How to Make Your Home Look Elegant but Feel Cozy

Ladies,

A home can look regal and feel cozy but styling these two qualities together takes careful consideration. Here are some solid guidelines for the homemaker decorator to achieve a home that looks elegant but feels cozy. Afterall, we want things to look nice but feel just as good.

Long Billowing Curtains

The more you use long, beautiful curtains around your windows, the more the look harkens back to the days of ballrooms, sitting rooms, and a certain elegance that can be as understated or overstated as you want. By using lighter colors or lighter weight fabric you can get an ethereal feel from your curtains, ones that can even flutter in the wind from an open window. It is all very romantic. By using darker colors or heavier fabric, you can create a more regal, dramatic, evening look, perhaps for an area where one wants to be in a lowly lit room and cozy up with a drink at night or watch a movie. There is no right or wrong way to do curtains other than using a long enough length to at least graze the floor and hang them about 4″ above the window top to prevent them from looking so squat right on top of the window. Hanging them with the correct dimensions is where most people go wrong, the fabric choice is simply up to what you want in the room. Light fabrics are as cozy as dark ones; it just gives it a different style. The lighting in the room, the furniture, that all plays into how cozy the room is as well. It is never just one thing that makes it elegant or cozy. It is the combination of elements that achieve an outcome.

Lamps, lamps, and more lamps

Lighting is such a vital factor in the ambiance of your home. Overhead lights kill ambiance. Lamps with soft yellow bulbs, not bright blue light bulbs, create warmth and calm atmosphere. One of my favorite decorating moves has always been to place lamps where they would be needed, but where many people would just use overhead lighting. The kitchen countertop, the bathroom countertop, a hallway. Lamp light with the right bulbs create a soft and inviting atmosphere. It directs attention to cozy little nooks and makes an area suddenly look special or the area around it look special.

Think of all the different sizes of lamps and how they work for different areas of your house. Small lamps are perfect for small areas. Big lamps fill out the space in a large room. Style detail on a lampshade can be a beautiful textile element to the room lending it elegance. The style detail on the lamp stand also lends a huge decor influence. Simple pieces look more modern; a bit of ornate detail looks a bit old world. You could do a sleek modern room with a splash of ornate lamps, or a more regal old-fashioned decor but keep the lamps sleek and modern for a twist. What do you like? What are you naturally drawn to when you see it? When you look at rooms in photographs, what do the lamps look like? Try to analyze and observe what you like about certain lamps and then try to find similar styles for your home. But remember that nothing in a room stands alone. It is the combination of things that create the cohesive look of the room.

Create Sitting Areas

You have the ability to create sitting areas. Do not feel bound to the ways in which most rooms function, a sofa, a coffee table, a TV. Design sitting areas near a window to take advantage of the daylight for a coffee date spot, or a place to read a book. Look at your rooms as though they can be divided up into separate purposes. It does not just have to be a bedroom. It can be a bedroom with a sitting area. Even in a very small space I have always done this and it has only added comfort and elegance to the room.

I took a very small section of the wall between the closet door and the bathroom door and placed a small table with the two armless parson chairs at an angle to fit them in. I created added visual height by placing the wall art in between. This has worked in small apartments and small houses that I have lived in and the funny thing is, this actually makes a room look and feel bigger! When you create a sitting area in an ideal spot, it can create almost “another room” within the room. Try doing this behind a sofa that sits in the middle of the room, instead of just placing a table on the back of it. Try a window area, this has typically worked very well for me. Make your sitting area in a useless little corner of a boxy room. Creating sitting areas creates dimension in a room.

“Clutter” Your House with Beautiful Pieces

Yes ladies, in the day and age of minimalism, I encourage you to collect the right kind of “clutter”. We don’t want receipts and keys littering our countertops, that is what pretty baskets are for. You want enough “stuff” in your house to give it character, warmth, design. I fill my tables, countertops, and bookshelves with beautiful candlesticks, faux floral arrangements, picture frames with special photos, baskets, lamps, etc.

The fact is, a home that is void of elements that you find beautiful is kind of void of the woman running the home. Put something up and out that makes you feel happy when you look at it. Enjoy making your rooms pretty. People who do not buy pretty things but only collect “stuff”, that is the clutter worth purging. Beautiful items are meant to fill a home. Without these elements a home can feel cold and even poor. One man’s minimalism is another man’s poverty. Fill out your room with warm lighting, warm textiles, candles, photos, etc.

Squeeze in as Much Elegance as Possible into Small Rooms

This was my teeny tiny itty bitty bathroom in our rental house. I hung a billowy long piece of damask fabric and tied it with a tassel. I put a hook in the wall for the tassel to be drawn to the side. I created a big faux floral arrangement in a large vase and put a big candle on the back of the toilet. I put out a little glass with extra long matches on the countertop. I did a lot of other things in this bathroom.

I made this little bathroom a reprieve to the senses, and you can read about the entire makeover here. I squeezed every bit of elegance I could into this tiny little room. I placed a scalloped edge bath rug in front of the tub and layered a small table on it next to the bath. I rolled up a towel, placed some wine and a candle. I just kept building and layering in elegance for comfort and style.

Let Your Ingenuity, Imagination & Design Skills Overcome Hardship

You can make a lot out of very little with the right mindset. Make your home the most elegant and cozy place you can with what you have and with what you can find at discount. I thrifted almost my entire household of goods which you can read about here.

The piece of fabric over the bathtub was a find at a church rummage sale. I have used this same piece of fabric in various ways throughout the years. Just a piece of fabric has brought such beauty to my home. It has to do with how you use things as much as actually finding the gems at a discount.

Go forth ladies and make your home beautiful in only the way you can, since you were given your home and your family and they need you!

WHATEVERLOVELY.com

CHRISTIAN LIVING – FASHION – HOME