Bohemian style is a bright, colorful, and creative expression for your home. It gives you freedom and can lead to unique rooms. This type of style is cluttered and chaotic, but can feel homey and fun. To create a bohemian look in your home, choose bright colors, mix your patterns and textures, and find unique furniture pieces.
Choosing Colors, Patterns and Textures.
Mix patterns. One way to achieve the bohemian look in your home is to mix patterns. It’s okay that it doesn’t match. Choose patterns that you like and put them together with no care to having them match perfectly.
You may want to choose a color base, like red or blue, and only choose patterns that have that base color.
Choosing different kinds of patterns may help reduce any clashing. Two mismatched florals may look worse than a floral placed next to a southwest pattern.
Choose a variety of textures. Another way to achieve the bohemian style is to have cotton alongside satin, faux fur, corduroy, and flannel. Try different textures on different items, or try mixing textures on the same item.
For example, you may have a cotton comforter, satin pillows, and a faux fur throw blanket. You may also use pillows and blankets made from satin, corduroy, faux fur, and cotton.
Choose chairs, sofas, and ottomans with different textured materials.
Consider mixing textures on rugs, wall tapestries, and curtains.
Pick bold, bright colors. One of the keys to bohemian decor is the color scheme. Bold, bright colors of any shade can complement a bohemian room. Common colors are rusted red, deep orange, gold, brown, electric blue, deep purples, and pinks.
You can choose one base color, or a few complimentary colors to start with.
With bohemian decor, you can really choose any colors you want.
Selecting Accents and Accessories.
Add colorful pillows as accents. You can accent your colorful patterns with throw pillows. Pillows add a perfect pop of color to your room, and help bring out the color palette. You may want to choose an accent color not prominent in the patterns to bring out the subtle colors.
You may also want to choose accent pillows with patterns.
Select bold accents and accessories. Bold, excessive accessories and items help build the bohemian look. This means you can pile cushions on the sofa or on your bed, add lots of decorative pieces to the walls and on shelves, and put up multi-colored curtains and bedding. Cover your entire floor with rugs or place house plants on every surface. The options are unlimited, and you can have fun with your choices.
Drape tapestries from the ceiling or around your bed to make a canopy or place them over chairs and dresses.
You can even choose to repurpose pieces as accents. For example, you may use a window pane or a rug as a wall decoration.
Stack your jewelry on your dresser for a bohemian decorative flair.
Choose unique furniture pieces. Bohemian chic furniture is quirky and unique. This can be anything. A canopy bed, a chaise lounge, or an antique headboard can accent any bohemian decorated room. As you shop, look for interesting pieces.
For example, you may find an antique looking dresser or armoire that has painted details or a distressed desk and chair.
Use ottomans with interesting fabrics, like velvet, satin, or corduroy.
You can look for pieces at antique shops, thrift stores, and garage sales. You may be able to find bohemian pieces to buy in stores.
Include bohemian wall art. Empty walls are the opposite of a bohemian decor. Cover your walls in vivid tapestries, artworks, and wooden wall art. Don't worry about cluttered walls or matching the decor. The bohemian ideal is to express your artistic side.
For example, you may hang up a wall tapestry with a teal background with pink and yellow geometric patterns, prints of famous artworks, framed album covers, wooden wall art bought at local art fairs, and interesting wall hangings found at a thrift store.
You may consider doing a collage on a wall of postcards, magazine cutouts, art prints, posters, and anything else you enjoy looking at.
Choose unique lamps. The bohemian look is accented by soft, warm light. This is achieved by unique lamps and candles around the room. Look for lamps in interesting shapes, shades with unique patterns and bold colors, different textures like satin or silk, and even beading hanging from the shade.
Consider hanging lighting from the ceiling or putting up globes.
Home decor in general is, of course, a matter of personal taste, so when you're looking to decorate the house for winter, the best guide to follow is your own gut. However, an important first step is to decide which areas to focus on, both in your home overall and then within each room. Finding ways to emphasize warmth will then make your home that much comfier during the coldest months. And for those of you who take your shoes off indoors, layering rugs during the winter is a further way to add warmth while adding seasonal variety to your decor.
Deciding Where and How to Decorate.
Choose which rooms to decorate. If you have the budget, time, and inclination to overhaul your home entirely, feel free to go wild. If not, however, prioritize rooms that see the most use. Don't waste time and money on, say, your bedroom, which hardly anyone but you will see. Instead, focus on areas like your.
