visitors, see you. It is also the first thing potential buyers will see, and the first impression is often a lasting one. Below are some great tips on updating your house exterior from styleathome.com.

• Consider updating your home with a fresh coat of paint every three to six years. If preparing your home for sale, use an appealing neutral colour.
• If you want to invigorate your home’s exterior without painting the entire exterior, freshen up the trim. White or rich neutrals, depending on the house's exterior colour, can easily update the look of your house.
• Paint your front door a statement colour that stands out from the rest of the house. Try a gorgeous historical blue or a radiant ruby red – not something you see every day.
• Shutters and porch gables are the perfect place to express a love for colour and decorate with paint.

Changing paint colour is one of the easiest (and cheapest!) ways to make your home look better and actually increase its value. Below you will find some tips on how to use paint when preparing your home for sale.

Source: www.stagemyownhome.com

• Limit your interior colour for home staging to earth tones and neutrals. Neutral wall tones create excellent backdrops for the colour you are going to add later during the final staging, with furniture, draperies, artwork, and accessories. Added colour will simply “pop” against a neutral canvas.
• Examples of interior colours for home staging that most people love: beige, taupe, ivory, coffee tones, honey, butter, golden, wheat, blue-green, mossy green, brown, blue-gray, and gray. Gray is a sophisticated colour and very trendy at this time. Gray complements all other colours and serves as an excellent backdrop for brighter colours, allowing them to shine.
• Light neutrals and earth tones have the widest appeal among home buyers and will complement most people’s furniture.
• An easy way to create colour flow is to use lighter and darker shades of the same colour throughout your home. A fan deck or paint colour swatch from any home improvement store can help you select interior colour for home staging. The great thing about paint sample strips is that they take a lot of guess work out of choosing paint colour, as they contain one colour in several different shades.
• To expand visually a space (or hide ugly moldings), use the same light colour on walls, baseboards and trim work. Doing so will cause unattractive features to recede, or seemingly blend into the walls.
• Minimize the length of a long narrow room by painting the long walls a light colour and the end walls in a darker warm shade of the same colour. Because darker colours advance, this gives the effect of “squaring” the room.
• For over-sized rooms, use a combination of warm and darker colours. The dark colour will make the room seem cozier and more intimate.
• Visually lift a low ceiling by painting it white or a light pastel hue.