Decorating Ideas: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Sometimes people don’t have a lot of confidence in their home decorating abilities. Sometimes you are just tired of the look and feel of your familiar spaces, and simply want a little inspiration to perk things up.
Decorating ideas are everywhere right under your nose. You never have to have any great ability, for original thought, to have ideas for ways to decorate. In other words, don’t reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of ideas out there.
Keep It Real
Magazines are the first place everyone thinks to look. If you really think about it, how many times have you really used something from a picture in a magazine anyway? Magazines rarely represent real life; they are for show. Do you really have fresh flowers in a sapphire blue vase on the sideboard as you walk into your home? Instead it is more like someplace you throw your car keys. I don’t recall ever seeing a picture in Better Homes and Gardens with the car keys on the sideboard. But that’s real life, and while some aspire to a picture perfect home, few ever achieve it.
Accepting that, look elsewhere for really great decorating ideas. Keep your mind and eyes open. What I am about to tell you are strictly confidential and a highly guarded trade secret in the decorating industry. Lift decorating ideas and modify them for your own use. Yes lift as in steal, rob, take, and pilfer. Decorating ideas are unenforceable to protect from flat out re-use by anyone. The truth is you can rarely re-use the exact ideas anywhere anyway.
Even from a magazine it would be unlikely that you could decorate a whole room just like that picture. You would not be able to find all the exact items, and not likely your intended space would be the same either. All anyone can ever do is lift a small, individual idea from any whole space and incorporate it with their own space. More than that, people always modify things to suit their own quirks and tastes. It is just human nature.
When you think of decorating ideas don’t think of the whole room picture in the magazine and then become forlorn, because you realize the impossibility of duplicating it. Always think smaller when looking for decorating ideas, lift them and modify them.
Where to get Decorating Ideas
Where do you lift these ideas anyway, if not from magazines? Something you might think of is to wander through your local furniture store. This never seems to be very satisfying though. The store is trying to show off the furniture in a setting you can imagine is realistic, but this cannot be considered decorated space or clever decorating ideas.
Better places to look for decorating ideas are not likely candidates to catch your attention. Next time you watch television, or rent a DVD, look around in the spaces shown in the background. Of course the actors are the main focus, but surprising what nifty ideas they do show in the scenes. Remember you are only lifting singular small ideas, not whole rooms. Real life often provides inspiration. Pay attention to the cutesy things people contrive in an office, your friend’s house, the neighbor’s, and the church. Remember the small things and not the whole rooms, are the real gems that are useful for decorating ideas.
Decorating ideas are just little clever ideas. Lift them and modify them. You were going to add a touch of your own style and make them your own anyway. So go ahead. Forget the fresh flowers; find a wide mouth, cobalt blue vase and throw the car keys in it instead.