Your home is your sanctuary, the place where you feel safe and you want it to be as beautiful as your thoughts, but you lack experience in interior design. Don’t worry! There are some tips that can help even seven years old succeed. So how are you going to create the interior design that will mesmerize your friends and relatives? And how are you going to fashion a positive ambiance for your home? Here are a few tips:

1. Choose a theme. Let’s say you are a passionate collector of butterflies. Why hide it? Choose this theme to decorate your home. Butterflies go well with flowers and other nature elements: leaves, ferns and trees. Place an original painting of a butterfly on the wall you want to set the focus on. You could also display your butterfly collections in a special arrangement. Your hobbies provide the personal note each room needs so much and many so-called designer rooms lack.

2. Choose your colors. Use a color scheme to help you choose the best colors for your home. You should use the colors that make you feel good – after all this is your home and you don’t need any fancy designer to tell you pink doesn’t match with green. Use some color accents to “spice up” the room. But remember: a single color should dominate circa 75 % of a room. Don’t over-color your rooms, as you might get a negative mood.

3. Choose your patterns. As per colors, you could use whatever you fancy, but don’t overdo it! Three is a crowd, but an acceptable crowd. More than three patters will lead to chaos. For your butterfly theme, you could use flower patterns and circles. Vary their scale: some small, some big. Spread them around the room and create a balance of color and patters. Don’t be afraid to try out new things. Let your heart decide. Believe it: your heart knows best!

4. Keep it simple. You need a place to relax, a place of comfort after a hard day at work. So keep it simple. Too much furniture adds weight to a room: gone is your sense of freedom. An over-furnished room is often gloomy and dull. Keep it simple, keep it functional and you are on the right path.

5. Light means life. You don’t want to live in a dark room. It has nothing to do with the fear of darkness (maybe you are not one of those afraid of the dark) but light is essential, especially in its natural form, as it kills bacteria and viruses, due to its UV emissions. Artificial lighting should be chosen carefully. There are enough manufacturers offering economical lighting objects. Choose LEDs or other economy lamps. Better opt for a more expensive product that has an extended warranty. Why should you pay for inferior quality? There’s a rule you should never ignore: you get what you pay for.

These basic five tips will not transform you over night into an interior designer, but they will certainly help you decorate your home with taste and a sense of professionalism.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to interior-design.guide-for-you.com/ Interior Design

Adding light to any room instantly heightens the look, style and ambiance. Who wouldn’t love a bit of light to their home, since lighting is one of the more affordable ways to redecorate? With lighting options such as table lamps and floor lamps never going out of style, it’s a lot easier to choose which type of lighting will go with your home while complementing your personal style.

Table lamps, for instance, come in a variety of designs, sizes, and shapes, but regardless they all perform the same function. Ideally used as reading lights, table lamps can also be easily used as accent lights for any room or hallway in your home. Now, this all depends upon the style and size of your table lamp. If per chance your lamp features a traditional style, complete with an accordion lamp shade and pull chain, it may be best to utilize it as a reading lamp in your living room, den or bedroom. Accent lamps usually have a much more unique feel to them and have a contemporary design. These are best used as corner pieces along the walls of your living room or foyer. Contemporary styled lamps usually sit well on console tables, end table pieces and coffee tables, which will add a hint of loud style to any demure room in a tasteful yet fun manner.

Floor lamps also act as terrific accent lights while offering an illuminating glow to any room. Usually placed in corners, there are a few types of floor lamps that you could get away with placing right next to your sofa or love seat. For instance, if your floor lamp happens to be adjustable and is used mainly as a reading lamp, then it’s perfectly alright to have it placed by your reading couch. Otherwise, it’s best to keep floor lamps in the corner. Torchiere lamps are the prime example of floor lamps that should always be kept in the corner. The only tricky thing about torchieres is that you have to make sure nothing will fall into the shade. Since they’re upward facing lamps, spiders, bugs and even curtains can fall in, which may bulb burnouts or worse yet, fires.

Essential to homes everywhere, lamps are the quintessential to interior design. And with the right lamp, you’ll be looking at your home in an entirely different light!

For an excellent selection in

Do you and your houseplants constantly battle? Do house plants
always seem to find a way to die soon after you bring them home?
Does your plant care need help? Ready to fix the problem?

