Archive for the ‘Home And Family’ Category
December 22nd, 2009 | 
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The bedroom is in some ways the most important room in the house. It is the sanctuary away from the troubles of the world, the ultimate escape from day to day life. Behind closed doors in the bedroom, problems can be forgotten. To create a setting for restful slumber, think about what colors and styles produce the greatest happiness and peace of mind. In your bedroom, you can have the off the wall decorations you’ve always wanted. The bedroom is private, so the interior design of your bedroom is all about you.
Your bedroom does more than just serve the need for a place to sleep. It accommodates you at all times of day, providing space for reading, studying, watching TV, talking on the phone, eating, and using the computer. Because of this, the bed is no longer the primary piece of furniture in the bedroom. Bedroom desks, large nightstands, or a television might be a better focus for your bedroom interior design. If you watch a lot of television in your bedroom, you might want to consider a chair and ottoman for more comfortable viewing.
If you like to read in your bedroom, you should pay special attention to the lighting in your bedroom. Dim, moody lighting may be restful, but it will cause eye strain when reading. The lighting should be at a level where you do not accidentally shade it, and tall enough to shine light on the book or magazine. Bedroom interior design professionals suggest that when using lamps in the bedroom, the lower edge of the lamp shade should be around eye level when seated.
Remember to choose colors that you find restful when decorating your bedroom. Exciting colors such as red should be avoided unless you personally find them comforting. Strong colors have been said to promote insomnia. Designing your bedroom interior with a splash of a bright color will liven up a room, but it should not be allowed to dominate.
Layered curtains in the bedroom are and excellent interior design choice. This allows you to wake up to filtered light, open the curtains for full light, or black out the room for naps and sleeping in. Blackout lined draperies will protect you from morning sun, whereas sheers or thin blinds will filter light for a gentle glow in the morning. Bedroom interior design has many options, and can be tailored to your personal preferences. The bedroom should be your sanctuary, and it is important to feel comforted and restful when you are there.
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Just about everyone loves to have light flooding into our homes. This can reduce the symptoms of seasonal melancholy and it can increase the way you feel in general. But sometimes too much of a good thing can be a real pain. Black out curtains are created to help you maintain control of how much light penetrate your house.
There are many reasons why people invest in black out curtains. Some homes have wonderful natural light beaming inside them through the windows. Nevertheless, this lighting is not right for every area of the house. The amount of light that enters each room, no matter what time of day it is, can be managed through black out curtains.
I don’t always want a well-lit bedroom even if I love to have a well-lit kitchen. I like the fact that that my black out curtains can be utilized to have the room dark during all hours of the day. I chose to add this feature to our bedroom as soon as my husband started working different shifts for his job.
Shift work demands employees to put in hours around the clock. When my husband works from 12am to 8am he finds it extremely hard to fall asleep. The black out curtains are made to turn day into night. He can sleep during the brightest days when these curtains are pulled shut. If you need to sleep during the day, these are wonderful to have.
Investing in quality black out curtains provides you some benefits. First of all, a quality one can block all of the light that can possibly penetrate in the room. Several products will make the room very much darker but authentic black out curtains will block the incoming light at 100 percent.
I have other reasons for choosing black out curtains for my house. I want to have control of the light that enters inside. This gives me options and it could be useful. For example, I used the darkening curtains during kid’s birthday parties that have glow-in-the-dark themes. The children love that the glow-in-the-dark products work anytime.
These kind of curtains are flexible. I can move them anywhere and to any window of the house. I can have as much or as little light as I desire. The black out curtains are also very attractive. I really like the sturdy material and the clean lines. I also find interesting the fact that they are fire resistant.
After considering all of the benefits of having black out curtains for my home, I am glad that I made the purchase.
At will you can finish bedroom walls with wood, cloth, veneer sheet or cork. Natural materials are distinguished by the characteristic structure and color, they do not have cheerless monotony and always look warm and lively, which is especially topical for creating comfort in the bedroom.
Partially the image of the bedroom is defined by color that dominates in its setting.
