How to Find Inspiration for Your Home

Posted by BULX.com

The primary goal of decorating a room or an entire house is to elicit an emotion. Most homeowners want to be relaxed and comfortable in their home, but other spaces are intentionally designed to be exciting, serene, sophisticated, inspiring, and more.

When it comes to decorating their own space, most homeowners don't know where to start.  This post is an introductory guide on where to start to create an original space you love.

As cliché as it sounds, finding inspiration for your home starts from within. Because we all have different associations with the sights, sounds, scents, and tastes we encounter every day, the interpretation of these experiences will never be the same.  The key, then, is to identify the things that you like (or don't like) and use them to

Some of our favorite sources of inspiration come from...

Nature, such as trees, wildlife, flowers, foliage and landscapes.

Other architecture, particularly urban planning sketches, modern buildings, or classical references.

Art, such as illustrations, digital art, sculpture or paintings...

and the water.

This is by no means an extensive list, but it should give you an idea of where to start.

Steps to Decorating Your Own "Emotional" Room:

1. Decide what emotion(s) you want to feel when you enter a room (serenity, excitement, happiness, formal/informal, nostalgia, relaxed,
2. Write down some places or memories or themes that you have the most positive associations with.
3. Jot down some descriptive words or items that you most commonly associate with those emotions (" bright colors" or "fast music" for excitement, "English library" for formal, "grandpa's old-fashioned radio" for nostalgia, etc.)
4. Visit Google Images or Bing Images and type in some of the phrases you have written down.
5. When you find an image that you like, save it into a folder on your computer.  Use the images you save to extract ideas for:
   1. Color - for your walls, furniture, fixtures, and accent pieces
   2. Texture - smooth vs. textured, plain vs. patterned, one-time vs. repetitive, fine vs. rough
   3. Style - which architectural styles do you like the most?
   4. Decorative Elements - which images could be used as accent pieces to help fill your space?

In future posts, we will work to translate these inspirational images and concepts into actual spaces.

Until next time, what inspires you the most?  Where else do you go to find ideas for your home?

Here's to loving your home,