5 Tips from Experts to make your Home Comfortable and Cosy 🇬🇧
What do you feel when you get home? Do you just LOVE being there or do you feel overwhelmed or maybe just a bit depressed by what surrounds you? Do you find your home empty or impersonal?
Everyone wants to live in a place that makes them happy. A place that makes you feel safe and comfortable and, in the end, motivated and inspired. This type of home is decorated with all the things you need and love and appreciate.
Now that we are spending more time inside, due to the current situation, we have time to scrutinize our surroundings and even renew the interior of our home.
A comfortable home is a place where you feel so good, you feel taken care of. It is a place where your guests also find themselves at ease and feeling special (and don’t you love when someone compliments your house?).
The thing is, sometimes it’s hard to find exactly what’s keeping you from having the place you live be a haven; it’s difficult to figure out exactly what changes we need to make.
Making your home a warm and inviting place should require you to look at every room in it and work on each one, individually and as a whole, knowing their purpose for you and the people who share the home with you, if you don’t live alone. Every room can have that cosy vibe to it, each space can be special and make you feel good in it.
We made a list of just five things that can be done to make your nest an inviting place. We consider that the following list of tips would be a common ground for all who want to do something to feel better at home. (Considering you already are living there and you already have furniture and decor in it).
Being all of us so different, each of us has a unique version of what a cosy home is, but even though this is true, some things are common among us humans.
The five actions experts advice we should do to turn a place into a comfortable home (or even work place) are the following:
- Declutter
- Check out the illumination
- Decorate your walls
- Add Fragrance
- Finish with Flowers and plants
- Declutter
We cannot emphasize enough just how crucial this first step is. It is so important, we consider it is the basic thing to do before making any other adjustments or improvements.
Sometimes this step might be a bit complicated and overwhelming. We many times do not realize we have clutter or do not know where to start.
We get used to living like we do, and many times, see with blind eyes our surroundings. (Also, everything we have, we want to keep, right? What if I need it later on? Or I lose the weight? Or these toys become collectibles and are worth a ton of money? So many “what ifs”!!!!!)
Well, the truth is, inevitably, clutter feels like something is blocking you, blocking your thoughts, your way through your home, it becomes an obstacle to find things…. in the end, it is exhausting. So, it is not good.
How to start freeing your home from clutter:
You can start this decluttering project gradually or you can block an entire weekend for it. Depends on the time you have available for this and the urgency.
(If this is a recurring subject for you, then you must have heard advice and tips to make it easier).
I will list some I think have worked for me:
-You have to have a goal of what you would like to achieve from this. Your goal could be a comfortable and useful home, a place where you can find things easily, everything is in order. Your goal could be to have more space, which also makes it more comfortable to live in. This goal, your end result, will become your North and it will motivate you, especially when you start having doubts on whether an item should leave your home for good.
- Go in and look at everything with the eyes of somebody that just arrived for the first time. What do you see? Make a list of comments of this impression.
-If it is not urgent, start with investing a short time each day, to not get drained. You can schedule time every day to decluttering. But, if the situation is critical, (and when we take the blindfold off, we can know), and you really are not comfortable at home, then block out a weekend, and start with energy. Be disciplined.
-Do area by area, let’s say, the kitchen cabinets. You might have too many pans, or knives or mugs or something you are not using at all. Finish the section and then go to the following one, could be a closet, your closet and focus on shirts or shoes, or handbags. (Boy, do we have things!)
-Decluttering can make us emotional. Many things we keep are because they are a reminder of another time, or a person we love, miss or wish we were. These things might be difficult to part with. So our advice for this type of moments, is to focus on the fact that somebody else can use the items RIGHT NOW. Its current state, gatherer of dust, can change for the better. It can go to a more happy life if used by somebody else. Use this idea to motivate yourself to part with things.
-Some days you will have more time than others, some days you will be attached to your things more than other days. Little by little you will be able to achieve your goal.
-Decluttering should be done periodically, every couple of months, to not accumulate things. Do a revision of your home and things and give away what is not used and is filling up your space. Donate clothes you never wear, etc, etc, etc.
-When you start seeing the results, it will definitely motivate you to keep on going.
- Light up your life
Natural light is certainly the best type of illumination for any room, but not all rooms have sufficient natural light and of course, at night we need to illuminate the different areas of our home.
Good lighting is of great importance to create a cosy home and might be the second most important point to fix after the decluttering.
How to start:
-Evaluate each room and think what it is used for. Think about where people will be sitting and what will you, your family and guests will be doing.
-Check out the light sources you have already in each room in the day time and night time. Look at the amount of lamps and natural light, windows you actually have. Take notes about this.
