How To Choose The Right Color For Your Living Room

• Cozy Feel: If you want a cozy room, use warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow. For a more spacious and elegant look, opt for cool colors such as green and blue, or even white.
• Connecting the Room: Living rooms are often connected to dining rooms and kitchens. Knowing where to start and finish the color scheme between each part can be tricky. One way is to paint a feature wall in an area between two sections as a color break. Or you could use a gradual progression of colors from one area to another.
• Ceiling: Do no neglect ceilings. Use another shade of the wall color to paint the ceiling. If you want the ceiling to look higher, paint it two shades lighter.
• Go Neutral: The ideal wall color is actually a neutral shade that will go with your furniture. And neutral doesn’t mean beige. Every color has a neutral shade, so go for one that you think is the most versatile.

If you still can’t decide which paint colors for the living that will match you personality, the easiest way is to look at your wardrobe. Usually the colors that dominate will probably be the ones that they are most comfortable with.

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Know Thy Living Pattern Well

When trying to save space in small apartment, homeowners tend to build more storage room, try to control clutter, then increase storage space again later. It is an endless, often ineffective battle.

To make truly smart use of limited space, objectively regard your apartment as a whole without boxing yourself in with conventional concepts like “sitting room,” “kitchen,” and “bedroom.” Be truthful about what your family’s or your living patterns really are, then adjust your apartment to suit the reality.

Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize!

Ask yourself these questions and consider the answers:

Q. Do we cook often enough to justify a kitchen this size?

If you say “no,” cut your actual kitchen area back to one stove or microwave, sink, refrigerator, and one small cabinet.

Reallocate the remaining kitchen/dinning space. It could be a music area your kids yearn for, an indoor garden for precious plants, a computer corner, or even a corner screened off with sliding doors to give individual members of a large, nosey family some privacy when needed.

Q. Do I need more than one bedroom?

If you’re a newly-wed couple without child, ask yourself if you really intend to raise a family in this apartment. Or if overnight guests are a big part of your life. If it’s “no” to both, perhaps you only need one bedroom.

Are you allowed to knock two rooms into one for one big bedroom? Is it structurally permissible to create an opening in the wall between your living room and one bedroom to form the bigger living room you have always wanted? Would you prefer to keep the other bedroom space intact for a favorite hobby of yours or your spouse’s?

Q. Should the store room be a store room?

Do not keep stuff in your store room merely because it is there. If you don’t really need a store room, you can remove the door, install good lighting, and turn that poky place into a tiny computer niche, or transform it with wood and glass into a proper, built-in display for your much loved crystal collection.

Q. What is my living room used for?

What does your family, partner, or yourself enjoy doing most in the living room? If it is primarily a dining-cum-television area, then make it so, and drop the extras.

If family members spend all their time in their rooms or out, you may not require a conventional living room. Free yourself of the idea that a living room must have sofa, armchairs, coffee table, and television set, and free the space for other thing. You can even section off a small part and erect partitions to make a private retreat for a child who has always shared a bedroom with a sibling, and longs for space of his or her own.

Your small apartment should no longer seem quite so small because when you enjoy and need most will have its necessary space to accommodate whatever it needs.

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It seemed the perfect house for those who want airy living places that don’t want to waste vast quantities of electricity just to keep air circulating. It was in fact perfect for him living there, but it was too bright for my tastes as it admitted too much light.

What You Should Consider Before Recreating Your Breezy Home

I don’t hate sunlight with a vengeance just not keen of being constantly exposed too much of it. The flip side of an airy home, besides no privacy, is that it bounds to let in too much light. To keep air moving, there must be access points like open windows or doors where breezes can enter, and exit points at the other end of the house. Otherwise there won’t be much flow of fresh air indoors.

1. Blinds and Curtains

Unfortunately, open doors and windows let sunlight in. Thin breathable curtains are insufficient protection for those who can’t tolerate even indirect sunlight, because they let rays through. Only opaque, lined curtains will do, but air hardly gets past.

Blinds are solution if they can be angled so that the wind blows easily through, but nary a ray peeps in.

Not fond of blinds and still want to keep the sun out and air moving? Open your windows, hang light curtains, and position sturdy opaque screens between the window and yourself. Sturdiness is crucial as winds can send a screen crashing down in your room, smashing ornaments and itself.

2. Solar Skylights

If you are a sun worshipper, then by all means throw your windows and doors open to the wind, and consider installing a Solar Skylight too. It’s an electricity-saving device that helps draw hot air out through your ceiling and roof via a flexible tube, and also lets sunlight and fresh air in while being unobtrusive in appearance.

However, it is feasible mainly for houses, and only single-storey ones or for the top floor of two- or three-storey houses.

3. Insect Problems

Letting fresh air circulate freely may mean that some undesirable guests like mosquitoes, flies, and cockroaches blow in with the breeze too.

Well designed insect screens let air in and keep bugs out, but those that are woven too densely may keep air out too, so install with caution. Put them up over the windows of just one room first and see how it goes before you do the whole house.

A slightly old fashioned but pretty alternative is a white lace screen that is attached firmly to your window frame. Do ensure that you and the store you buy the material from devise a way of removing or parting them with minimal fuss for cleaning and access to your windows.

4. Busted By Dust

A constant breeze blowing through your home also introduces dust, depositing it in corners and on your furnishings. The above mentioned insect and lace screens can limit this problem somewhat, but not completely as dust particles are microscopic.

Other than getting a good vacuum cleaner or an industrious housekeeper, or creating dust traps like pools and ponds between your house and the wind, there is not a whole lot you can do to fight dust if you want air to enter freely.

To a certain extent, dust is minimized if your home is on a high floor—insect don’t come that thick and fast either.

So do let fresh air into your home, but be aware it’s not always a breeze!

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