Kids Room Decorating Ideas on a Budget - Tips & Techniques

As parents, everyone dreams of creating a nurturing environment for your little one to learn, play, grow, and thrive. Naturally, the development of this personal space starts from the very first day when you design their nursery. However, until they take over the task of decorating their own rooms as teenagers (let’s face it, everyone goes through this face of “self-expression”), it can be tedious to create a functional yet beautiful room that your child appreciates. And achieving this feat on a tight budget becomes even tougher!

Fortunately, here are some excellent tips and techniques to make your kid’s room swoon-worthy:

Work Hard, Play Harder

When thinking of the decor for your child’s room, less is more. With minimum furnishing and less decorative elements, you offer them ample room to indulge in something that they all love - have fun and play. Pair the dedicated play zone with some accessible, floor-level shelves where they can store their beloved toys. 

The open space also leaves room for you to include and update the furniture and decor as your child grows (more on that later). In fact, it is always a smart move to maintain this negative space even after every redecorating cycle. Hence, even if you do include furnishing, use items like a swivel TV mount to keep it compact and functional.

Colors Them Impressed

Deciding on the color theme and palette for the room can be a daunting task. You would naturally want something that screams “fun” but would not be too keen to give in to the child’s wishes of painting it shocking fluorescent orange (kids can make the strangest choices!) 

In this case, settling for the classic primary colors in pastel shades would be a smart move. These colors bounce light off of them and accentuate natural light. And when you have a kid at home, you would want them to bask in this natural light! In addition to splashing the room in peppy colors, you could also color coordinate the bedding, rugs, and panels to amp up the aesthetics. Alternatively, you could also choose an adult-feeling vibe for painting and decorating the room, especially if you intend to keep it such in the long run.

Play With Patterns and Textures

If repainting the room is not on your list, you can always use wallpaper, decals, and art pieces to give their room a pocket-friendly makeover. Make use of graphics, patterns to spice up the room and reflect your child’s likes and dislikes.

However, be mindful that kids may soon grow out of this phase, and something they loved dearly once can turn into an embarrassment. In this case, you could start with basic foundations and layer on some color, vibrancy, and pizzazz to make it more appealing to your child’s transient needs. When the time comes, strip these elements off and swap them with something more age-appropriate. 

Storage, Storage, Storage

From toys and games to books and wardrobe - as your child grows, their possessions will also expand proportionately (if not by leaps and bounds). Therefore, you need to plan in advance to organize all the clutter. One needs to get creative with storage options to envision practical ways to accommodate all the belongings. 

To double up your storage, you can start with the basics - hooks, under-the-bed storage shelves or drawers, take-apart crates, wall-hugging book rails, and furniture with built-in storage. Aside from picking out sleek and moveable storage elements, you can also decorate these to match the theme, allowing them to blend in with the surroundings.

Keep ‘Em Busy

If your child’s room allows for it, have a dedicated work area to keep their minds and little hands busy. Activities like coloring, playing with play dough, reading, etc. encourage the physical and mental development of a child. So why should you hold back in inculcating such valuable habits?

Set up a reading corner or a workstation in a quiet nook where the child can indulge in these hobbies. It also gives them space to spend some quality time with themselves and get away from things. In due time, you can transform this area into a homework station.

Leave Room in Rooms

As you may have fathomed by now, decorating your child’s room requires several changes and upgrades that happen over time. The room will grow just as your child would and change as per their needs, habits, and preferences. With this in mind, it would be sensible to leave room to change the decor, the scheme, or accessories. Make use of elements that you can uninstall and remove without any hassles to accommodate these long and short-term changes.

Conclusion

Every child is unique, and decorating their room that reflects their personality and style will make them feel seen and acknowledged. Hence, involve them throughout the process and incorporate their ideas while decorating the room. It will hone their individuality and offer you a great opportunity to bond and spend time with each other!

How To Choose the Right Type of Furniture for Your Home

Picking out the furniture for your brand-new abode is an exciting but stressful experience.

