4 Reasons Your Home Still Looks (and Feels) Like a Rental
Moving into a home and making it your own are two different things. Even when you own the place, it's not hard to end up with it looking like a space you eat and sleep in that lacks comfort and doesn’t actually feel like a home.
In our experience, there are any number of reasons why your home looks and feels unfinished and impersonal. Beyond the basics people typically think of: sofas, tables, beds, and lighting, there are common things many homeowners fail to think about when it comes to home decor and furnishing their spaces. Here are just a few, along with solutions.
You forgot about window dressings
Window treatments matter. Dress your windows! Naked windows look, just that, naked! Before you make excuses about the cost, these don’t have to be expensive. Buy them at Walmart or Target, or Amazon, hang them at the right height, and they will radically transform your space.
3 quick and easy tips for dressing your windows:
For shorter windows, try blinds, shades, or cafe curtains. Personally we rarely recommend short curtains unless under specific circumstances. Roller shades, inverted roller shades, roman shades, and venetian blinds are typically the ones we tell clients to use as they work across different interior and architectural styles. Cafe curtains are particularly cute in bathrooms, where privacy is needed, and in kitchens, over the sink for example.
Place your curtains as close to the ceiling as possible. There are some instances when this doesn’t work, for example if you have an awkward slope in the ceiling, but placing curtains close to the ceiling makes the walls feel taller as it draws your eye up. Make sure the curtains go all the way down to the ground but don’t puddle on the floor. If they’re slightly too long, take them to a regular tailor to have them hemmed.
Choose colours that are already represented in the room, but don’t pull the exact same colour. You don’t want your curtains or blinds to blend into the walls, but you want the colour to coordinate.
Beata Heuman
The walls are empty
Put stuff on the walls. If you’re in a rental where the landlord won’t let you put nails in the walls, move! Just kidding. Use command strips to hang lightweight art and clocks, use easels to hold heavier pieces, and lean art on walls and on top of furniture. Don’t forget bookshelves either! While they should be full of books, the odd photo or tiny tchotchke is not a bad idea, and is a great way to create a sense of belonging.
And don’t feel like your art has to be ‘art’. There are budget-friendly things you can do. While you can purchase legitimate art from real artists (and we recommend this over art websites and companies that sell generic art), there are other options if you’re on a limited budget.
How to source art:
Mount cute postcards - use colourful mats like these to add interest, and hand paint or stain frames if you don’t like the way they look!
Tape posters to the wall - be careful to use a tape that won’t rip the paint off(!), and tape them up in the corners for a more artsy look.
Print your pictures large scale in black and white - doing it on Blueprint paper adds interest and makes them look more professional
Make your own - buy a canvas and paint your own large scale artwork! Choose colours you know will work with the rest of your decor, and pick a style that is accessible for you and your level of ability.
Your floors are bare
Furniture arrangement matters, but so do rugs! This is pretty easy, but rugs can get pricey quickly. Don’t let that put you off though. Shop for rugs secondhand, vintage and on Facebook marketplace, and check TJMaxx, Walmart, Target and HomeGoods for lower cost rugs, and watch keenly for sales. We posted a link to a rug buying guide from Rugs Direct in Episode 8 from Season 1 of the Lived In podcast, and we also talked through how to choose a rug size for your space - make sure to listen to the episode if you want all the details!
Veere Grenney via House & Garden
Your storage is lacking
Storage is one of the most overlooked aspects of design when homebuyers are working without an interior designer. Things clogging countertops, shoes puddled by the door…none of these things are anything to be embarrassed about, but they do all pull a house toward looking unfinished and incomplete. Invest in clever storage solutions - you’ll hear this from us all the time but purge regularly, make sure you don’t have things you don’t need - if you have storage but everything doesn’t fit, replace that storage with something more substantial. Some of our favourite storage solutions include: floor to ceiling cabinets, under bed storage, baskets on open shelves, and reorganized closets.
Historiska Hem
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