Living room.
Family room.
Dining room.
Kitchen.
Bathroom(s).
Pick a color scheme. If you're a purist, bring the outside in with seasonal colors that emphasize cold. If, on the other hand, you want to make your home a comfy hideaway from the elements, go the opposite route with warm colors. There's no right or wrong, so follow your instincts and please your own taste.
Cold color schemes include white paired with either blue, burgundy, emerald, gray, plum, or silver.
Warm colors also include white, as well as browns, reds, and yellows.
To find colors that match your paint, furniture, and other decor, use online color palettes.
Add seasonal decorations. If you celebrate Christmas, you're probably already starting the winter off by decorating for that. But whether or not you celebrate that holiday, search the aisles or online for decorations that don't tie directly into the holiday. Use these to decorate your home throughout the winter season, even after you've packed all the Santa stuff away.
Items to look for include figurines, framed pictures, snow globes, wreaths, and garland.
Neutral designs include snowmen, sleighs, winter villages, and bare or snow-covered evergreens.
Use small touches to drive winter home. Again, if you want to go hog-wild about it, feel free to make your home a winter wonderland with any number of appropriately themed decorations. But if time, budget, and space is limited, use them wisely. Consider:
Choosing one fanciful item to stand out as a seasonal centerpiece in a given area, like a model winter village to top a mantelpiece, bureau, or window seat.
Replacing everyday items with seasonally decorated ones, like dish- or hand towels, salt and pepper shakers, and placemats.
Investing in seasonal pillow cases, blankets, comforters, and/or even sofa- and armchair covers to quickly punch up areas like bedrooms, living rooms, and dens.
Choose decorations that transition from season to season. Between school and holidays, both fall and winter can be busy times of year, so plan ahead to minimize work. As you decorate for each season and/or holiday, use items that will still be appropriate as you roll over to the next so you can minimize work. For instance:
Red, yellow, orange, and brown scream autumn when bunched together, but each is a warm color that can help make your winter home more inviting. Say you decorated your living room with throw pillows in all four colors for fall. Simply take away the yellow and orange ones and leave the red and brown pillows.
Hanging wreaths with bare branches is a popular way to decorate for both fall and winter. Simply swap the autumn leaves with more winter-appropriate flair like holly leaves, oranges, or leaves painted in cool colors like blue or silver.
Evergreen garland and pine cones are Christmas favorites, but on their own they work just as well for the whole winter.
Making Your Space Feel Warm and Cozy.
Provide literal warmth with fire. If your house has one, use your fireplace! Rearrange the furniture to make the hearth the centerpiece of that room. Make a blazing fire a daily, nightly, or weekly ritual with your loved ones.
If your fireplace is inoperable, stack some bright firewood in the rack anyway to suggest the idea of a nice warm fire.
Set out candles. Whether or not you have a fireplace, light candles to add the flickering glow of flames to your home. Choose candlesticks or holders that enhance the winter theme either by color, design, or both. Enhance the effect by burning scented candles that fill the house with pleasing smells that highlight the season.
Gold or brass candlesticks provide warm colors and reflective surfaces, enhancing the light and suggestion of warmth.
Mugs, bowls, and jars filled with readymade candles and decorated with seasonal designs are also widely available.
Popular scents for winter include cinnamon, cloves, oranges, pine cones, and various types of wood.
Alternatively, you can also use LED candles if you're worried about fire risks or forbidden to use candles.
Add throws to seating areas. Drape throw blankets over the backs of your couches and armchairs. Arrange throw pillows in the corners of each one, too. If you have an accent chair, pile extras on the seat so family, roommates, and guests can help themselves as needed. Don't be mingy with them; the more, the better!
Choose neutral-colored throw pillows and blankets to use year-round. This way, you can easily dress up each seating area with just a couple of new winter-themed blankets and/or pillows.
Change your curtains. Make an instant dramatic change to your home by hanging curtains selected especially for winter. Choose whichever color or design highlights the season best for your tastes, but favor thick, heavy fabrics to suggest more warmth and protection from the cold outside. For the best insulation, choose thermal curtains, which are designed to prevent heat from escaping while also blocking drafts from the windows.
If you miss the sunlight in winter and still want to let it in without keeping the drapes shut all day, you can also find thermal-backed vertical blinds that allow more light to pass through with minimal heat loss.
Layering Rugs for Extra Coziness.
