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16 decorating mistakes you should avoid

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There are rules everyone should follow in order to create a good-looking and comfortable home. If the rules are not observed, consequences are often disastrous. Be smart and don’t make the following mistakes:

1. First and foremost – don’t buy randomly. Set a budget and make a plan on how to purchase your furnishing. It is best to proceed in this order – flooring, window treatments, large furniture (sofa, bed, wardrobe, cabinets and cupboards), small furniture (chairs, stools, coffee tables), accessories.

2. Too much of a good thing can make your home look ridiculous, cluttered and really, really messy. Don’t get swept away in adding accessories – you can live without all those pillows on the sofa, can’t you? This rule applies to furniture, too.

3. Showroom ready isn’t as good as it may seem. The thing it lacks is individuality. Showroom ready solutions are stylish, yes, but if you want it to “work” with your home you should add some personal touch – accessories that reflect your personality.

4. Hey, it’s your home, not a gallery! Some people go to extremes with decoration. They put too many sculptures, too many paintings, and too many prints. Remember – artwork is just an addition, not a wall treatment.

5. Hey, it’s your home, not a telephone exchange. This means you should find a way to get rid of all those cables that wallow on the floor. You can easily do that by hiding them under the baseboard or covering them with cable covers.

6. Fashion, fads and trends. Yes, it’s good to be aware of decorating trends, but don’t overdo it. Just think about it – there’s a new fad, okay, you decorate your home according to it. What are you going to do when it goes out of fashion after several months and new fad is out? Redecorate your home? Better choose items with more universal looks, so they can keep their actuality over time. And if you still can’t escape your obsession with fads, just make sure to throw away all of your ex-fad objects.

7. Matching everything. Don’t make it look like there is only one color or only one style in the world! Experiment, mix, think eclectic – within measure, of course.

8. Small floating rugs. Rugs are beautiful, but they are not some work of art to display. Rugs should “interact” with furniture – there are 2 options: the furniture sit on top of the rug or the furniture frame the rug (it means that all of the furniture should rest their front legs on the rug).

9. Lighting is important, remember? Make sure that there is enough of it, that it’s not too harsh, that it highlights your interior’s good sides and hides the bad ones. It sounds complicated? Well it is. But it is a must to have it in mind.

10. Keep a sense of proportion. Make sure the furniture you chose fits well and properly into the room and does not make it look cluttered and too small/big.

11. Curtains…oh, the curtains. Curtains are a serious issue of many homes. The most common problems are : the curtains are too short or hung too low. In the first case curtains look cheap and wretched like there was not enough textile. To avoid this buy them longer rather than short. In the second case curtain hardware is hung too low. It crowds the window, making the ceiling appear lower. The right height of the curtain hardware should be about 6 inches to 1 foot above the window molding.

12. Art can also be hung too high. You don’t want the art in your home to go unnoticed or to cause neck cricks, do you? So hang art at eye level – it’s about 57″ to 62″.

13. Large furniture on the diagonal. You saw in some magazine how fresh a room looked with a sofa placed on the diagonal? Don’t try this at home. It’s a thing you better leave to professionals, otherwise you risk to get nice pockets of dead space behind them. Be wise and stick to classical solutions – large pieces of furniture should be “glued” to a wall.

14. Every room is a different world. Sounds exotic, but in practice it’s not, it looks absurd. If you have a favorite theme, it is enough to place a suggesting accessory – it will stand out and create the feel you are after.

15. Stylish – yes, comfortable – no. People tend to be carried away by furniture’s exquisite looks and buy it without thinking about how comfortable it is. Remember that the furniture you need should be comfortable and durable above all. Just imagine a modern chair that gives you backaches, or your children, playing with the dog on the expensive rococo sofa. Gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?

16. Balance, harmony, proportions…well, take them into consideration. Don’t pair small desk with a huge chair, long table with narrow mirror above it, too big bed with a small bedroom, etc. Keep things in scale.

Share your decorating mistakes below in the comments!