Get Cozy: Interior Design Tips for a More Inviting Home

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Coming home after a long day should feel like a warm hug. Not only does an inviting home put your mind at ease, but it’s also the simplest way to make your guests feel welcome.

“Make yourself at home,” is a phrase guests hear often, but how can you do that in a home that feels cold, chaotic, or disorienting? Read on to learn some simple, actionable tips on how to make your home the coziest it’s ever been!

1. Throw Pillows

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Throw pillows are one of the easiest, most affordable ways to instantly boost your home’s coziness. Choose pillows with different textures, such as wooly cable knit and rich velvet, to add interest and extra snuggle points.

This is also a great way to add a splash of color to your living room or bedroom. If your room has a cool, monochrome color palette, change it up and choose warm colored throw pillows with funky patterns.

Why do splashes of color make your home more inviting? You don’t want your home to look like a hotel suite, which makes it seem colder. Guests will feel more reluctant to really get comfortable on your couch and touch your furniture.

Splashes of color add bits of your personality and break up monochrome color palettes!

2. Soft Lighting

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Lighting is often an aspect of interior decoration that’s taken for granted, but has a tremendous impact on how your home is perceived! While rooms such as the bathroom and kitchen need brighter lighting to properly get ready for the day and prepare meals, the function of your living room and bedroom is primarily relaxation.

Skip the stressful fluorescent lighting that harkens to office buildings and department stores. Instead, choose soft, warm-toned LED lights, candles, and even fairy string lights to create an inviting, cozy environment. Create depth by including warm lighting in different light sources, such as table lamps, floor lamps, and wall lights for living room.

During the day, let the light in! Slide those thick curtains away, stop wasting electricity and add sheer light filtering shades that help soften and diffuse harsh sunlight. Not only is a sunlit room pleasant to look at, a study found opening up your curtains during the day also helps kill bacteria that lives in dust. Seems like a win-win!

3. Showcase Pleasant Memories

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Now that we’re in the age of digital media, our photos often sequester within our devices and online. It’s easy to forget your favorite moments with loved ones when they’re hidden away – so remember to print and hang your favorites!

By printing your photos, framing them, and hanging them in high traffic areas like your living room, entryway, and hallways, you instantly add a personal touch to your home. Not only is this a welcoming sight for you every day as you relive these pleasant memories, but your guests will immediately feel that they’re stepping into an inviting home and not a polished hotel suite.

4. Say Goodbye to Clutter

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Clutter doesn’t make your home more inviting; in fact, not only does it add stress, but it distracts guests from the rest of your interior decoration! You probably already know the exact areas where your clutter tends to gather.

It can be that stack of mail in the entryway that you can’t bring yourself to go through, or the old magazines in the corner of the living room that you can’t bear to throw away. Remember that the peace of mind of both yourself and your guests is far more important than the chaotic accumulation of random materials.

Schedule a small amount of time out of your day, even just for 15 minutes, to tackle these piles. And if you simply can’t discard anything, stash them in an official home by finding some stylish trays or boxes!

5. Add Some Greenery

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Fancy yourself a green thumb? If not, adding plants to your home is still a great way to create a more inviting space! There are many plants that thrive in soft, indoor lighting with a minimal amount of watering.

Not only do these organic elements add life to a space, but the color green is naturally soothing. Moreover, the furniture in our homes, such as shelves, cabinets, coffee tables, and end tables, is predominantly geometric in shape.

Plants immediately soften a space with the natural curves of their leaves and branches. The large oval leaves of the rubber fig add a high contrast to the predominantly square shapes in a room; the trailing tendrils of English ivy help draw the eye in a pleasing way around what would otherwise be empty space.

6. Layer Soft Textiles

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Last but not least, immediately soften a room and add interest by adding rugs and blankets. A large, plush rug in your living room beneath modern furniture with sharp lines adds immediate contrast and comfort.

As the seasons change and it grows colder, layering throw blankets at the base of your bed, along the arms of your couches, and on the backs of chairs creates a cozy appearance and inspires guests to get comfortable.

Creating an Inviting Home

By following even just one of these steps, you’re on your way to an overall more pleasant, inviting home. Your personal space should bring you peace, joy, and delight, and your guests will undoubtedly foster the same feelings!

Want more informative, actionable ideas for a comfortable, inviting home? Keep reading the Domestications Bedding blog!