Interior Decorating Information

Summer Decorating Tips To Cool You


Redesigning your home for summer gives you the opportunity to have fun with your home. A few simple changes can make your home feel refreshed as well as refreshing.

Make your home feel fresh and cooler with these interior design ideas:

Welcome to Our Haven

Start with your exterior to instill the image of a cooling retreat. Provide shade to your front door. If you don't have sheltering trees, add umbrellas in heavy pots to shade the entry landing. A wall water fountain near the front door adds cooling sounds to support your sense of hearing. You can make a standing water fountain with a small pump, a container with no drainage, a water plant like the common reed, and pebbles. Deep shade and water sounds invite you to linger outdoors while promising further respite inside.

Cool Down With Lighting

Yes, the color of light influences the way you feel. Use white and blue iridescent accent lights. Change out your yellow-casting light bulbs with cooler daylight-mimicking light bulbs. Look for bulbs that simulate natural daylight, the healthiest light source for the human eye, with reduced eyestrain. Soften your room lighting at twilight with more light sources instead of a few bright lights.

Fans, Fans, and More Fans

Ceiling fans make a great addition to living room, family room, and bathroom makeovers. However, ceiling fans above dining tables cool food too soon. Use an oscillating fan that mimics tropical breezes instead. For a large dining room, try two standing oscillating fans on medium speed. Lower speeds equal less irritating motor noise while giving you cross breezes similar to Mother Nature's cooling breezes. Also, if your outdoor rooms need air circulation, use fans in your garden.

Mix Up Your Furniture

If you live in an area that doesn't get many summer showers, you can have fun by bringing indoor furniture outside. Set up a bed outdoors for lazy afternoon reading or napping. Move a favorite overstuffed chair outside for serious book reading. On the other hand, bring garden furniture and potted plants inside to make your home feel like a tropical vacation.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Summer relaxing means less work, right? Give yourself a break from taking care of your knickknacks and normal accessories. Rooms with fewer furnishings give you breathing room. Especially consider storing dark and heavy accessories. Take a hint from the Victorians who covered their dark landscape paintings with sheer fabrics. Exchange your darker paintings with white wood-framed mirrors during the summertime.

Lighten up your colors, your accessories, and decorate your home with less. Enjoy your summer!

Copyright © 2005 Jeanette J. Fisher

Jeanette Fisher, author of Joy to the Home Journal and interior design and real estate books, has researched the effects of environment on emotions for over 15 years. Besides flipping houses, Jeanette teaches college courses on Design Psychology and professional real estate investing seminars. For free Design Psychology reports, visit http://designpsych.com/


MORE RESOURCES:

Telegraph.co.uk (blog)

War, peace and interior decorating
ABC Online
The interior decorating was finished in time for the president's Oval Office address to the nation about the end of US combat operations in Iraq. ...
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressNPR
Oval Office redone during Obama vacationUPI.com
Oval Office RedesignedNBC Washington
Big Journalism (blog)
all 577 news articles »


Gateway FX6803: PC With a Fast Foundation Needs a Little Interior Decorating
Washington Post
As has become a sort of tradition on the performance desktop charts, Gateway has brought another iteration of its FX-series desktops to the market, ...



NHL.com

Is It In Your Blood? Rooms
NHL.com
You've got until September 28th to do some interior decorating and submit your photo. The winning photos will be posted on September 29th. ...

and more »


Businesses welcome elbow-to-elbow festival crowd Friday afternoon
Hometownlife.com
Carla Marshall, owner of Accessories Shop, at 511 S. Washington, said she spent the week working on the interior decorating to draw a crowd. ...

and more »


DBKP - Death By 1000 Papercuts

Oval Office Makeover: Pimp My Office
DBKP - Death By 1000 Papercuts
I'm sure that this bad acid trip will be praised as a “progressive†approach to interior decorating considering the FLOTUS' amazing taste in clothing as ...



Former CFO of a Texas engineering firm sentenced for embezzling over $3.7 million
Examiner.com
... of real estate in Houston and Colorado, and expenses related to the construction, landscaping, and interior decorating of a home in Estes Park, Colo. ...

and more »


Technorati (blog)

Interior Design Tips
Technorati (blog)
One of the cheapest ways to get a high-end interior decorating look is to reupholster your own furniture. To have a professional reupholster your furniture ...



Big Freedia brings bounce to San Jose
San Jose Mercury News
While Freedia often plays five or six gigs a week, she's kept her day job, running the interior decorating company Da Diva's Creations. ...

and more »


The Ultimate Interior Decorating Guide
Tom Wilt News
This home decor and interior design e-book nearly sells itself because this decorating guide really does teach people how to place their furniture. ...



Four short links: 3 Sep 2010
O'Reilly Radar (blog)
Koren elucidates the elements of arranging rhetoric that all designers instinctively use in everything from floral compositions to interior decorating. ...


Google News

home | site map
© 2006