Determine the best spaces to layer rugs. Assess how much visibility the floor area receives in each room. Favor open areas over small, cramped ones. Use layered rugs where they will stand out and be noticed, rather than areas where furniture blocks them from view.
Larger rooms like the living room or den are generally ideal for this. Depending on the square footage and the amount of furniture inside, master bedrooms can also be a likely candidate.
Layered rugs can also be used in smaller spaces with little or no furniture, like hallways or bathrooms. However, expect rugs to possibly wear out faster here due to concentrated foot traffic.
Select your rugs. Maybe you're buying both at once, or perhaps you're trying to pair a new rug with one that you already own. Either way, make sure the base rug and accent rug complement each other. Make your selections according to.
Size: whether you're choosing an accent rug, base rug, or both, aim to have at least one foot (30.5 cm) of the base rug revealed along each side of the accent rug. With the base rug, always err on the side of too big if you're unsure of how large a rug you should select.
Supporting role versus starring role: favor neutral rugs for your base. Let the accent rug shine by choosing a base rug that won't upstage it. At the same time, make life easier by going with a base rug that can be used year-round while you switch accent rugs by season.
Contrast: make the accent rug pop out even more by pairing it with a base rug that contrasts it. Use color, pile height, shape, texture, or a combination of these features to make your selections more eye-catching.
Lay out your rugs. For areas like hallways or bathrooms without furniture, simply center the rugs in the open floor space. In more heavily furnished rooms, use your rugs to define specific spaces within that room, such as a sitting area in your living room, or the desk area in your home office. This may take a little trial-and-error depending on the sizes of your rugs, the open space available, and the surrounding furniture. For example.
One rule of thumb is to cover at least two feet (61 cm) of both rugs with the furniture surrounding it. Let's say your rug is being placed at the foot of a single 3-seat sofa in the living room, with no other surrounding furniture. As long as you're happy with the amount of rug visible, this should be fine.
Now let's say you're framing the rugs with an L-shaped couch. Covering two feet on either side of the base rug may look fine, but doing the same to a small accent rug may not. Here, you may want to pull the accent rug out from underneath on one or both sides..
Now say that you also have a coffee table to go with your L-shaped couch. If it's solid wood (as opposed to glass and see-through), you may wish to pull either the accent rug or both rugs further out from underneath the couch so they are more visible.
The iconic colors and smells of fall evoke feelings of coziness and warmth. Whether you live in a location that goes through the four seasons or not, preparing your home for the fall means incorporating the crisp scents, warm colors and all-around comfort of shorter days and longer nights. Create an oasis of the season with a few simple touches both inside your home and out.
Method 1 Incorporating Fall Colors.
1. Gather leaves and pine cones. Collect leaves, branches and pine cones from your backyard or a nearby park. Individual leaves and branches surrounding battery-powered candles on a tray or charger plate is a subtle but beautiful accent. You can also press dried leaves flat and arrange one or two in a picture frame. For a more dramatic centerpiece, cut medium- to large-sized branches with changing leaves and place them in a large vase.
As fall progresses, the leaves that change color vary so you can continue to collect different hues and patterns throughout the season.
If you don’t live in an area that experiences fall, purchase fake pine cones, branches and leaves to reuse each year.
There are endless ideas to decorate with dried leaves and branches. Use your creativity!
2. Buy decorative pumpkins, gourds and squash. Decorate your dinner table, sideboards and coffee tables with pumpkins and squash of all sizes. Add some dried wheat, dried Indian corn and fall-themed ribbons to create an entire centerpiece or focal point. Place the pumpkins, gourds or squash on a fall table runner or in cylindrical vases with vines or branches. Accent these festive centerpieces with votive candles.
Buy carving pumpkins early in the season to use as decoration for the fall, and then carve them when it comes time for Halloween.
Yellow, green and purple squash can double as decoration before you prepare it for a meal.
3. Add baskets to hold seasonal items. Place kindling or pine cones to throw in the fire in a basket near the fireplace. Baskets can hold seasonal soaps, lotions and tissue in the bathroom. Use a large bushel basket to hold extra blankets near the sofa. A basket by the front door can be a holder for umbrellas.
4. Add throw pillows and blankets. Find accents in colors like gold, crimson, red, orange, vermilion, tan, beige and maroon. Arrange seasonal pillows and throws by layering colors and adding in a few patterns and textures. Pick patterns and textures with similar shades to keep the arrangement cohesive.
Work from the outside of the sofa and move inwards as you arrange.
To save some money, buy pillow covers that you can put on the pillows you already have.