Furniture is expensive, and there's a huge pressure put on selecting the “perfect” fit. If you decide you're not too fond of your new couch, returning it and picking out a new one is a hassle—and it’s something you likely don't have time for.

If you're wondering how to choose the right type of furniture for your home, these quick and easy tips will help.

Pinpoint Your Style

Narrowing down your options is a crucial but simple step. Think of your personal preferences and the aesthetic you want your interior design to reflect.

If you're fond of a sleek, modern style, you can take older, traditional-looking furniture off your list. A preference for the rustic, cottage-inspired look suggests you should focus on pieces that are wooden, distressed, and natural. Having a sense of direction makes it easier to find that perfect piece of furniture.

Considering your home's interior is important, too. What color are your walls? Is the flooring carpet, tile, or hardwood? Do your thresholds have a natural, wooden trim, or are they metallic? If your furniture clashes with the room’s overall interior, it can look odd.

Choose the Right Material

Another tip for choosing the right type of furniture for your home is to consider its material.

The right material will set your home's mood. Metal furnishings are clean, modern, and attractive—but if there's too much of it, your room can appear cold and unfriendly.

Glass is bright, delicate, and airy. It gives your home a gentle look and makes rooms appear lighter and more spacious. The material's fragile nature can make your guests feel like they need to walk on their tiptoes, so be cautious about going overboard.

Leather is sleek and sophisticated, and it gives your home a professional flair.

Fluffier materials give off the illusion that you're walking on clouds. These materials exude a warm-hearted aura.

Wood is the preferred material for most individuals. It's versatile and has several advantages over metal, leather, and glass. If you're aiming for a natural, familiar aesthetic, wood is the way to go.

Consider the Space

The amount of space you have available is a necessary consideration.

If you live in a compact apartment, steer clear of larger furniture items. They'll pack your rooms to the brim, making them difficult to navigate and cluttered. Conversely, don't fill larger rooms with small, dainty objects; if you do, you'll be left with tons of unused space.

For smaller rooms, use what's available to you in a creative way. Seek out furniture items that offer built-in storage. Tables with drawers, storage compartments, and ample shelving are good ways to keep your home organized without taking up excessive amounts of valuable space.

10 Tips for Making a Living Room Feel More Livable

In the age of COVID-19, we’re all spending a lot more time at home. Large gatherings are becoming small gatherings, and our living rooms are seeing a lot more use. So, it pays to spruce up our living space, particularly our living rooms. Check out some of our top picks to make your living room feel more livable below!

1. Let in the Light

A few layers of light can make any room shine. Whether you get your light from natural sources, like a skylight or large windows, or recessed lighting, such as a chandelier or overhead placement, or a wall-mounted light source like a sconce, a few different layers of light are essential for a living room and can also perform a variety of decorative functions. It’s important to vary your light sources. Don’t make it all-natural, and don’t make it all artificial. Mix and match for the best aesthetic and ambiance for your living room space.

2. Keep Seat Height Consistent

You shouldn’t have a variety of seating options at different heights. A high-backed chair next to a low sofa doesn’t look good. Vary the seating (see Tip #3), of course, but also be sure to keep height and scale somewhat consistent to avoid a jarring, off-putting aesthetic.

3. Mix It Up

What we said about height aside, your chairs and sofas don’t need to match each other (and really, they shouldn’t, unless you want your living room to look like a brand catalog). Mix and match styles, from L-shaped sofas to futons to traditional sofas, and incorporate a variety of chairs to create a unique space that you want to call home.

4. Go Green

A holistic approach to design can go a long way. Incorporate healthy, natural materials to craft a healing space. Eco-friendly furnishings, organic textiles, and raw fibers are excellent ways to make any space feel a bit more natural. Add a few plants, and even try some biophilic designs, perhaps hanging succulents, a living wall planter, or something else!

5. Conversation Circle

This furniture-arranging trick has worked for hundreds of years. Basically, arrange your chairs and sofa around a central point, a table, for example. That said, you can try a few variations, too! Instead of a traditional sofa-and-chair layout, try a series of upholstered swivel chairs, or opposing couches, to create a casual, laid-back conversation circle.

