How To Incorporate New Trends Into Your Home

Another year has gone. The industry trade shows are over, and the home improvement shows are starting. Every new year introduces new design trends, and 2007 is no different.

This year has truly introduces some innovative ideas that combine Oriental and retro styles, effervescent colors, and patterns that are guaranteed to create a strong emotional impact on anyone who enters the room. Forget buying a $5 000 chair to impress your boss. This year's theme is about renewing the 'hearth and home' feeling, without actually going back and bringing forward the designs, colors, and motifs of our childhood.

The newest trend is DIY, Do It Yourself. Hand made furniture, accessories, and walls are the 'new' sophistication. This year's decorator does not need to invest in a professional designer to create the room right.

Floral art is important, but it needs to stray away from the bold prints of the English Country style and take on a more Oriental look, full of earth and natural colors, muted pastels, and Oriental shapes or lines.

DYI home decorators need to avoid the temptation of going overboard and create a tropical or Feng Shui design. The new trends can blend some of these factors, but they should never dominate. The focus is on furniture - not art, walls, or lighting.

The most important decorating skill that DYI decorators need to develop is the ability to mineralize. Home decorators who grab this year's theme and overpower a room, or home, with the one design will have a home that is 'out of style' within a year.

The best way to incorporate themes into a home is to choose those elements that speak to your emotions and lifestyle needs. Then, add a few pieces or wall treatments. This lets home designers update their home each year, keeping their home up to date.

Home decorating themes build on each other, year after year. Remember the deep coppers and burnished gold tones from 2005. Take these elements and dry brush a deep plumb over them, or sponge a rich gold brown fabric paint to the trim on drapes, furniture, or lampshades, and you've updated your accents and artwork to match the new design.

One way the home owner can bring the 2007 trend to their home is by adding grasscloth to walls, instead of wall paper. This heavy weave type of wallpaper is not for everyone. It looks like colored grass, woven and pasted to wall paper. This means that seams will remain very visible. The lines can overpower a room, so they are best for a smaller area.

If this is too much, then adding wallpaper with a silk sheen and mottled pin stripe, will bring the 2007 theme to a room, without creating a home decorating blunder that is difficult to remove. One way to prevent this is by finding a short wall, and use a single strip to turn the wall segment into a piece of art. This can be done on a full size wall, dividing the wall into strips. However, before doing this, make sure you learn the technique well.

One last tip, never install the 'Real McCoy', hand painted silk panel wallpaper. Do not even use the local wall paper company. Phone around and ask for someone who has already installed silk wallpaper. Silk wallpaper is totally unforgiving. It is not sold in rolls but panels. If one panel is ruined, then the whole wall needs to be replaced, at a cost of $1 - 7 000.00.

However, if you wait until March, the market will release paper wallpaper that mimics the Oriental hand painted, or embroidered, designs.