Interior Decorating Ideas

Now that you've built or bought a new home, it's time to start thinking about how you're going to decorate it. It's an exciting time for any new homeowner, and like life, it's open to nearly endless possibilities and paths you can take. Of course, once you get started, you may be inundated with these limitless options, and suddenly you have no idea where to start. Or you may have a few good interior decorating ideas and no way to choose between them. For every choice you make, after all, there is one that's left behind. If you're having trouble with a specific room, search HomeAdvisor for that specific room. We have articles on decorating specific rooms inside your home. If you're just starting out, though, we can help you brainstorm and decide how to create a home decorating scheme that you will be proud of.

Use Specific Styles to Generate Interior Decorating Ideas
Specific interior decorating ideas are a dime a dozen: wrought iron wall decor, flowing water for relaxation, vessel sinks, soft colors, little color, lots of color. Almost all of these ideas purport themselves to be the latest in home decorating fashion. This doesn't necessarily make them bad interior decorating ideas. Indeed, many of them are good ideas, but specific ideas and fashion trends may not help if you're just getting started. After all, you can paint your living room seaside peach, but without a decorating plan, simply choosing fashion trends isn't going to leave you with a cohesive and decorative interior.

To help figure out where you want to end up with your interior decorating, it's best to investigate decorating styles. By looking at what these styles have to offer, you can choose one or two that seem to best suit your own preferences, and then add wrinkles to this scheme as you deem appropriate. The point isn't necessarily to create an authentic French country home, but to consider the different atmospheres that are created and how these decorating schemes go about creating a cohesive decorating style.

Common Decorating Styles

Country Decorating: This decorating style is all about a laid-back lifestyle with a full decorating repertoire. In other words, if you love to impress neighbors with home accents but don't like the austerity of overly ornate decorating, you should look into this scheme. The need for slightly more maintenance is usually not a problem for country decorating. Although this decorating scheme is, naturally, meant to invoke a rural setting, you don't have to live out in the country to appropriate its look.

Contemporary Decorating: This decorating style puts a premium on functionality and convenience. If you have a high-paced lifestyle with little time to maintain detail-oriented decorating, here's where you should start. Lighting is usually an integral part of contemporary decorating.

Oriental Decorating: Whether it's Japanese interior design with interior lattice work or Chinese feng shui with its arrangement of home furnishings to help create a calm psychological landscape, oriental decorating tends to place a premium on minimalism and using open space as its own style of decorating.

Urban Decorating: This decorating style both invokes the urban setting and attempts to bring a bit of the country into the city. Stainless steel appliances and open ceilings are combined with decorative house plants and wall art to create a warm but streamlined design. Lighting again tends to play a large role.

Hiring an Interior Decorator
If you need some professional advice, don't hesitate to hire an interior decorator. Even if you don't think you need help with every last detail of home decorating, an hour or two-hour consultation can provide superb and personalized interior decorating ideas. The best thing about hiring an interior decorator is their ability to look at both the individual decorating items and the wide-angle decorating schemes. They can help you best find what to do with any odd spaces or architectural features, or they can tell you how specific wall hangings will (or won't) work with your furniture or floor covering.