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If you’ve ever looked around a show home at a new development, you’ll know that the interior designers who style them have some very clever ways of making a home look great.
How can you make your own home look like the ones on display?
Don't overcrowd your space
In show homes you’ll always find that dining room tables have plenty of space around them, sofas are slightly pulled away from the walls, and furniture isn’t placed in a place that makes it difficult to open doors or walk around.
This is something that most of us don’t stick to in real life. If our dining room is too small we simply push the table up against the wall and expect guests to squeeze themselves into their chairs! It’s not a good look.
Plan rooms using harmonious colours
Of course, they don’t simply make all the rooms look the same, rather they use a limited palette of colours that all work well together and style the whole house or apartment using these colours.
For example, you may have a living room that’s grey, lime green and cream, and the bedroom may be silver, grey and a lighter shade of green. What it means is that as you move around the property you get a sense of harmony, and the space merges into one.
Use mirrors to make rooms look bigger
It’s not just a case of hanging mirrors everywhere though. Position them in places where they’ll reflect something attractive - perhaps a window or a plant. A mirror reflecting your kitchen bin, for instance, isn’t going to give you the show home effect!
Use clever storage to hide clutter
If you look carefully at show homes then you’ll find that appliances are often just for affect – they’re not usually plugged in. This is because tangles of cables look messy. Although you have to have your appliances plugged in at home, try concealing the cables by running them down the back of storage units, or putting them in a cable tidy. Another alternative is storing appliances away to keep cables and worktops looking clear. For this you can use traditional kitchen storage, but if you are short on this, try using sideboard which is spacious to conceal these gadgets.
Strategically place accessories
Last but not least, show home designers will always set the scene – they don’t leave spaces looking bare and minimalist, but will have strategically placed objects showing how somebody can live in the property – crockery on the table, notebooks on the desk and customised art-work on the walls. You can make the same policy work for you by making sure that you have accessories that you can leave out, even when you’ve cleared away the more functional items you use every day.
