With guests coming and going all summer, some homeowners may be frazzled about how to give their main rooms a quick makeover. With beautiful floors like the maple hardwood in Anderson's Eagle Lodge Hardwood Floors as their base, homeowners shouldn't worry. They go with any color or furniture style, making home design changes a simple matter.
Seasonal adjustments are probably the easiest to do. Introducing lighter, summery colors in fabrics and accessories will brighten any room design. Since many people have solid colors for their largest pieces of furniture, an easy way to change the look of sofas and chairs is to add pillows, decorative throws or slipcovers that introduce a variety of accent hues.
Soft furnishings like these are also the pieces that lend themselves to different patterns, prints and textures. Not only do they provide an affordable way to introduce a new look, but they can make a significant impact with very little effort. Using reversible fabrics makes it even easier.
Philadelphia interior designer Donna Hoffman suggested shifting your existing color scheme so that the main color becomes an accent shade and one of the accent hues is used as the anchor color of the room. That doesn't mean changing the color of your walls, but only the soft furnishings. Using Hoffman's formula, they can be changed with minimum fuss and expense.
Reevaluate your lighting
With longer days in summer, lighting wouldn't seem to be an issue. But after the barbecue is over and a night chill takes over the patio, guests will want to come into a warm and well-lit place to socialize.
According to This Old House Magazine, a variety of lighting can be implemented to cast a soft glow or bright illumination depending on the needs of the room and the atmosphere one wants to create. One interesting tip from the magazine is to hang a stained glass panel in a window that will reflect indoor light in a profusion of color.
When it comes to candles, they should be set at varying heights. The candles can also be coordinated with the hues used in a room's decor, although a neutral - light or dark - often works best.
Windows are a natural focal point if homeowners play them up as an architectural feature. Adding indoor shutters, a valance or customized drapes are all ways to play up the attention paid to a design element that's too often overlooked.