Give Your Home Office Some Style With Nantucket Decorating

Nantucket decorating is a charming and comfortable approach that will lend style and interest to your home office. This is an interior design that draws its good looks from seashells and ocean themed items as well as shades of yellow and blue. Below are various ideas on attaining the style of the seaside in your home office with Nantucket decor.

Every good home office needs adequate lighting, not only on the desk to illuminate what you are working on but also overhead for general lighting and on side tables, filing cabinets or credenzas to give it a more home feel. For this tyle, lighting fixtures should be a reflection of the ocean - one great look is to get a clear glass lamp and fill it with shells. You might also consider a lighted ceiling fan that has large wicker paddles for a breezy summer feel.

Decorating with office staples and accents in your home office ought to help round out the decorating style. For decorating with accessories, an upscale look is most suitable. Include accessories that exude your own personal style to the room for a different application that is all your own. Sprinkle some shells around the room, on window sills or the desk to bring the Nantucket feel inside.

Window treatments are key to any design and for this look you could go with sheers to keep the room light and breezy. If you want a more private look, try plantation shutters in light wood or painted white.

Buying an interesting desk and chairs should help enhance your room interior decorating scheme. Traditionally, pine items match terrific with this design style. For the most part, Nantucket decorating is better paired with nautical style furniture.

One area a good number of us don't consider when redesigning or redecorating is the floor, and you should try to be certain to take your Nantucket decorating the floor by adding most suitable wall to wall carpet or a large area rug if you have wood flooring. Remember that your floor decor is a big part of your design approach, so be sure to consider something that coordinates with both the colors together with the room design. Take a look at decorating with organic or short pile rugs in beige tones which pull in the other colors in the room design.

See how Nantucket decorating can transform your home office? Getting a little style in your home office can make it a more fun place to work as well as integrate it with the rest of the home.

Choosing Color Schemes to Decorate Your Home in Style

Color plays a huge role in not only in the beauty of your home, but the atmosphere as well. Many people don't realize just how much color affects mood, relaxation and ambience. In this article, you will find ideas and information that will help you create color schemes that make for an inviting, comfortable home that your family and friends will love.

Basic rules for creating an appealing color scheme

Keep in mind when choosing colors for a room to use only 2 or 3 total. One color should dominate the room, while the other two will complement or contrast with the dominating color. This makes for rooms that are beautiful, colorful, and anything but bland.

Many people use neutral colors, simply because they are so easy to accessorize. Also, it's easy to refresh the look without buying all new furnishings and accents. If you prefer a bold, elegant look, consider using black and white with a few interesting splashes of red.

Neutral colors are chic and simple

When you think neutral, consider shades of black, white, gray and brown. You can choose any variations of these colors, such as cream, beige and gold. Incorporating these colors into your decorating is simple, as these shades blend easily with most furnishings, especially those that are made of wood or leather. Always make sure that darker shades and lighter ones are well balanced, so that the room doesn't appear too "heavy" or too "light."

Also, make certain that you vary sleek, smooth textures with nubby or rough textures to add interest and depth to the room.

Warm colors invite relaxation and make a room look rich

If you love rooms that are rich and relaxing, warm colors are the perfect choice. Take your cue from the colors seen in the fall, when leaves are golden, orange and russet; forest greens and brown tones add to the comfortable, inviting atmosphere.

Many people who decorate their homes in country or western style decor incorporate these colors into their rooms. A wall may be painted cream and trimmed in russet, or vice versa depending on the size of the room. Dark walls are fine for large rooms, but tend to make a small room appear even smaller.

Accents such as throw pillows and area rugs should be rich in color; plaids and stripes of forest green, russet and gold add bold splashes of texture and color.

Color is an integral aspect of interior decorating. Colors affect mood, and create a certain type of atmosphere. In a home office, you may want to use colors that make you feel more energetic; in a bedroom, relaxing colors such as soft lavender or pastel blue invite sleep. Consider the room you are decorating, and the effect you want to create when choosing colors.

To help you choose the perfect colors for your home, pay particular attention to the colors of nature; the skies, forests, mountains and fields offer up plenty of ideas. Put these tips to use in your home, and you will have rooms that are not only appealing to the eye, but appealing to the senses as well.

Interior Design Style and Colour Use for the Home Office (3 of 4)

There are two ways that you can go about selecting the general decor of your home office: either follow the style that prevails in the rest of your home, or treat your office as an individual space. Choosing which way to go is a simple task requiring answers to only a few questions.

> Has your home been decorated in one style that is visible throughout?

> Is your office easily visible from other rooms/areas of your home?

> Does your work suggest a style of its own?

Based on the questions above, here are a few simple ways to help you easily achieve a pleasing decor in your home office.

If you are going to treat your office as a part of your home, using the same decor and style, your job is already half done. But remember, you don't have to use the exact colour scheme or mood. You can modify what you see outside your office to blend smoothly. For instance, you can reverse the main and accent colours; you can use the same colours but in different proportions; or a different level of formality. Because you are decorating an office, it is likely that you are going to want to treat the style differently than how it appears in other areas of your home, and this is normal. Don't be afraid to create a variation in the atmosphere -- it is only the general style you are aiming to respect.