-From there, think of the type of light that will be needed. Note from where the light should be coming from and how much, depending on the furniture arrangements and uses for each room. If there is a desk, it should have light to illuminate what you will be doing on it, so you do not work with shadows. Check out how sofas and meeting places are illuminated. In some areas you just need to place an end table with a lovely lamp and a warm light bulb to illuminate the spot.
- Don’t have just one overhead light for a room.
-Placing several light sources around the room helps you take control of the lighting you will be needing for each occasion. This is a great tip for having beautiful illumination in each room, giving a warm glow or bright light, depending on the moment.
-Changing your main switch and replacing it with a dimmer, will give more personality and atmosphere to a room.
-Putting different lights on separate switches means that you can control how bright, or how dim, to make the space.
- Check out what you have right now in terms of the type of colour bulbs. If you have any white lights (neon lights, for example) replace them with warm natural light ones. The white ones feel a bit harsh, impersonal and the warm ones even make your skin glow. Even the kitchen can use warm lights. There are several “work stations” in the kitchen, so, where you feel you need to have more bright light, go for more wattage. (Again, white light, fluorescent for example, are not comfortable, they are cold and stress you a bit).
-Candles also give atmosphere, don’t forget about them. There are also floor lamps, table lamps, wall lamps to add for ambience lighting.
-If installing wall lights is not something you want to do, due to the investment and knowing it is more permanent, start with the table lamps and floor lamps to add decorative lighting. You can find many prices in the market for this.
-Renovating the lighting in your home will be a great change, if you are needing it, of course.
- Avoid Boring Walls
I used to have, for years, blank walls. Nothing to hang because I was undecisive, or felt it was too much money spent or procrastinated the decision. Then one day, I went to a gallery and asked how much would I need to make a down payment on a piece, a big red art piece of an artist from Latin America that I really did not know about, but felt it was going to be something that would make me happy when I arrived home. So, little by little, I payed for the painting and then one day hung it on the entrance wall. And everything changed.
From there I found out a universal truth: Wall art makes a home look so much more beautiful and complete.
So, I started accessorizing my walls and making our house a more decorated and pretty place where we feel surrounded by things we enjoy and appreciate.
Wonderful art is impossible to ignore.
You don’t have to clutter your wall, but you should decorate it.
How to Art your Walls:
-Look at the available wall space and then see how much you need to fill it.
-Measure the space and visit galleries and see what is available.
-Look at the décor in the room and see what colour would go with it or what colour is needed to add life to it.
-When we decorate with art the walls of our home, we should choose works that mean something to us or that we love to see. We will add personality to our surroundings, expressing our passions
-Every room should have art on their walls, from the living room, to the dining room, to the kitchen, even the toilets.
-Sometimes we already have art at home, just poorly placed. Many times we hang art too high for a sofa, or too low, or the size is not right for the wall (a painting that looks too small on a wall feels wrong). That can be fixed moving things around. Arranging the art on the walls to make a good composition is another important point to take care of.
-With art you can add cheerfulness, colours, design. You can be inspired and boost creativity on the people living there.
-The best advice for purchasing art is buy what you love and makes you happy. Buying art and surrounding yourself with it is always worth it. In the long and short turn. Be creative arranging art.
- The Power of Scent
What you see is important, but the fragrance a room and a home has, is something to never underestimate.
If your home looks amazing, but does not smell good, you are damaging all the hard work you put into it.
There are many different ways to decorate with scent your home, you just need to find the one that will work for you.
How to make a home smell good.
-There is an enormous amount of options in the market to help you make your home smell fabulous. There are scented candles, potpourri, wax melts, diffusers, incense, you name it. All you need to do is pick which way is your favourite, and obviously pick a scent you love.
-Making your nose happy will be good for your well-being!
- Working on this, making an effort to make sure your home smells nice, will be a great addition to the cosiness you have achieved following all the other steps.
- Add Life with Plants and Flowers
Potted plants, greenery and flowers give life to a room. If you don’t have plants or flowers, and you want to have that cosy home feeling, consider starting to decorate your surroundings with them.
Plants are cosy because they are living things.
Flowers and Plants in your home:
-Fresh flowers are always a beautiful touch
- If you don’t have time to take care of living plants, consider faux greenery and florals instead. There are many beautiful options, fabulous roses, tulips, etc. and perfect, almost real faux house plants. Many are so real looking, you can’t really tell the difference.
Comfortable and cosy homes can be large or small, but no matter the size, they feel welcoming and approachable. It can be any type of design, modern or traditional, the importance is that it will be something positive for your well-being and of the people sharing your home with you. It doesn’t need to be hard to turn your house into a comfortable, cosy and well decorated sanctuary and you don’t need to spend a ton of money on it.
This is a wonderful project; you do not need to finish everything immediately. It can be ongoing, and it is a lot of fun to do. And in the end, the result is so very satisfying!
GA
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