You’d want your home to be your paradise, your sanctuary, your heaven on Earth; you’ll also want it to stand out in terms of décor and style. Whether you want to impress your friends, your family or your boss, or if you want to bring your dates home to an architectural masterpiece – you’ll need to make sure your house is completely different.
There’s another very important reason behind trying to make your home stand out from everyone else’s, and that is if you are looking for a potential buyer or a tenant. If your home is on the market, you’ll need to make it appealing to others. A house or an apartment that is dull, drab or looks like every other house in the block isn’t going to attract the best customers; for that to happen, your home needs to truly stand out.
This article is about making those changes to your home, so that whoever sees it the first time, immediately falls in love with it.
- Think Neutral Colors
You might love your home to have all the colors of the rainbow, but others might not. If you want your home to pass hands, keep the colors neutral. Choose basic and primary colors for your walls, ceilings, and floors, namely: white, beige or off-white. With a light color in the background, you’ll have many more options for decorating your walls.
When your whole house is white or something similar, you can choose any of the walls to paint in dark and exotic paint. You can even apply wallpapers, mural or stencils on these bright walls, using a color that’s vibrant and daring. This is not possible if all the walls in your home are already colorful and diverse. Besides, neutral color in the background makes it easy to buy furniture according to one’s own preference and style.
- Make Uses of Windows
These days, we don’t see a lot of windows in modern homes; at least, there aren’t many full-length windows covering the whole wall. Whatever window you get in your rooms, therefore, needs to be highlighted and brought to focus. If you are allowed to build and change the structure of your home, you might want to build better and bigger windows that come with a good view. If not, you’ll have to do with the windows your home already has.
Some windows are meant to be kept open most of the time instead of covered; you’ll need dark shades or curtains only for your bedrooms where you don’t want the sun to disturb you early in the morning. For everywhere else, windows are the main sources of natural light and view, and they should be focused on as much as possible.
If you have full-length windows, all you need to do is to keep it clean, and all the attention in the room is going to fall on the view outside. For smaller windows, you can build a cabinet around it, hang blinds or curtains that match the rest of the décor.
- Keep the Rooms Bright
There’s nothing worse than a house that’s dark and uninviting. Modern homes are supposed to be bright, vibrant and filled with light – both natural and artificial. To make your home welcoming and appealing, it is extremely important that every single room has plenty of light coming in.
If you have windows in every room, they should ideally be kept open, not covered. If you are not very lucky with windows, you can have the almost same effect with the right lights. You can have multiple sources of lights in the same room, by hanging lights from the ceiling, wall lights and strategically placed lamps all around the rooms. Besides, you can do wonders with the lights and lamps that you can find in the market these days; with the same fixture, you can change the color and temperature of the light, and change the whole look of the room.
- Keep Everything Hidden
Personal items, groceries, makeup and toiletries, stationery items, crockeries, small tidbits, and papers – everything should be hidden away from view. Instead of keeping all of your personal belongings open for everyone to see, they should be tucked away in drawers, cupboards, and cabinets. Only a few selected items, selected because they are aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and goes with the décor, should be on view.
It is always better to buy furniture that comes with plenty of drawers and covered spaces. They can hide away everything you don’t want others to see, and only put on show items that are decorative and pleasing to the eyes.
- Remember: Less is More
You won’t have to fill your rooms with expensive furniture and decorative items to make it look beautiful. Sometimes, you need to declutter and keep the minimum amount of possessions in a room; the golden rule of decorating dictates that the less clutter in a room, the more peaceful it is.
Instead of filling your rooms with more belongings and furniture that you need, it is important that you leave empty space everywhere: on the floor, on top of furniture and on the wall. Sometimes, empty space is just as beautiful as something expensive and exotic. Only something carefully chosen to match your room’s décor should have a place in your house, and nothing more. A beautifully colored wall doesn’t require too many paintings to clutter it, a room doesn’t need too many unnecessary furniture in it and your furniture doesn’t need too many items sitting on them.
- Add Natural Items to your Home
Fresh flowers in vases, potted plants, decorative items made from natural wood, window boxes, ferns – it is always better to fill your home with natural items instead of artificial, plastic ones. If you love gardening or if you wish to have a small terrace garden in your home, there isn’t much more you need to do to make your home looking fresh and beautiful. A few plants and flowers can do more for your home than expensive decorative items.
If you don’t have enough time to take the responsibility for taking care of plants, there are some that don’t need watering often. You can keep them anywhere around the house and take them out to the sun every now and then, and water them once or twice a week. Fresh flowers, too, can add colors and life to your rooms, but they can be quite expensive to maintain.
- Be Patient in Your Purchases
Every time you feel the need to buy something, be patient and smart in your purchases, instead of being spontaneous. A sure way to stop your home from cluttering up is to not buy anything unnecessary and extravagant. You should buy something only when you absolutely need it or when you are sure you have enough space to put it. Even when you are an avid collector or if you have a hobby, you should only add to it when you have the space to put something.
Buying what you don’t need will only add to the clutter in your home, and will keep on growing until you are ready to tackle it. A practical person would wait to buy what they think they need until it is absolutely necessary to replace it; this will help you to save money and also stop clutter from forming in your home.
- Buy Smart Gadgets
The right gadgets can actually help in removing clutter from your home and replace the need for too many possessions. An Internet TV replaces the need for DVD players and TV boxes, and soundbar can replace a complicated home theatre system; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth operated gadgets like the Amazon Echo devices, tablets, cell phones, and phone chargers can eliminate the need for unnecessary cables around the house.
Gadgets are becoming smarter every day; you can use the same device for multiple uses these days so that you won’t need to buy one of everything. If you have a good phone, you won’t need a camera, a music system or a radio in your home. A good laptop or computer can also mean that you won’t need a DVD player or even a television set in your home. If you are smart in buying your gadgets and if you can learn to buy the best ones that can cater to all your needs, you can make your home clutter-free and gorgeous with very little.
- Keep Everything Clean
Now, nothing matters if your home isn’t clean and tidy. You can have the most expensive belongings and the most exotic furniture around the house, but they have to be clean if you want your home to stand out from the rest. This means no dust accumulated on the furniture, no dirty dishes on the open kitchen counter, no mess around the bedroom and no groceries outside the kitchen cabinets.
Keeping your home clean also means to regularly clean all the places that are usually ignored and neglected: the window sills, shower walls, kitchen cabinets, space between the tiles, under the chairs and tables and inside cabinets. These places can get dirty often but they are harder to clean, which means they stay dirty for a long time. A look into these locations can make anyone disappointed and unimpressed. These are the areas you need to keep clean if you want to impress anyone with your home.
- Create a Good Entryway
The entrance to your home is as important as the inside of your house. The main door, the foyer, the garden or the stairway outside – these all fall under your responsibility. You need to decorate and keep them clean just as you need to take care of your other rooms. Bright lighting, a few paintings, carefully concealed cupboards to hold all your shoes, jackets and umbrellas, a mirror, a vase of colorful flowers – these are what you can use in your stairways and foyers.
If you own a house and have a garden at the front, albeit a small one, it can become the perfect welcoming view for guests, visitors, and potential buyers. Colorful flower plants in the entryway are just what you need for a beautiful welcome.
Your home can have the most beautiful furniture and decorative pieces you can find, or it can be naturally beautiful and subtle. Your home is what you make of it, but making it stand out doesn’t mean you can’t be comfortable in it anymore. Your comfort and serenity should be the first priority, but your home should also be also beautiful, clean and tidy.