Blue or dark blue plunge you into the thoughts of coolness and sky space. Green tones are associated with spring, freshness, they favor relaxation, but their emotional restraint requires active support from warm colors. Beautiful combinations are made as a result of combining pale shades with rich, saturated color and light.
Yellow gamma is like sun rays, it warms and animates the room, but it is recommended that vast yellow surfaces are freshened with fragments of other saturated colors.
It is better to soften orange by combining it with cool key of gray-blue or one can experiment with its pale shades. Red is considered “to cheer up”, but it is difficult to wake up in such a bedroom. It is better to use red colors as a light accent.
Violet is deep and expressive, especially in combination with mild yellow or green background.
Ascetic black-and-white gamma is actively used in popular minimalist stylizations. But the best decision for bedroom is thought to be shades of white that remind of baked milk or soft gray that approaches the color of flax linen.
Effective are combinations of light and dark, weak and saturated colors.
Textile plays the dominant role in the decorative finishing of the bedroom, even more so because cloth decorations are can be easily replaced at will. The chief textile topic of the bedroom is connected with finishing of the window and the bed.
The surface of walls and floor in this case serves as background: monotonous walls harmonize with variegated cloths with saturated colors; patterned wallpapers or a gay carpet, conversely, match one-color textile. However, interesting can be also the decision, when textile and walls are covered with one pattern. Upon basically finishing the bedroom, one can proceed to curtains.
Usually they are made from soft, well-draped clothes. The ideal variant is curtains of medium thickness that disperse intense daylight and soften light contrasts. If the window is on the sunny side, it is better to complement light curtains with thick ones, small screen rollers or Venetian blinds. The shape and pattern of the curtains can change the proportions of the window and influence the geometry of the room.
A small embrasure in the spacious wall can be visually increased by means of covering the whole window wall with curtains.
You should avoid using cloth with big pattern in a small bedroom with a great window opening, as this will even more diminish the room.
While choosing cloth for curtains, you should also consider a bedspread and bed-clothes.
The easiest thing is to make bed-spread from the same cloth, as the curtains, and bed-clothes by one or two tones lighter. A more original decision is a complex combination of cloths with different patterns and various textures, which reflect light in a different way.
Bed-clothes can be combined in the following way: a one-color sheet that matches the general coloring of the bedroom plus multicolored pillow-cases and blanket cover.
Have you decided on the planning, style, materials, color and textile?
The next stage is choosing the lighting.
It is better to avoid direct, open, collimated light in the bedroom, because it creates deep shadows. Disperse light can be achieved with the help of lamp-shades, plafonds from suffused glass or mosaics it is the so-called general, orientating light. And finally, it is impossible to imagine a bedroom without accent lighting: table, wall and floor night-lamps, built-in or hung up in the head bed lamps. They calm down and tune in for sleep.
These are some brief pieces of advice in design of “intimate space” of your house. Of course, advice is not a dogma, but it should be taken into the account, when you get to bedroom in your fantasies about repair-work.
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How you dress your windows is an important piece of your overall design and a lot of thought should go into the style and fabric used for your bedroom window treatments.
How do you know which window treatment is right in your bedroom?
There are 3 basic types of window treatments that can be used alone or in combinations. Here’s some tips on these basic types and what style of room you might choose them for.
Curtains and Drapes
Curtains and drapes are a style of window treatment that most of us can recognize but there’s many variations on this old standby. If your bedroom design is simple, you might choose just plain sheers as these will go well with many themes including a romantic theme, a modern theme and anything in between.
Valances can be used to soften the top of the window. They are great if you don’t want to cover up a great view but also don’t want the window to look too bare. Typically valances are made from fabric but you can build them form wood and decorate them with an aged or stencilled paint to go with your Tuscan or French country design. Fabric valances can go with almost any bedroom decorating theme depending on the fabric you choose and can be used in conjunction with sheers to give you a bit of privacy.
Drapes are an elegant bedroom window treatment. If you have a romantic, French or Victorian theme some heavy drapes in rich fabrics can transform your bedroom into one fit for a queen. Heavy drapes look best on tall windows, but if you short squatty windows like most homes built in the 60’s – 80’s don’t let that deter you from using great drapes. You can always just keep them closed to hide the window behind and no one will ever know the difference!
