Home Décor for Beginners: Essential Interior Design Tips

If you're not exactly a professional interior designer, the prospect of furnishing, decorating, and arranging your home in an attractive, functional way can seem daunting. Of course, it's your home, so the most important thing is always that you feel comfortable and happy there. But it's nice to know that other people will appreciate the spaces too when they're there. That's why following some simple interior design tips is a good idea. In fact, these interior design tips won't just help you make a good impression on your guests; they'll also help you to like your home more, even if you don't realize it. Interior design best practices make indoor spaces more aesthetically pleasing, more logical, and more practical. When you throw a room together without giving them enough thought, you usually create an off feel that bugs you even if you never quite know why. So, if you're a newbie to home décor, use these beginner interior design tips as a guide to putting your home together just right.

Basic Home Interior Design Best Practices

• Choose a décor style and aim to use it for about 70% of your home.

• Every room should have one dominant focal point, whether it's piece of furniture, an artwork, a fireplace, a great view out a window, or some other room feature.

• Avoid these common furniture-arranging mistakes.

• Place furniture that's proportional to the room; don't use huge pieces in small spaces or too many small pieces in an expansive space.

• Create balance in each room by evenly distributing furniture and decorative items; don't lump most of the stuff in a room together on one side.

• Make sure there are flowing, easily navigable paths to walk around all through your home.

• Bare walls make your home feel sterile and uncomfortable. And make sure you effectively fill space on large walls.

• Natural light is always good. Don't block it. Let it in.

• Bring other natural elements into your home too. Here are a number of ways to add nature to your indoor spaces.

• Stick with a neutral base color for about 60% of the room, a secondary color for about 30%, and an accent color for the remaining 10%. It's the safest formula when you're not experienced with home décor or you don't have a great eye for color.

• Layering multiple shades of the same color is another relatively safe approach that's hard to mess up (but be careful not to overdo it).

• Don't use dramatic colors or busy patterns in particularly small rooms. Also, avoid over-decorating them.

• Know what you're doing when combining different patterns in a room.

• Use the same flooring in adjoining rooms to make your home feel more cohesive and expansive.

• Place area rugs to delineate living spaces in a room. Here's some advice on selecting the right area rug for any space in your home.

• Invest in storage pieces and avoid clutter anywhere in your home.

• Design a room around the primary line of sight for its users. For example, if you're usually sitting on a couch in the living room, arrange from the vantage point of sitting there; if you're usually standing at a counter in the kitchen, plan the room around that vantage point.

• Group decorative items in threes.