Looking to give your space that signature touch? We’ve offered lots of advice on how to choose the right sofas and armchairs for your home. Gorgeous, artisanal furniture creates impact but what about the smaller elements?
Enhancing home interiors is about attention to detail. Today we’re sharing overlooked or underrated design elements that can seriously elevate your space and add personality. Small home decor elements are the final details that bring a home together and make it uniquely yours.
Read on for home decor tips from our design experts.
Transforming Spaces with Throw Pillows and Cushions
Throw pillows and decorative cushions are one of our favourite small decor tips, transforming spaces and adding a touch of comfort and cosiness. Over the years we’ve gathered some essential pillow decor tips.
Versatile and affordable, simply vary the colour, pattern, shape, or size to suit your existing interior. Experiment with asymmetrical arrangement for an eclectic feel and group pillows in odd numbers for natural visual harmony. Layer larger pillows at the back and small cushions to the front to add depth. Feature fabrics are a great way to bring vibrancy to neutral decor without spending a fortune on new furniture. Just remember to choose pillows that align with the overall mood of the room especially if you’re looking to balance retro elements.
The Original Chair Company stock a range of soft furnishings to enhance the comfort and elegance of your home.
Stylish and Functional Radiator Covers
An overlooked design element in most homes, luxurious interiors included, is radiator covers. Here are our stylish radiator cover ideas and why they make a difference to your home.
Radiate beauty
Stylish radiator covers come in a variety of designs and can often be customised to your taste. From sleek and modern to ornate and decadent it's easy to see how radiator covers can add another layer of beauty to your home. Functional radiator covers serve as a finishing touch, neatly concealing ugly radiators to create a cohesive and polished finishing touch to your home decor. They come in a range of materials from wood, metal, and MDF to suit every style and budget.
Functional aesthetics
Functional radiator covers double as shelves or additional surface space, which gives you more space to display decorative items like plants or books, enhancing the room's functionality and aesthetic. Where space is tight, stylish radiator covers offer a practical way to double up on beauty and function.
From a practical point of view, functional radiator covers help to prevent accidental burns, especially in households with children or pets, making your home safer and more comfortable to live in.
Create the illusion of space
Tired of bulky, awkward radiators upsetting visual harmony in a room? A stylish radiator cover creates a more streamlined and spacious appearance. Whether your style is minimalist or maximalist, clean and organised spaces look more luxuriant. There are plenty of radiator cover ideas out there so they can blend in with existing furniture to create an illusion of space and visual harmony.
Extra perks of radiator covers
Radiator covers can help muffle noises from the radiator, creating a quieter and more serene environment. True luxury is having peace to relax in. Another functional benefit of radiator covers is that they help improve the flow of warm air into the room by directing heat outwards instead of up, a particular benefit in period properties.
The Impact of Lighting on Home Decor
One of our top tips is never underestimate the impact of lighting. Thoughtful home lighting makes a significant difference to the comfort and atmosphere of a room all while enhancing aesthetic appeal. Here are our favourite lighting tips.
Spotlight features
Draw attention to unique architectural features and intricate details with decorative lighting. For example, accent lighting can showcase high ceilings, moldings, staircases, windows — even an antique bookcase.
Create ambiance
The right home lighting can transform the atmosphere, making it feel warm, inviting, romantic, energetic, or serene. The first thing to consider is temperature. Warm light (2700K-3000K) creates a cozy, inviting atmosphere, perfect for living rooms, bedrooms, and dining areas while cool light (3500K-4100K) provides a bright, energetic feel, suitable for kitchens, bathrooms, and workspaces. Using dimmer switches means you can control the intensity of your home lighting depending on what mood you wish to create.
Light fixtures and styles
Choose light fixtures based on your personal style.
Chandeliers add elegance and grandeur, often serving as a focal point in dining rooms or entryways.
Pendant lights provide targeted illumination and visual interest, commonly used over kitchen islands or dining tables while recessed lighting offers a clean, unobtrusive look, providing subtle yet effective decorative lighting.
Finally, remember table and floor lamps which help create a layered lighting scheme with functional and decorative benefits.
Choosing the Perfect Curtain Poles
Choosing curtain poles requires several considerations like material, finish, and proportion. Metals like brass, chrome, stainless steel, and wrought iron are popular for their durability and timeless look. If your room scheme takes inspiration from nature then wooden curtain poles make sense and can be stained to match existing furniture.
Decorative curtain poles can be fluted or carved with ornate finials to suit traditional interiors and period homes or sleek and minimalistic for a contemporary look.
Finally, you need to consider proportion. High ceilings can accommodate thicker and more decorative curtain poles and you should ensure that the pole extends beyond the window frame by 10-20 cm on each side to allow the curtains to be fully drawn back. Rooms always appear larger when you maximise natural light and choosing the right curtain pole helps.
Creative Magazine Stacks and Storage Solutions
Luxuriant spaces are always clutter free. Creative magazine storage keeps your reading material in order while enhancing the visual appeal of your living room. Why not repurpose antique furniture as a magazine rack or use a gorgeous ottoman as storage? Upholstered footstools with built-in storage are another functional and chic way for organising magazines and keeping your space clutter-free.