Wooden Shutters and Blinds
Indoor wooden window blinds are a great way to add privacy to your bedroom and can be used alone or with curtains, drapes or valances.
There are 2 styles of shutters – plantation shutters and café shutters.
Plantation shutters cover the whole window and have louvers which can be opened and closed to let light in or provide privacy. These shutters go great with a plantation style look, a country look or a coastal cottage look.
The café shutters are the kind that cover only the bottom half of the window and swing open to let light in. These also look nice in a country or beach style bedroom and are perfect for a Paris apartment style as well.
Fabric Blinds
Fabric blinds add a nice touch to any bedroom and can be decorated and embellished with whatever you want. Fringe, pom-poms and ribbon are just a few of the great ways to make these bedroom window treatments stand out.
Roman blinds work well for childrens rooms and informal styles such as cottage or beach style decor. These shades fold up to expose the window during the day and roll down at night.
Festoon blinds are puffy with lots of fabric. They are quite ornate and work best in a romantic style bedroom such as a Victorian, French or Italian motif. Festoon blinds look best on wide windows and might not be good for small rooms as they can tend to be a bit overwhelming.
There comes a time when your child is no longer a baby that the nursery room decor simply won’t do. Your child needs a place that he can call his own and which reflects his or her emerging personality.
Kids rooms should be fun as well as comforting and relaxing. When you set out to decorate your childs room, ask them what they like and incorporate some of their favorite themes and colors into the room. At the same time, it might be wise to keep an eye on the future and know that their tastes will change and if you make your decor flexible enough the room can last into your childs teens.
Here’s some tips on decorating kids bedrooms:
1. Use colorful curtains and accents. Show your child some curtain selections and ask them what they would like to see no the windows. Try to stick to bright colored window treatments as these will help the room to look sharper and cleaner.
Adding a valance can help define the opening of the window and lessen bright overhead light from coming in at the top of the windows. It also opens up the window so the room can be lit evenly during the day. Add a colorful or themed shade for privacy at night.
2. Consider using your childs toys as wall decor. This can serve two purposes – as decoration and to save on storage space. You can create hooks to hang larger toys and add shelves to display the smaller ones. Now if you can only get your kids to put them away!
3. You can always add paintings and prints in strategic places but make sure they are appropriate to the room. If you can afford it, consider having a wall or room mural painted on the walls in your childs favorite theme such as a magical forest, sports or race cars.
4. Decorate with photos of your childs most fondest memories. Family pictures of fun vacations or photos of your child on a day of achievement can add a personal touch to his or her room.
5. Depending on the age of your child, consider adding lifelike statues of his or her favorite cartoon characters or super heroes. This can add a bit of whimsy and make the decor unique.
6. Plants always add softness to any room and live plants help to clean the air. Just be sure you don’t add any plants that can be toxic and that your child is old enough not to dig in the dirt in the pots!
7. Don’t forget about the lampshades when decorating a kids room. Lamps and their shades can be purchased to accent any type of theme. You can also try making your own shades by buying plain ones and embellishing them with accents the compliment the rooms theme. Make it into a project that you can do with your child and they will really feel a sense of accomplishment every time they go into their room and see the lampshade.
8. Select your bedding to match the theme of the room as well as for comfort. Be sure to buy sheets, pillows and comforters that can be mixed and matched and don’t forget to add some extra accent pillows. You can even buy curtains that match the bedding, or if the curtains are not available for the bedding you have chosen, buy an extra set of sheets and make your own curtains.
9. Turn your childs ceiling into a magical night sky with glow in the dark decorations. These can be fun and even comforting for your child to be able to lay in bed and gaze up at the night stars.
10. Don’t forget to put educational and informative things into your kids bedroom. Include books, charts and toys that add to the childs education. Then your children can be learning while having fun.
Decorating your kids bedroom is a great way to give them a place they can call their own inside your home. You might even find your kid spending more time in there!