Decor Disasters: What Not To Do With Your Lounge

Getting stuck into a new decorating project is always exciting. You get to let your creative juices flow in a way you may not have before while at the same time injecting a little of your own personality into your home. Everyone loves a watching the DIY programmes on the television and pretending they are the new Lawrence Lewellyn-Bowen. This works in the same way that knocking up a new meal turns us into Jamie Oliver in the kitchen!

There is a fine line between creativity and splashing paint around a room in the same manner a three year old would. Making sure you avoid certain living room mistakes is imperative for loving your lounge. It happens to everyone; getting overexcited equals mistakes and what should look cool, classy and chic ends up looking a mess. What should you avoid when you come to decorating?

1. Scale it back! When you decide to design your lounge, be realistic. You probably don’t have cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows so don’t plan for a room to look like you do. Measure the room properly and know your limitations before you start.

2. Plan your budget as much as you plan your colour scheme. It’s easy to get excited about mosaic prints and made to measure curtains but if your budget is more IKEA than it is House of Fraser, spend wisely.

3. Don’t forget to ask for help. Getting some sound advice from an interior design agency or even a very honest friend is smart. They won’t try to stunt your vision, just steer you away from luminous yellow feature walls and juke boxes in the corner.

4. Purchase great art pieces if the room size allows it, but don’t fill a wall with quirky pieces that don’t connect to you or each other. You want your lounge to reflect a space YOU want to relax, not the visitors to the Tate Modern.

5. Pick out your textiles before you begin to paint. By choosing your rugs and blinds or curtains, you can match your room colours to those and therefore end up with one feature wall rather than the entire room painted.

These tips aren’t exhaustive, there are hundreds more mistakes you could possibly make when you decorate a living room. Impulse buys won’t do your home any favours and likely won’t reflect the personality you are desperate to put into the room so pay attention to what you’re doing and try your best to stay level-headed about the choices you make. Interior design takes a keen eye and that doesn’t mean you need to be a professional to decorate. This just means that you should be aware of what colours go and pairing giant leafy plants with a fluorescent colour scheme will likely look more gaudy than Gauche. Stylish, chic and classic is a look you should be going for and matching your soft furnishings to your walls will have an impact.

Step away from the paintbrush and pick up a pen: you have some planning to do!