6. Use Natural Wood

Natural wood is an excellent choice to make a spacious, open living area inviting and cozy. Natural wood isn’t just decorative or functional, it can balance out a living space by increasing texture and warmth. The organic element elicits the allure of nature and harkens back to a more cozy, visceral time, even in the most contemporary of homes. Ceiling beams, plank walls, and raw oak floors are excellent large-scale ways to incorporate natural wood, but handmade wood tables and chairs work well too!.

7. Bring Out the Books

Bookshelves aren’t just an excellent wall space decoration, they’re a great place to… well, store your favorite books. Artwork and family photos also fit right in on a bookshelf. These additions all give a more personal, individualized ambiance to a living space, making it feel “lived in.” What’s more, they give guests something to look at while you prepare to make your grand entrance!

8. Rugs, Rugs, Rugs!

While most designers would say that any rug should take up around two-thirds of floor space and all the legs of the furniture should sit atop the rug, we wouldn’t hold ourselves to that standard. Try different things. Shag carpet, cool designs, whatever you like! Layering rugs is also a great idea, creating multiple spaces and a more intimate atmosphere. A good rug is a perfect accent piece, too. In many cases, “It really ties the room together” (The Big Lebowski, anyone?).

9. Cater to the Occupants

In other words, read the room! Regardless of the size or layout of your living space, you want to craft a living room design that caters to the people living there. Keep in mind who will be using the room and how they’ll be using it. If you have three kids, keep that in mind. If you’re single, live alone, and only want your living room to be a showpiece, keep that in mind. That said, in general, durable and comfortable fabrics and disaster-proof finishes are integral to making a living room both long-lasting and welcoming. 

It’s quite hard for guests (or yourself) to feel comfortable if they’re worried about ruining furniture or breaking things. Don’t make it a child’s playroom, of course, but keep things simple and durable. It will go a long way towards making your space more welcoming. That way, when guests come over, they can put their feet up and relax.

10. Add Awesome Art

Art is always good. Incorporate your favorite paintings, sculptures, or tapestries to give a room a unique vibe that’s all your own. There’s no right way to add art to a room, but just remember to cater it to your own personal space, keeping your intent in mind at all times. Art is also a great conversation piece!

How To Use Color-Coding To Organize Your Home Office

Even neat-desk types can benefit from quick visual clues about what goes where and what’s inside a folder. Learning how to use color-coding to organize your home office will save time and ease frustration when you’re looking for documents and supplies.

Use Colors According to What They Mean to You

Green means go; red means stop; yellow means caution—we learn this from the earliest days of crossing the street. In addition to traffic lights, color codes have been used to indicate threat levels, such as the prevalence of infection in geographic areas. They’ve even been used to label states by their predominant political persuasions.

When you’re deciding how to use color-coding to organize your home office, pay attention to your most immediate associations with individual colors: green may mean money to you, but it could also indicate a folder with a project that has been green-lit. Red could mean work that has stopped, or it could mean work that’s extremely urgent (“code red”). Yellow could mean happy or hazardous. Your system will be successful if there’s no confusion about what the colors mean in your individual color-coding scheme.

Code Consistently

Once you’ve decided which colors you’ll associate with what—types of work, urgency of work, client, or subject—be consistent with your color code across all applications. This means the colors on your calendar should correspond to the colors of your file folders. You can even fasten documents with staples in different colors that correspond to the hanging folder in which you’ll keep them or that signify the creator or the subject of the document.

If you use a physical planner or bullet journal, use the same color-coding system when you write in them, and do the same for sorting e-mails.

Don’t Overthink It

Color-coding works best if you keep it simple. Office supplies may keep expanding the number of colors and shades of colors available, but using a complicated palette of colors will create more confusion than organization. Purchase file folders, hanging files, staples, and pens or markers in the fewest number of colors you need to divide your work by subject, urgency, stage of completion, or client. Three-ring binder colors and their tab separators will also give you fast ways to get at the information you need to keep your work flowing.