If you have pets, you’ve already learned that paws can leave dirty tracks that are more difficult to remove from your carpet and furniture than those made by human feet. For one thing, the number of dogs capable of learning how to wipe their feet before entering the house is far greater than the number of people who know this and are willing to teach their dogs to do it. If you happen to be a household with a few cats, you already know which of the fabrics covering your furniture your kitty finds most suitable for sharpening their destructive little claws.

The point here is that fabrics, carpets included, can be difficult to keep looking good when some of your family members have four legs. If you’re presently living in rooms that show all too ample evidence that your last carpet and fabric choices weren’t the best, don’t despair—more pet-suitable choices are available today than you may suspect. Just keep the following facts in mind when you choose your next pet friendly decor:

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Apartment Dwellers – Colors Can Actually Make a Space Seem Larger

If you are an apartment dweller in small quarters, consider that the colors you use on your walls can actually make a small space appear larger. A great way to make a room feel bigger and draw the eye down to create a sense of space is to create one awesome accent wall.

What is an Accent Wall?

An accent wall is exactly what the name implies – a wall painted a different color than the rest of the walls to accent the room. You can choose from a rainbow of cool colors to create your own unique accent wall.

Isn’t it True that Dark Colors Make a Room Look Smaller?

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How to Effectively Group Home Accessories for Maximum Impact

Clearly home accessories can be an effective way to enhance your living space based on statistics from Home Accents Today. A 2005 study revealed that Americans spent 14.3 billion dollars on home accessories to personalize their abode. The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lot of cash to have a comfortable, attractive home. By rearranging and properly grouping the accessories you have, your treasures will have maximum impact.

Many professional interior designers group accessories together for a major decorating impact. Often these groups are odds numbers, most frequently three or five. Odd groups create additional interest and professional home stagers frequently cite the rule of odds that items look best when arranged in groups of three, five and seven. Additionally, many interior designers follow the ‘pyramid rule” to arrange accessories from the tallest to the shortest.

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Weekend DIY Series: Transform Your Laundry Room from Washed Out to Crisp and Clean

Let’s face it, you probably spend a lot of time in your laundry room doing the wash, but spend little time thinking about its decorating style. For a room that most of us spend so much time in, it’s usually one of the most ignored rooms when it comes to interior design and decorating. Perhaps it’s because the time spent in the laundry room is boring, mundane, and uninspired. So, why not transform it into a crisp, clean, fun place to be and add some excitement to your daily chores?!

The first thing you can do to spruce up your drab laundry room is to add a little color. Stay away from really dark shades because they can make small rooms feel even smaller and the reflection of these darker colors onto your clothes can actually make them look dingy and more difficult to see stains. Instead, choose bright and airy colors, like a sunny yellow, soothing light blue, girly pink or grassy green. Bringing in a sense of the outdoors will make you feel like you’re hanging clothes on the clothesline in the breezy summer wind, just like grandmother used to do!

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Bedside Tables with a Twist: Great Stashers with Personality

Few homes today can afford the luxury of single purpose furniture, especially in the bedroom where storage space is frequently at a premium. So when you set out to buy bedside furniture, consider all the possibilities there are for making the pieces you choose do double duty.

Need more storage for your socks and underwear? Consider buying matching three-drawer chests and putting one on either side of the bed. If you’re part of a couple, you can keep your small stuff in one chest and your partner can stash his or hers in the other. On the other hand, if you live alone you can keep both chests for your very own use, perhaps keeping casual foldable garments like jeans and sweaters in one and your underclothes in the other.

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Weekend DIY Series: Circus Themed Bedroom for Your Child Complete with Tented Ceiling

Lions and tigers and bears – oh my! Everyone loves the circus, complete with clowns and performing animals and it makes a great theme for a child’s bedroom or baby nursery. If you are an avid do it yourselfer, it only takes a weekend, paint, fabric and a little creativity to create a circus bedroom that will delight your child and ignite their imagination.

Creating a circus themed bedroom can be as simple as hanging stuffed animals from the ceiling (monkeys looks especially nice) and sewing a simple set of rod pocket curtains and a duvet cover from a few yards of fun fabric. For a baby, check out Amy Coe’s circus themed fabric at your local fabric store. For a toddler or older child, Covington makes the most fabulous circus toile fabric that you will fall in love with!

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Lighting can change a home’s atmosphere in many ways. I never realized the effect that lighting had on a home until I lived in a small apartment without overhead lights. Trying to keep enough light in my home so that it really felt comfortable was extremely difficult. Although I found ways to work with the lack of light, I never felt completely at ease in my home without effective lighting. The dimness of the rooms could be depressing, and during the winter, the darkness was at times unbearable. Choosing light fixtures and lighting for your home can be difficult, but your family will thank you for your choices.

If you have the opportunity to use overhead lights, then you should take advantage of that. Overhead lights offer a lot of light that spreads throughout a room. How much light is given off depends on the wattage of the bulbs as well as the type of light fixture you purchase. The light fixtures on ceiling fans and Chandeliers give off a lot of light because they have four bulbs, one shining in each direction. However, yellow tinted bowl light fixtures tend to give off a yellowish glow and leave most of the rim in semi-darkness; the color can make everyone look jaundiced and does little to lighten a room. Also be careful about using light fixtures with many details that will be hard to dust.

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Many people don’t seem to realize that there are several colors which are quite sexy. Meaning these colors create feelings and moods of senuality and intimacy, and these can be quite sexy to use in your bedroom decorating themes and designs. Before getting started of course though, it’s helpful to know which colors are considered the sexiest…

Romance & Passion With Red
The color red is an obvious, and universally accepted sexy color. Red symbolizes passion, romance, and increased sexuality. Red is very bold though, so be careful not to dominate the room with red completely. Painting the walls completely red for instance, can actually create the opposite effect than you’re going for. Using certain shades of red on the walls may create depression and overly agressive behavior. Using red as your primary room color is fine, but do it through the use of accents and accessories such as brilliant red silk sheets, instead of painting the entire wall that color.

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Decorating your child’s nursery is an exciting experience. Your little bundle of joy will finally be in your arms soon, and you want to make sure his or her new home is absolutely perfect. The biggest shock for a child is coming from the warmth and comfort of your stomach into the vastness of the world. Creating a home that is both safe and comfortable is your top priority when decorating your nursery.

Colors are especially important in designing a nursery. Although babies are said to see in black and white at first, bright colors will soon attract their attention and become quite important to their overall development. Having cozy, relaxing colors like peach, green, and blue in the room may help your baby to rest easier, and sleep better.

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The first time you rent your very own apartment or house, friends and relatives often either give you hand me down essentials or they go out and buy you some of the basic necessities to get started with. And while this is very nice, welcome, and useful, most of us end up with a variety of home decor items that don’t match. As the years pass and we collect decorating accents and accessories from various sales, flea markets, and other friends or family members though, sometimes it can seem as if nothing we have matches at all.

And the dining room seems to be the worst place this occurs most often at. Since dishes, silverware, and pots and pans are one of the first things we need to live in our own home, these are the items that are given to us most often. So we can find ourselves with a large variety of beautiful kitchen or dining room accessories that don’t quite seem to go together in any way.

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