Some people have thrown in the towel and stopped trying to keep
houseplants in their home. The reason is not because they hold a
basic dislike for plants. No it comes down to basic survival.
House Plant survival!

Many often give over attention and kill even the hardiest of
houseplants like the aloe vera plant. When you step back and
examine they’re plant care habits you’ll find the problem comes
down to water. Over-watering to be exact. They have no idea how
much or often to water their plants. They either give them too
much or not enough. One solution to the over watering problem
with indoor plants can come from using self watering planters to
reduce plant-watering headaches.

Who wants a home without plant life? Plants provide color, texture
and depth, plus they make each room unique. Artificial plants,
even the quality silk ones which by the way have a place in
interior decorating lacks the look and feel living houseplants.
Plus artificial can become big dust collectors.

The beauty potential of plants can provide will never be achieved
if proper water techniques and practices are not followed. If
fact, incorrect watering can harm the plant by causing root rot
and creating an environment for plant diseases. Watering plants
can be simplified with sub-irrigation or self watering practices.

The self watering container design found today includes
irrigation technology, and aesthetic designs compliments the
demanding world of interior design and decorating with a wide
array of colors, shapes and sizes.

We all agree plants provide beauty. However, we’ve known for
decades the other benefits indoor foliage provides. The serve the
valuable function of being the world’s air filters and cleaners.
They work non-stop making our environment better.

With busy work schedules, hitting the gym regularly, squeezing in
quality family time, taking care of duties around the house like
washing clothes. Most of us find little room on our plate for
watering plants. Using the time a technology advantage of self
watering pots now means watering can come down to checking the
water level in the reservoir.

Self watering pots work with a tank or reservoir creating a false
bottom of pot. Using wick type material which stays in contact
with the water coming out of the water tank the wick stays in
contact with the soil often running right through the drainage
holes of the growing container. As the potting media slow dries
the water slowly gets drawn up like a sponge through the wick
distributing moisture through the soil. Think for a moment of a
paper towel drying up water.

At first glance self or automatic watering pots make people a
little skeptical. Ask yourself… without sensors or programming,
how does the container know when to water? The wick in a tank of
water and the soil function like a natural sponge. It is nature
at work!

Now whatever excuses you may carry on not having plants in your
house are gone. Try a self watering pot and see for yourself how
easy watering plants can be.

Thomas Fryd shares his houseplant experience at plant-care.com www.plant-care.com. He recently looked at plant-care.com/automatic-watering-for-plants.html self watering planters and pots and how success with houseplants can be made easier when utilizing them.

Most parents to be love decorating the nursery as it really does bring the reality that a new arrival is on its way. There are lots of different decorating styles that you could choose from that sometimes it can often be a hard decision to actually choose one! There are so many things to think about when planning the nursery so just what exactly should you be aware of?

Planning the Décor and Furniture

It is extremely important to plan first before you actually set off designing what you want. You need to plan the furniture, the color scheme and also the little extras that you may want within the room.

Furniture wise you are going to need a cot or a cot bed, a changing table and a wardrobe. Then there are extras such as a mobile to hang over the cot and a nightlight to soothe the baby at night as well as a playpen for when the baby needs to be left alone for a few minutes. However, before all of that you need to decide a color scheme.

Many parents to be choose a color scheme based on the sex of the baby. However, if you do not want to know the sex of your baby then you may wish to choose a neutral color. If you wanted to be completely different you could always decorate with a mural on the wall. Obviously you will need to be artistic to do this or you could buy wallpaper which has baby animals on it. Usually there is a wide selection of nursery wallpaper so if you do get stuck you can always go back to that.

Where to Find Nursery Equipment

If you are decorating the nursery with paint then your local hardware store should be able to help you. However, if you are using wallpaper then a DIY or craft shop may be able to help. As for the furniture, that can be found in all kinds of places.

Either you can choose the furniture and extras at a department store, or if you are on a budget you could always try the discount stores or even a flea market. You never know what you will find at a flea market and some parents do find some good bargains there. So, you have to be prepared to look everywhere and you should definitely find something to suit you.

Overall planning and decorating the nursery should be fun and it should be given at least a little planning beforehand!

Andrew Caxton is the author and editor of many nursery articles and newsletters published at home-decorating-reviews.com home-decorating-reviews.com . A website with tips on home-decorating-reviews.com/styles-guide.html decorating styles.