Don’t be afraid to add in extra large pillows or odd shapes to mix up the look.
5. Drape fabric in fall colors over your window covers. Don’t worry about purchasing new curtains or drapes for the season, but instead purchase a large piece of fabric that you can drape across the curtain rod for a cozy touch.
Make sure that the fabric lays evenly on both sides.
6. Put up fall wallpaper. Before installing, wipe down the wall you are planning to cover and let it fully dry. Unroll the wallpaper and place a few heavy books on the corners to help flatten the curled edges. Cut the panels of paper according to the space you have and lightly mark the wall with a pencil where the edges of the panel should go. Stick the paper to the wall and smooth out any creases and bubbles.
Temporary wallpaper makes it easy to switch out your look for each season.
Peel and stick wallpaper typically runs for less than $50 a panel.
Be sure to measure the space you plan to cover carefully before purchasing the wallpaper panels. Consider purchasing more than you need to be sure you have enough.
Ask a friend to help. The process is much easier with two sets of hands.
7. Add new rugs near your doors. Large rugs can change the look of a room but are pricey, so you can just focus on switching out rugs near your home’s entryways, in the bathrooms and under the kitchen sink.
Instead of purchasing Halloween or Thanksgiving rugs, consider purchasing fall themed rugs to keep all season.
Method 2 Making Your Home Smell Like Fall.
1. Buy fall candles. Look for spicy, sweet and harvest-oriented scents like cinnamon, pumpkin spice and apple. Light a candle to spread the scent throughout a room, and the natural light of the flame can help add to the coziness of your home.
Avoid lighting too many candles at once so that the scent doesn’t become too overpowering.
Always blow out candles before leaving the room in which they are located.
2. Boil cinnamon sticks and cloves on the stove. To make a simmer pot, fill a medium sized pot with water and turn the stove on high. After bringing the water to a boil, let it simmer and add in the cinnamon sticks. Add in orange rinds, apple peels, vanilla, anise or nutmeg as well. Keep the water simmering for hours.
You may need to add extra water every 30 minutes or so. Keep an eye on the water level.
Use a crockpot to simmer the water all day long without much hassle.
These simmer pots are primarily for scent and shouldn’t be consumed.
3. Light a fire. Add kindling and a couple of logs near the back of your fireplace and use a large lighter to get it started. Use a fire poker to keep the flame going evenly. Cover it with a metal grate.
Make sure you clean your fireplace before each season.
Be sure to crack a window or door so your home doesn’t get too smoky.
Never leave a fire unattended.
4. Cook a hearty meal. Dishes centered around root vegetables and squash are warm, filling and nourishing and can make your home smell like heaven. Chili, stews, casseroles and other baked one-pan dishes are comforting and can be modified to fit your specific tastes and diet. Cook with fall spices like cinnamon, turmeric, rosemary, ginger or paprika.
Method 3 Decorating Your Home’s Exterior.
1. Buy a fall wreath for your door. Purchase a wreath with wheat, squash, nuts in shells, apples, etc. – any fruit or vegetable harvested in your area at this time. Weave in fall-colored ribbons, braid, lace, etc. to spice up the wreath.
2. Plant fall mums. Purchase fall mums at a local grocer or garden center already potted or plant them in your own pot. Colors of burnt orange, deep red and warm yellow are ideal.[8]
If you live in a hotter climate, look for mums with a higher heat tolerance.
Mums can also be planted in the ground.
These flowers bloom for weeks and add eye-catching pops of color.
Mums can be planted as annuals and live for more than one season. Consider planting them in the spring or summer.
3. Add hay bales and corn stalks. Few things scream fall more than hay bales and corn stalks. Adore your home’s front door or front porch with these items. Put an equal amount on each side of the door.
Consider adding fall ribbon or using these piece together with other decorative items, like flowers, rustic wood or an outdoor rug.
Corn stalks are narrow making them ideal for small front porches.
4. Incorporate rustic elements. Reclaimed wood screams fall, so think old ladders, rocking chairs, pallets and more to your porch, front yard or backyard. Old pallets can be used as planters for herbs or flowers.
Tips.
You don’t have to change out your entire home’s decor, adding accents to a neutral palette can make a big difference.
Use fall as an opportunity to clean your entire home. While spring cleaning might be more commonly known, fall is a great time to start with a clean slate as the time spent inside your home grows longer during this season.
Fall is a great time to experiment with baking and cooking and will make your home smell like heaven.
