Zoe-Lee Skelton

They say there’s no place like home, and for many of us, this statement rings true. Home is a place where we can relax and be ourselves. When you’re designing your home’s interiors, it’s always important to consider the purpose of each room and how you want to feel when you use that particular space. In an office or studio, you want to be inspired and motivated. In the kitchen, you may wish to create a sociable space where you can hang out and catch up. In the bedroom, it’s important to feel calm and design an area where you can chill out, switch off and embrace the peace and quiet. If your bedroom is more hectic than heavenly, and you’re keen to create a tranquil haven to retreat to after long, busy days, here are some suggestions to inspire you.

Using colour to set the tone

Colours can have a significant impact on the way we feel. Certain shades can energise and uplift us, while others can make us feel calm. In the bedroom, it’s beneficial to opt for tones that facilitate relaxation. Avoid colours like orange, yellow and purple and opt for blue, white and grey. Pastel tones can also work well. If you want to add colour without making a bold statement, keep the walls understated and use accessories to add interest. Monochrome is a really popular choice for bedrooms. If you’ve got white walls, you can use soft furnishings, vases and frames to add grey and black tones. When you’re searching for inspiration for colours, have a look at some samples, get some ideas from the Internet and interior magazines and think about the kind of style you want to go for.

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Making your bed the star of the show

Most of us spend the majority of our time in the bedroom sleeping. When you walk through the door, and you catch sight of your bed, how do you feel? Do you feel relaxed and overjoyed that you’ll soon be climbing under those covers or does you bed leave you wanting more? If you’re keen to make more of a statement and ensure your bed is the focal point of the room, take a look at some designs and styles on sites like John Ryan by Design or think about ways you could breathe new life into an existing frame. If you’re a creative person, and you don’t want to buy a new bed, you could always embrace the upcycling trend and use your talents to make a unique headboard or an eye-catching frame, for example. Once you’ve got your bed sorted, use linen and accessories to bring attention to it.

Adding subtle lighting

Lighting can be used to brighten up a room, but it’s also a really useful means of setting the tone. In the kitchen, you probably want as much light as possible, but in the bedroom, it’s best to keep things muted and subtle. Low-level lighting creates a romantic ambience, and it will help to prepare you for a well-earned rest. Stick to bedside lamps or fit a dimmer switch so that you can turn down the lights and create the right mood when you’re ready to hit the hay. You could also use LED candles or even fairy lights to add cosiness.

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Embrace the darkness

As humans, we are programmed to sleep at night and wake when it’s light. If you’ve got light streaming through the windows and you’re trying to wind down and doze off, you may struggle. Ensuring that the room is dark will create the desired atmosphere and make it easier to get to sleep. If your room isn’t pitch black at night, you could add a lining to your curtains or invest in some blackout blinds.

Celebrating plant power

Plants can bring a beautifully fresh and natural aesthetic to the bedroom, but they also have benefits for your physical and mental health. Studies show that having plants at home can improve air quality and help you feel less stressed. With so many people struggling to relax due to stress, adding some plants to your boudoir could prove beneficial. Research suggests that exposure to plants can lower your blood pressure, combat stress and improve your mood. If you’re not a gardener, don’t worry. It’s very easy to care for houseplants. All you need to do is choose a spot with access to natural light and water your plants every couple of days.

Image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/emilysnuffer/10270509044

Decluttering

Take a walk into your bedroom. How do you feel when you open the door? Do you feel happy, relaxed and peaceful or do you feel anxious or on edge? If your room is full of stuff, there are clothes and shoes scattered all over the place, and you can’t see the floor for dust, now is the time to embark on a decluttering mission. Clutter can make you feel stressed, and it can make it difficult to switch off and get to sleep. Invest in some storage boxes or fit some shelves to enable you to tidy your belongings away or display them in a stylish manner. A tidy room makes for a tidy mind. If you’re guilty of hoarding things, try and be ruthless. If you’ve got clothes you haven’t worn for years or ornaments that are gathering dust in boxes, have a clear out. Decluttering can be very cathartic.

When you’re heading up to your bedroom to read a book, listen to some music or catch forty winks, you want to feel completely calm and relaxed. If your bedroom is full of stuff, the decor is garish or drab, or there’s no space to chill out, now is the time to overhaul your boudoir to bring a sense of serenity. You don’t have to spend a fortune to achieve a stunning transformation. Choose soothing colours, keep the room dark and tidy and set the tone with ambient lighting and an inviting bed. Finish the look with some carefully-selected accessories and some houseplants. Hopefully, you’ll have a stunning sanctuary in no time.

Over time, it can be easy for the home to become disused in a number of ways. One of the clearest and commonest ways for this to happen is for individual rooms to stop being used as they are meant to be. This means that your kitchen is no longer just a space for eating, or your bedroom has become more than just somewhere to sleep. This happens gradually in most households, but by the time it has occurred it usually means that the home as a whole has lost much of its charm. It then becomes necessary to find a way to reclaim those rooms, so that the home can improve again.

The Bathroom

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We’ll start with an easy one. The reason the bathroom is usually easy to reclaim is actually twofold. Firstly, it is not usually quite as prone to being disused as many other rooms are. Secondly, it is often the smallest room of the home, making any changes that are necessary easier and quicker to carry out. To begin with, take a look at the decor. It is perfectly possible that the passage of time has rendered the decor of your bathroom outdated. This can happen sooner than you think, and it is definitely worth looking into. With any luck, you will only need to give it a quick lick of paint to get it back to the level of standard you want.

