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The Six Essential Elements to elevate your home
The Six Essential Elements to elevate your home
After you paint your walls, cover your windows and place your furniture, there are six essential elements to consider when styling a living space:-
- Soft furnishings
- Lighting
- Wall Art
- Jars Pots & Vases
- Other decoration
- Candles, Scents & Perfumed Flowers
If you are attempting to create a cohesive look, you should consider each of these areas to add texture, dimension and comfort while personalising the space with your style.
At Pieces of Joy, our top tip for creating a harmonious feel is to choose items you love and want to surround yourself with. After all, it's your space, style is always subjective and personal, and even the most prolific entertainers will spend most of their time enjoying their space without guests. This article explores each essential element in detail to help novice decorators style their homes and confidently personalise their spaces.
Element 1: Soft Furnishings
Soft furnishings such as rugs, throws and cushions are relatively affordable ways to bring a unique style, colour or feel to a room. When used together, they soften the hard edges of large furniture pieces, add luxury and comfort to a sitting area, and add additional texture to provide dimension to your room.
Rugs
When people think of buying a rug, they often look for a solution to cover or warm up a hard floor. But beyond practical purposes, rugs have a more critical styling use in defining a space and linking furniture pieces together.Rugs are a lovely way to add an extra layer of luxury to a carpeted area, however, decorators must carefully select the correct size rug– just like the Goldilocks principle, it shouldn't be too big or too small, as it can take away from the sense of harmony in a room.
Throws
The most obvious reason to use throws in your living spaces is that they add bursts of colour and texture to a piece of furniture, immediately transforming them. In various colours, fabrics and textures, throws (or throw blankets) are typically lap-sized and easily draped across any chair's back, side, or arm. Beyond their good looks, throws can be used as a blanket to add warmth or cover and protect furniture from pets or children. Finally, throws are very convenient to move around or store during the warmer months.
Cushions & Cushion Covers
Changing cushions and cushion covers are a simple and affordable way to change the mood of any room. Whether on couches, chairs, beds or the floor, cushions of different sizes and shapes can soften a space and evoke feelings of cosiness and luxury. Look for throw cushions in colours and patterns that will coordinate with the palette you are already using in your home.
When choosing your cushion combinations, there are a few simple guidelines to keep in mind:-
- The key to success with bolder prints is to balance them with cushions in neutral tones.
- If you have a neutral colour theme in your living room, select two or three bold colours to inject a little depth into the space.
- The more neutral your room, the brighter your cushions can be. Don't be afraid to combine multiple textures, from velvet to silk to fur; combining heavy textures with lighter ones across your cushions will keep your home cosy yet modern.
Element 2: Decoration
There are so many items that fall into the decoration category available at Pieces of Joy. We specialise at sourcing beautiful and unique Homewares items that are visually impactful and high quality, without being priced to break the bank! Our specialty range of ceramics are sourced from quality local and overseas manufacturers and have been carefully chosen to work with your existing tableware to bring new life to your entertaining. While any list of decorator items can be extensive, general categories you should consider for your home include:-Artificial Plants
Mixing and matching artificial and real plants is a wonderful way to add consistent greenery to your space with less upkeep and maintenance. Some incredibly realistic and beautiful arrangements are available that need a little dusting to maintain their glory all year long.
Keepsake Boxes
Keepsake and trinket boxes are a lovely addition to a side table or coffee table and can be filled with sweet treats for guests or prized objects that require protection.
Picture Frames
Although many of the photos taken today are never printed, it is worth selecting some special memories and displaying them within your home to surround yourself with your nearest and dearest. Grouping frames of similar colour tones and different shapes can be a stylish way to dress a side table or provide a foundation for a gallery wall.
Trays
Beyond the practical use of a tray to carry and deliver items from one place to another, decorative trays are an excellent way to define a display space on a tabletop. A square tray on a round table immediately adds dimension and interest to the surface area and provides a designated place to hold condiments and seasonings in a convenient grouping.
