Create a unique space: 5 tips on how to decorate your home from scratch.

Are you moving into a new house? Then you are facing one of those moments that is both scary and exciting in equal measure: how should you decorate your new home from scratch?

Perhaps your head is full of ideas and you have checked out the latest trends in interior decorating, but where should you start and how can you ‘sort out’ all those references? Take note of some recommendations that you should take into account to make that new house a home with personality.

Stick to one single concept

There will be plenty of time to start looking at furniture and to make endless lists, but before all that it is essential that you know what it is you want your home to ‘convey’ and how you see yourself within it. Are you more of a minimalist? Is a retro style more in-keeping with your personality? Or do you like to mix influences?

And the fact is that just as a writer develops a whole story with its different characters and storylines all as part of one overarching plot, so it should be in interior decorating too: don’t make the mistake of taking decisions room by room ‘without rhyme or reason’, but rather choose a style and on this basis give each space its own personality depending on who is going to use it or what it is for. In this way any doubts as to how to decorate your first house will automatically have some basis on which you can work.

What will you need?

Moving into a new house gives you the opportunity to decorate every last corner as you wish, and as such, in accordance with the aforementioned premise of having a defined style, start to think about what furniture you want to include and where it is going to go, weighing up different possibilities until such time as you find the one that is best suited to you and your family.

*Tip: having a floor-plan of your house can help you to decide how to distribute the said furniture and give you a clearer idea: take a look at our post with tips on how to distribute your living/dining room to get the most out of it.

Yes it should look good, but above all it should be functional!

Often we make the mistake of allowing ourselves to be ‘seduced’ by magazines or shop displays that recreate ideal rooms with a distribution or a kind of furniture that is not necessarily going to meet the real needs of your day-to-day life. Think about your daily routine, and how you and the other members of your family use the house. What furniture or accessories are basic requirements or do you think you would miss if you didn’t have them?

Colours and lighting go hand in hand

Without doubt, choosing the colours for your new house is one of the most difficult decisions when it comes to how to decorate your home, given that it plays a crucial role in the atmosphere you create.

When choosing lighter or darker shades, bear in mind the orientation of the building and the amount of light that enters from outside. Even so, we recommend (a priori) choosing more neutral colours for the walls (which can always be changed later) and using darker colours in relief or for accessories.

Who lives there?

Don’t forget to give it your own touch and to include items of a more personal nature in the decoration, such as photographs, souvenirs, books, etc. so that the house reflects your personality!

Ready for that move?