Decorating Your Home with a Unifying Style: Part 2

Decorating your home with your own style creates a comfortable blend of anti-conformity, because you have created a space that is uniquely you, and conformity, because most everything in your place goes together. This blend can make your house or apartment a true sanctuary. In Part 1, I covered two major aspects of creating a theme for your home: furniture and shelving. Now, let’s look at wall hangings and decorations.

Wall Hangings

This can include paintings, photographs, tapestries, and posters. The two things to consider here are the images themselves and the frames. Picture frames come in many styles, and you can even make your own. YouTube is a great source of DIY craft tutorials. Just put in your keywords, like “Victorian picture frame,” plus “tutorial,” and see what comes up. Incidentally, I did find a tutorial with that search. Even if your specific keywords aren’t matched, chances are you’ll find a tutorial that you can modify. The content of your photographs will no doubt include your friends and family. If you’re going for a wilderness theme, feature pictures taken on hikes and camping. If you want an old fashioned theme, you might consider black and white pictures, or photographs in sepia tones. Fortunately, there’s plenty of picture editing software you can use to get these results before having your photographs printed. For a modern/futuristic look, consider digital photo frames. These are basically screens that can move between images. You can turn them off when you’re not at home. When it comes to paintings, drawings, and tapestries, go with images that reflect the overall theme of your home. You can even create your own, and again, YouTube is an excellent source of instruction for doing so.

Decorations

For finishing touches, add decorations that match your theme. Free space on your shelves provide areas for these. Etsy or Ebay are great places to find statues, terrariums, and the like. If you’re going for say a superhero theme, there are plenty of high-quality models available at comic stores or from various online sellers. If sports are your thing, you might want to spring for signed sports memorabilia. And yes, there are plenty of sports figurines to decorate your home. Today, 3D printing is getting more popular. If you want something really different that reflects your style, check out Shapeways and Sculpteo. You can purchase from a number of makers and some will even make modifications to an item for you. The sites also offer ways to create your own products if you can’t find something you really want.

In Part 3

Parts 1 and 2 of this series covered things you’ll have control over if you don’t own a home. In Part 3, we’ll look at modifying the painting and even plumbing, areas homeowners can modify. We’ll also look at scaling things down, or how to give each room its own look.