Baskets
If you're looking to fill a larger space or use storage to display objects stylishly in plain sight, baskets are a perfect solution. Whether used in single or group formations (think odd numbers of 3 or 5), baskets allow you to contain and display soft furnishings and items that do not store easily.
Decorative ornaments
Often passed on as family heirlooms or received as gifts, we all have treasures to display that hold great significance and meaning. However, these sometimes pose a decorating challenge as they may not suit the design style or aesthetic we have created for a room. The secret is to tie these items in with two other decorator pieces that fit your style so you minimise their difference.
Element 3: Lighting
While overhead lighting provides a room's practical lighting, Lamp Shades and Lamp Bases are opportunities to add decorative flair to your rooms.
Of course, they have practical value however, mixing and matching interesting lamp shade and base combinations can elevate a space and bring your theme to life.
Element 4: Wall Art
Wall hangings, art and photos can be stylistic icing on the cake. Wall art draws the eye, pulls together your space, and makes your home more inviting and exciting. Not only does wall art add personality to your area, but it gives any room an instant upgrade and ties everything together.
Here are our top 3 tips when thinking of wall art choices for your space:-
- Try to keep it in proportion – pictures shouldn't be more than two-thirds longer than your sofa.
- Measure up before you shop - Hanging height matters, and you should aim to keep wall art 15 centimetres, at minimum, above the edge of your furniture. Also, consider the height of your ceiling and the room's proportions when placing your art.
- Small prints can get lost on their own – group small pieces of art for impact rather than filling a large space with a mini print. Works by the same artist or in the same colour scheme will complement each other well
Element 5: Jars, Pots and Vases
If you love the Hamptons look in your home, Ceramic ginger jars, pots and vases are the perfect way to bring the blue and white theme to a new level. Styling vessels of different shapes, heights and functions creates a unified but interesting display.
At Pieces of Joy, we often get asked 'What is a Ginger Jar?' – put simply, Ginger jars are large containers with lids used in ancient China to stock spices and herbs in during the Qin Dynasty. In the 19th century, Ginger Jars were exported to Europe, and Europeans began calling them "ginger jars" presumably because some of them carried ginger.
Element 6: Candles, Scents & Perfumed Flowers
Beyond the visual, a room needs to appeal to all the senses to be truly inviting. And while people often overlook it, using scents to layer your space is a very cost-effective way that is also easy to change with the seasons. Scented Candles are a wonderful home styling element that helps bring your favourite smell into your living areas at the strike of a match. But importantly, they must be extinguished when you leave the room.
For long-lasting fragrances that you can set and forget, Perfumed Diffusers & Perfumed Flowers are a great way to link a fragrance throughout your home while adding décor. At Pieces of Joy, our Cote Noir range of scented candles, diffusers and flowers allow you to select a scent your love and link it throughout your home.
If you want to create the soft visual impact of candles without the fuss and fire danger of real candles, LED Candles are a beautiful and practical option. The LED candles made today look realistic, adding soft flickering light to a dining table, sideboard or coffee table display.
Some advantages of LED candles include:-
- They cannot start fires
- They cannot cause burns to children or pets
- They don't drop wax and mark furniture
- They are economical due to their LED technology, and they will never burn down to an empty vessel
- They don't produce smoke with harmful toxins
If you consider your home your sanctuary, spending the time to curate your spaces will pay you back in spades. There is no need to tackle everything at once, rather, we suggest you slowly add to your rooms when you come across items that appeal to you and approach one room at a time, adding and swapping the essential elements until you achieve a look you love.
If you fall in love with a particular item, it will eventually find its place within your home, although maybe not where you first imagined it. There is no right and wrong, only your style and way of combining pieces that make you feel at home. And if you ever get bored with your look, you can always reset your furniture and rearrange your home all over! We'd love to help you on your home decorating journey and welcome you to come in store to Pieces of Joy and let us play with your vision.
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