Accessorize your Home Affordably With Some Tricks by a Professional

Do you have to spend a fortune to accessorize your home? Not if you know what you are doing and where to shop.

Home accessories make a space functional, fun or dramatic depending upon your style. Rather than throwing all types of accessories bought on impulse, start out with a plan. Home accessories bring a room together and should serve a purpose to balance the color scheme, the scale of the room and enhance the theme of the room.

Make a list of the sizes and shape of the things you think you need and get color samples from the paint store to match the colors you will be shopping for. This is a lot easier and a lot more portable than dragging a pillow or a picture around with you to the store.

Shopping on line is easy and it is fun, but beware that the colors that are shown are not always true. At Barbara English Designs, www.barbaraenglishdesigns.com we have found quite often that rugs, bedding, drapes or other decor items look different when they show up at your home than they did on your computer. If samples or swatches are available and it is a major purchase, get those first and then order.

You do not have to shop at the most trendy and expensive stores for the great accessories. Shop in those places to get some great ideas and then make a trip to your discount stores to see if there is anything similar for sometimes a third of the price. You might even find something that you like better and your budget will always go further if you are economical on the accessories.
Save your bigger bucks for durable furniture or fabulous artwork that will really make an impact.

Stay away from cutesy. Too many people make the mistake of conglomerating one look all over the house. Craft shows can inspire an impulse purchase, but how many wooden cows really work in a home? Beware of overloading yourself with too many small accessories. Vary the size and shape and pay attention to the theme of the room.

If you want to do nautical, invest in the unexpected. Try antique stores for parts from a ship or beach resort. If you want to surround yourself with luxury, don't be afraid to use that fabulous shawl you saw in a dress shop over the corner of a chair.

Some of the best accessores are really used to bring colors, textures or scale of the room into balance. A neutral color scheme can pop with two red pillows. Wooden furniture that does not match can make sense if accessories of the same color are placed somewhere else in the room for balance. A dark chair in a room with light furniture can work if dark baskets or pottery grace the room.

Large spaces require large accessories. Less clutter is critical and if you have collections of things, group them in the same space together rather than spreading them all over the house. That way they can be appreciated for all of their similar differences as a collection without looking cluttered.

At Barbara English Designs, www.barbaraenglishdesigns.com we have worked with thousands of clients who were not sure how to accessorize their homes. Balance, scale and avoiding impulse purchases that don't have a place are all things to consider.