You might have noticed that storage has become a problem in your bathroom. Usually what happens is that the bathroom is at first only used for storing those items which are relevant to it. But then after a time, you might end up having to store other things in there as well. This could be random items from around the home, or you might have even started putting more and more ornaments in there too. After a while, this can result in a bathroom which is no longer functioning in the way you would hope. It can feel more cluttered and messier than you would like, and this can take much of the potential relaxation out of using the bathroom. The obvious solution is just to de-clutter the room – and you might well find that this makes a huge difference.

Starting with the bathroom in this way will have a way of making you feel much more in control of your home, and you will then feel more ready to move on to some of the other, larger rooms.

The Bedrooms

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Psychologists often claim that you should use the bedroom for two things, and these things alone: sleeping and sex. But how many of us have noticed that the bedroom starts to be used for much more than just these things? It normally doesn’t take too long for any bedroom to become a general kind of dumping ground for random items, much in the same way that the bathroom can (as we have just seen). However, the bedroom is altogether different because we are often prone to leaving it alone for much longer, for whatever reason there might be behind that. If you want to reclaim your bedroom you will first need to tackle any of the clutter you might have developed in there, as with the bathroom. But that alone might not be enough.

Are you having trouble sleeping? Many people do these days, and among the most common reasons are: a messy bedroom (which we have just discussed), and an uncomfortable bed. This, then, is another of the really profound and useful ways in which you can take back control of your bedroom. If you feel that you could do with a new bed, why hesitate any longer? Go out and treat yourself to a new mattress, and see what a difference it makes to your bedroom.

The Dining Room

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We now move on to a room which is particularly notorious for these kinds of troubles. If you are fortunate enough to have a dining room, it is probably not long before it becomes overtaken by stuff from around the home. Before you know it, you have wrapping paper, Christmas decorations and old bookshelves all piled up in the corner. As before, clear these things away as soon as you can – but also look to regaining the room as it was meant – for dining.

You might not even have a dining table in there. If not, consider getting one. It has a way of bringing both function and style to the room, and it can be a great addition to the home regardless. You will then want to think about decorating the table for use in its official sense. Tablecloth experts will be able to provide you with ones which will stand the test of time, meaning you won’t need to replace them any time soon. You’ll also find it hugely stylish to treat yourself to some good quality cutlery, and perhaps even a centrepiece. All of this helps to reclaim the dining room for what it is really meant for.

With that, you should have a dining room to be proud of again – but there is one more room which you might want to look into.

The Kitchen

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The biggest culprit in all of this is the kitchen. This is the room most likely to be overtaken by belongings from elsewhere, and before you know it you are finding it much more difficult to even cook a simple mean in there. This can actually have a surprisingly devastating effect on the home, and the family. Without being able to take control in the kitchen, your food intake genuinely suffers – a particularly big problem if you have a family. Fortunately, it is possible to reclaim your kitchen. Declutter it and make space, and make the most of this opportunity to bring out many of your kitchen goods into the open. This will make the process of cooking easier, and it will lead to you having a much more enjoyable use of your kitchen.

Is your old bathroom starting to feel tired and grubby? Bathroom décor has come a long way – by embracing new technologies and changing designs you might not only be able to make your bathroom cleaner and more functional, you may even be able to add value to your home. Here are just a few ways of modernising your bathroom for the better.

Shower

Modern showers are far more effective at maintaining a steady temperature and water pressure. Thermostatic showers are able to create a precise mix of hot and cold water – many also contain an anti-scald device which turns the shower off immediately if for some reason there’s a fault and boiling hot water comes out. Some modern showers also come with two heads – a fixed overhead shower head and an adjustable shower head. Such an upgrade could be great for making your shower all the more refreshing in the morning.

Taps

The days of having separate taps for hot and cold water are over. If your bath or sink currently has these taps fitted, it could be worth upgrading to a sleek new single tap with a temperature control. Sites like https://www.tapwarehouse.com/category/bathroom-taps offer a wide range of taps to choose from. You could even opt for a stylish waterfall tap.

Lighting

To make your bathroom feel less dark, why not add some extra lighting? Spot lighting can be placed anywhere on the ceiling or on a wall to add extra illumination. These lights can be embedded into the ceiling or wall so that only the bulb is visible, hiring the wiring and stopping it from getting wet. You could even experiment with some ambient lighting in your bathroom for when you want a hot relaxing bath.

Flooring

Make sure that your flooring is a sturdy water-proof solution. Carpets in bathrooms should be ripped out immediately. Instead, consider some non-porous ceramic tiles. To keep your feet warm and help water evaporate, you could also look into underfloor heating. You can find underfloor installation services at sites like http://www.warmup.co.uk/underfloor-heating. Underfloor heating is also a great way of upping the value of your home.

Toilet

Toilets have also evolved in recent years. Many modern toilets have cisterns that refill quickly as well as having a multi-flush setting to conserve the amount of water you use per flush. On top of this, many modern toilets have a closed back so that you don’t have to see that horrible pipe sticking out the back.

Ventilation

A bathroom is a damp environment that is susceptible to mould without sufficient ventilation. Save having to open a window on a cold day by installing an extractor fan. Modern extractor fans are very quiet and so won’t wake people up in the night. You can even trigger them to turn on whenever the light is on, or install a separate switch altogether.

Radiators

Today’s radiators have become a statement piece as well as an essential part of your home’s heating. Instead of opting for a basic white rectangular rad, why not consider a designer radiator, like a heated rail or even a a vertical, coloured radiator to adorn your walls and keep your bathroom warm and cosy.