Planning home improvements necessarily involves addressing
numerous practical matters. That doesn't mean you should ignore
the fun stuff!
The Fun Stuff
The first thing to plan for in home improvements is the
practical stuff. The second thing you need to talk to family
members about is the fun stuff.
Most people have colors they like and colors they don't like.
They have things that interest them and things that don't. Get
your family to talk to you about those things. Each person's
bedroom, or bedroom area, should reflect his or her taste and
interests. A boy who likes green, football, and backpacking can
easily have a sage green (it "reads" as more neutral than many
shades of green if re-sale of your home is a concern) room with
cream woodwork, cream interior shutters, and cream ceiling.
Framed football posters and wilderness scenes might be pleasant.
Bedding with a rustic motif (rows of stylized pine trees?) from
L.L. Bean or Plow and Hearth would work right in. Add a touch or
two of a bright color like red or yellow.
Does he need a desk in his room? A chest of drawers? A bookcase?
Would he enjoy having a bulletin board? Even if they're small,
most rooms need at least three lamps so that illumination is
general and even. The shades are usually best in warm, neutral
colors. (Light coming through green shades tends to make people
look sick.) Lamp shades should be level and the seams should be
toward the wall so they're not visible. When the bottom edge of
most lamp shades in a room are the same height from the floor,
the room tends to look serene and cohesive.
Hanging pictures usually look best if the bottom edges of the
frames are the same height from the floor and level with each
other, too. There are exceptions to this and every
generalization of course. A grouping of pictures can have the
bottom tier follow the "rule" while all of the other pictures
are higher. A picture over a fireplace often looks good higher
than the other pictures in the room.
Pictures usually look best when they have a relationship to
furniture or an architectural feature. Pictures centered over a
chest, bed, bookcase, or fireplace are good examples. Pictures
don't tend to look good if they're scattered willy-nilly around
a room, or if they're up near the ceiling (unless they're part
of a grouping), or if the height at which they're hung varies
wildly with no rhyme nor reason.
A girl who loves pink, the ballet, and swimming can have
woodwork the same cream as her brother's while her walls are a
soft pink (a pink with a hint of yellow in it tends to go well
with cream), and her art work reflects her interests. If she
loves to read, make sure she has a good reading lamp near her
bed, or near a comfortable chair, or both.
A cream colored dust ruffle with widely spaced pink stripes and
a quilted plaid coverlet in pink, green, yellow, and blue on a
cream background might look nice. Add cream fabric window shades
with large pink polka dots and I'll bet she'll smile.
The bigger point is to simply have fun with some of your home
improvements. There is no need to look exclusively at practical
matters.
More Information:Visit
http://www.fsboamerica.org/ for more details.
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