For a home office that is open within an area of your home, you are going to have to be a little more cautious. In this case, you must respect the style seen around your office, but at the same time you should definitely aim to create a sense of separation between your work space and living space. Visual separation does not mean building a wall; it means creating a new environment within the existing one. Some ways of creating visual separation include changes in ceiling height and/or floor level (a step up or down); a room divider placed to look decorative rather than confining; colour changes such as reversing the main and accent paint colours used on the walls; and furniture placement.

Placing furniture in a way that the layout separates space is fairly simple, but don't forget to play with your ideas on graph paper first or else you may find yourself still rearranging while you should already be at your desk. Consider using a large bookshelf or storage cabinet as a room divider -- the back of it can be decorated with fabric, paint, a collage... or place furniture back-to-back to create the sense of two separate zones. Keep in mind while you are working on the layout that you don't want to feel that your office is, for instance, in the back of your basement -- it is at the back of the basement. Just as words can be played with, so can space.

A home office that is to receive a style of its own is a fun thing to work out. You should aim to have a bit of who you are visible in the decor, while creating a visual sense of what you do. This is not a cubicle in a large office complex -- this is your office. If you have a love of bold patterns, classic cars, angels... incorporate them into the decor even if they have nothing to do with what you will be doing in your office. At the same time, your office should say more about whay you do that "I work at a desk." What do you do at that desk? If you are in the computer business, have things around that suggest that, like an enlarged and framed comic strip that has something to do with computers. If your office is actually more of a workshop and you do clothing alterations, incorporate your supplies into your decor: display spools of thread in a rainbow-like pattern, hand a rod a few inches from a wall and drape some fabrics over it for an ever-changing backdrop. If you work in the travel industry, have a model plane suspended, and display items or pictures symbolic of some of your favorite destinations; if it won't get in your way, have a beach ball in your office, or make a "sandbox" to hang on the wall by gluing sand to the back of a shadow box and gluing small shells onto the sand.

When choosing the colours for your office, there are a few basic points to consider. Yellows, reds, and other very warm colours in large quantities can cause you to feel thirsty. Blue is very relaxing, but be careful not to choose a bland grey-blue that can actually lead to feeling tired or restless. The best way to go about selecting the colours for your office is to choose three colours; use one as a main colour (for instance on the walls), another as the main accent colour (visible in a pattern on a rug, drapes, desk accessories...), and the third as an accent colour appearing only in splashes here and there (such as flowers in a vase, a couple of photo frames...). At this point your colour scheme is set, and all you have to do is keep in mind some basic points of colour psychology. A dark ceiling will feel very low; mirrors and reflective materials make a space feel larger; too many colours, especially bold ones, can cause a feeling of clutter even if there is none.

A final point on the topic of colour and style: materials such as woods, stone, and metal can be incorporated into any colour scheme -- although they may affect the style, they will not clash. A natural pine desk will certainly give a different look than a mahogany one, but either will match any colour scheme; ditto for stainless steel and brass, and marble and concrete.

Look for the final article from this 4-part series on home offices: Lighting and Window Treatments for the Home Office.

Decorating Ideas That Integrate Your Personal Style

Home decorating is a constantly evolving thing, a task that has the potential for being never-ending. Tastes change, designs change, trends change, families change. Selecting accessories and editing or finding your personal style does not need to be a costly endeavor, it just requires some creativity, several guidelines, and an open mind.

Your house is so many things - your headquarters, your safe place, the center of your life, your universe. It's the place you return home to following a long day and you want it to become a comfortable, happy location to relax and enjoy with your family and friends.

Being comfortable in the home has even taken on a new meaning in today's lifestyles, with more and more individuals electing to work from home and creating home offices, and even telecommuting in order to save themselves the stress of back and forth commuting to and from their place of work. Many moms enjoy being full time stay-at-home moms, so they spend much of their time within their homes.

For these reasons and more, it's becoming much more crucial to design comfortable rooms, which implies more than simply adding new furniture or even a few new picture frames. Take a look at your living area or decorating project overall and determine how your space is commonly used - is the family more formal or laid back? Also, take note of what your preferred colors and styles are. You also have to take into account children and your pets, and add them to your plan.

Your Personal Style

More often than not families are considered "casual" in the manner that they use their house, which should strongly influence how your house is decorated as well as the type of selections that you'll make. Furniture styles vary greatly, too, from very relaxed and casual, to traditional and modern - all of these can be "casual" if done properly. It is possible to thumb through magazines and decorating books to seek out pictures of rooms that you will like, and after that either photocopy them or tear them from your magazines. Establish a "look book" from all of these photos. An excellent starting point for determining your style is if you begin to see common decorating threads in the photographs that you've selected. You may even discover that you like an even more eclectic look - elements of several different styles in one room.

The choice of colors that you make is really a personal choice, and it may tell so much about your tastes. But have no fear of being considered boring if you choose something along the lines of beige tones for your rooms. Choosing beige tones can indicate that you might want a calming influence within your rooms. Show your dramatic flair by having a red-walled dining area, or perhaps a wall filled up with colorful panoramic picture frames with artwork or family photographs.

A lot of people, including designers and home decorators, take color cues directly from your closet. If you're the kind of person that enjoys jeans and t-shirts, it could be that an appropriate shade for you is deep blue. You can take color cues like this literally, like deciding on a denim family sofa, or use it when picking accents. Likewise, if your closet is full of soft colors, it can suggest that you would probably feel more comfortable in rooms that are decorated in similar tones.

Now that you understand some of the ways that you can incorporate your own style into your home redecorating project, have a lot of fun including these ideas in your project. Start small or start big, but get rolling!