7 Designer Touches You Can Literally Do For Free

When designing I am always trying to achieve visual order and balance in both color and composition while maintaining a room’s functionality. Do you ever wonder why homes in magazines look so beautiful? Sure a lot of it is lighting and camera angles, but there are a few tricks that designers and stylists use to make a space look amazing and cohesive. The following list is comprised of ideas I’ve used in my own home that have proven pretty effective. Oh, and you can do all of them for free.

1. Clean Your House

I don’t think I can emphasize this enough. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your furniture is or how many decorations you buy, if your room is cluttered and untidy, it will look like a hot mess. Put your clothes away, dust lamps off, wipe down dirty surfaces, vacuum your rugs and sofas. You’d be amazed how much better a space looks and feels after a good cleaning. In fact, you might find that you want to get rid of stuff rather than add more. I have a client whose bedroom I’m redesigning and at first I thought it was going to require a lot of work. But after they cleaned the room to get it ready for the “Before” photos, I was shocked at how much better it looked after all the mess was gone. Turns out all it needed was a fresh coat of paint and some new lighting.

2. Edit and Purge

In the spirit of cleanliness, purging is one of my favorites. It’s not surprising that many homes look their best when they’re on the market to be sold. Most of the junk and excess furniture has been removed from the home to maximize the visual appeal and make the space look bigger. If you have kids, donate old toys they’ve outgrown and no longer care about. Clear out clothing that you no longer wear, discard old papers/receipts/mail, let go of all those pens that don’t have ink anymore, recycle those magazines from 3 years ago and throw out those Christmas cookies you forgot to eat. Compile all of the things you no longer use or enjoy and get rid of them. This can make a huge difference in your space.

3. Rearrange Your Furniture

I’ve been in so many rooms and spaces where a simple rearrangement of a room could have made the room more cohesive and visually pleasing. For example, I’ve seen very large living rooms, where people arrange their couches and seating all along the walls, sometimes leaving a huge empty floor space in the middle. Unless you’re planning on having wrestling matches in the middle of the room, try pulling your furniture away from the wall to facilitate conversation and togetherness. In general people have subconscious and intuitive reactions to a space before they form an articulate opinion. People feel the room before they know what it is they actually like or dislike. So use your instincts as you rearrange.

Examine how the room flows. If you have a large space, try to create smaller intimate groupings or use furniture to divide up the room. If you have a small space, it’s more appropriate to push the furniture to the wall and maybe consider removing unnecessary furniture that’s just there for no particular reason.

4. Decorate with what you already have

I’m not really into buying things for the sake of decorating (i.e. the infamous bowl of random glittery balls). In the end, if it doesn’t serve a purpose or carry emotional significance, it feels kind of vacuous. Decor should bring you joy, not feel fussy. So use what you already have in your home especially if it’s made from natural materials like glass, wood, and metal. For example, I have wooden box that I keep my watercolors in. I also display it on my shelf because I think it’s pretty. So it serves both an aesthetic and functional purpose. Also, don’t decorate with too many tiny objects and small trinkets. While a few well placed items may add some nice detail, too many small items can make your space look kitschy and chaotic. Try to use larger decorative pieces to anchor your eyes as they look around the room.

*Trigger warning, if you love reading this next one is not for you*

5. Turn your books around.

I used to think this was dumb especially since you can’t see the titles of your books anymore, but it does clean up the color palette on your shelf. If you’re one of those people who has a lot of colorful paperbacks and can’t afford a ton of hardcovers, this will be a visual improvement especially if you’ve read the books already and don’t want to get rid of them. This one is a little controversial and probably impractical, but it definitely cleans up the look without spending any money.

6. Bring the outdoors inside.

Glass bottles are everywhere and you can easily repurpose them for a vase. Take cuttings of plants instead of buying flowers. Long branches with leaves can add height and drama without costing you a penny.

 

7. Hide your DVD/Blu Ray boxes or just recycle them.

I LOVE movies. I own a lot of them too. But I don’t think I have ever seen a designer room with DVD boxes on full display. Not only do they take up a ton of room, they introduce a runaway color palette into your room that you have no control over. One thing you can try is storing your movie discs in a CD wallet and recycle the boxes. If you don’t want to chuck the boxes, keep your movie collection in cabinets and place your more beautiful items on display. But if movies are your everything, by all means go ahead and show them off in a fun and creative way.