Breathe New Life Into Your Old Home
A lot of magazines and blogs would have you believe that good interior design is all about creating a home that looks clean, minimalist and current. This certainly isn’t the case! If you’re living in an older home, there’s no reason why you can’t preserve its rustic charm and respect its character. If you want to redecorate an older home, and the whole task is making you scratch your head, here are some great tips to follow…
Image from Wikimedia
Keep the Walls, Ceilings and Trims One Colour
In a lot of older homes, one of the most attractive features is the detailed work that’s gone into the molding, trims and doorframes. You simply don’t get this kind of polish and personality in more modern homes, so accentuate them with a fresh coat of paint. Go over the walls, ceilings and trims with one colour, and then get a paint with slightly higher gloss to go back over the trims. This will subtly draw people’s attention to them. With this background in place, you can contrast the doorways with a different, neutral tone.
Cover Awkward Windows with Drapery
One of the downsides to having an older home, from an interior decorator’s point of view, is the awkward, quirky windows which were installed in strange places all those years ago. If you’ve got any of these that are making décor tough, then covering the whole wall with drapery can be an excellent way to clean up the look, without totally getting rid of those windows and blocking out the natural light. Look at any “before and after” photos of rooms with high, awkward windows, and you’ll be amazed at how much difference this one change can make.
Let Vintage Trims Breathe with In-Window Shades
If you’ve got any windows with attractive vintage trims, then don’t smother this intriguing feature. Instead, use in-window shades, as opposed to loose, hanging drapes. This will not only accentuate one of the more attractive features of an older home, but will add a potent dose of modernism, keeping the whole space more up-to-date, without taking too much integrity out of a rustic space. Of course, if the windows are too dated to be polished, you may want to replace the frames with more modern glazing bars. You could also stick to wider, loose-hanging drapes to mitigate the impact of the ugly frames.
Mix the Old with the New
Including a few minimalist, modern pieces in a space, along with ones that look like they fit the period the home was built in (even if historians might disagree) will tie the potent, rustic air of an older home in with day-to-day life. Furthermore, when you have a decent balance between the old and the new in your home, it will help to make contemporary essentials like a plush sofa, TV, games consoles and so on look more at-home than they would if you kept the whole place looking rustic.
If you thought you could never make your older home shine, I hope this post has changed your mind!