Add Depth and Character with Decorative Mirrors
For adding character nothing rivals decorative mirrors. A beautiful and well-placed mirror amplifies light and creates an illusion of space. Oversized or uniquely shaped mirrors create stunning focal points in a room and mirror decor further enhances aesthetic appeal. Furthermore, mirrors are practical! Luxury is about creating a sense of comfort, ease, and elegance and a beautiful mirror placed in the hallway is a convenient way for a last appearance check before leaving home.
Our mirror placement tips? Typically, the center of the mirror should be at eye level for most viewers, which is about 60-65 inches from the floor. When hanging a mirror above furniture like a console table or a fireplace, leave about 4-6 inches between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the mirror.
Functional and Stylish Shelving Units
Shelving can be both functional and stylish, serving as a place to store items and as a way to display objects that are meaningful to you. Hopefully these shelving decor ideas will provide you with plenty of inspiration.
Arrange items by height to create a sense of depth, for example tall candlesticks or books with smaller items. You could also arrange items on shelving units by theme, for example glassware or travel souvenirs. Rotate displays seasonally to keep things fresh. Minimalist? Floating shelves in natural wood make for simple, stylish shelving.
Aim for a balanced look by arranging items symmetrically on shelving units. Declutter your shelves regularly to maintain visual harmony and only display items that you love. A curated shelf looks stylish and should add to a room’s overall aesthetic.
Create Ambiance with Scented Candles
Scented candles engage the senses and significantly add to the luxurious ambiance of your home. Scents like lavender and vanilla have been proven to promote relaxation, and scents in general are strongly tied to emotion.
Create mood and ambiance with candles regardless of whether they're placed in a living room, bedroom, or bathroom. Like it or not, your home fragrance is what guests will remember most because scent is the most powerful memory trigger. Be sure to choose high-quality fragrance with natural essential oils for sophisticated scents.
Taking time to light a few candles can turn evenings into a mindful ritual as you quietly bask in the serene glow of scented candles softly perfuming your home. Some scented candles are so sculptural and beautiful that they can act as home decor in themselves, adding a touch of elegance to coffee tables and shelves and atmospheric lighting that’s perfect to unwind in.
The Versatility of Wall Art and Picture Frames
If you want to dramatically enhance your home decor, consider the versatility of wall art and picture frames. Whether you want to add balance, charm, or originality these art placement tips will help you bring a room together.
Wall art and ornate picture frames are the perfect way to express your personal aesthetics. Whether it's a family portrait or abstract seascape, you can customise frames to match your room’s theme.
The most versatile wall decor doesn’t simply draw attention though, it creates a dynamic focal point in a room, anchoring the eye with visual structure. Arrange multiple pieces in a gallery wall for an eclectic look or choose a large-scale painting and frame for maximum impact.
We love wall art as an easy way to introduce colour. You can choose to complement the room’s existing palette or artfully clash depending on personal expression. Framed art can provide texture with sculptural frames, bringing life to flat or neutral walls.
One of our best art placements tips is to try hanging wall art in different areas of the home. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that a piece destined for the living room brings drama to a hallway or bathroom. Play with scale and proportion until you find a placement that works. Large-scale pieces are better suited to big walls while grouping smaller frames together creates intimacy, and can even tell a narrative.
For something truly unique, why not try a decorative headboard in place of wall art in the bedroom? It creates a stunning focal point, is super luxuriant, and doubles up as art!
Practical and Decorative Rugs and Carpets
Rugs, carpets, and decorative rugs can significantly enhance an interior. Color, texture,and placement will significantly impact the mood and look of a room. Here are a few design principles to bear in mind.
In larger rooms, use multiple rugs to define different areas. Ensure they complement each other in color and style otherwise your room could end up looking messy instead of intentionally eclectic. A rug that’s too small for example can throw off a room’s balance. Decorative rugs can tie together living room seating arrangements — just be sure to pick a rug that extends under all major pieces of furniture.
When placing rugs in the dining room make sure it’s large enough to accommodate chairs even when they are pulled out. For bedrooms, try putting a rug under the bed and extending it out so you have a delightfully soft surface to step on first thing in the morning.
In hallways runner rugs and carpets add color and comfort to narrow and sometimes poorly lit spaces.
Decorative rugs are a great way to introduce colour and pattern to a room. Tie them in with other soft furnishing like scatter cushions and throw pillows for visual cohesion. Geometric, floral, and abstract patterns break the monotony of single-coloured walls or furniture and are easier (and cheaper) to switch out when you’re bored. For harmonious aesthetics, balance bold rugs with subdued interiors or use neutral rugs where there’s already a riot of colour.
Finally, decorative rugs are also practical, providing warmth and making your space feel cosy and inviting.
Elevating Your Home with Small Decor Elements
Small decor elements have a big impact on the look and feel of your home. Elevating home decor can feel overwhelming but with a little imagination and sound design principles you can completely transform your space into a cosy, stylish, and welcoming home.
We hope you’ve found our home enhancement tips useful and feel inspired to add the final touches to your home. Call us today if you’d like us to apply our design expertise to your own home.