Bring the Exotic to your Home

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homify Eclectic style bedroom
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A well-designed home is a reflection of the people living in it. When your personality has so many facets, your home interiors should be just as exotic. When designing home interiors, keep your lifestyle in mind and use it to create a design brief for the house interiors. If you like entertaining at home, let the living space dominate the house while if you love traveling, use maps to show off the places you have been to or would like to go to. To design an exotic home interior, think in terms of luxury and warmth. This is possible even with a limited budget when you make the right choices in terms of colors and materials. Here are a few design tips to get you started.

Begin with a natural colour palette

Keeping in mind how colours affect the energy of a room, picking a colour palette for a house can be quite a task. However, picking a colour palette should be fun not stressful! Neutrals are hues you cannot go wrong with and the perfect primary colour for an interior colour scheme. Shades of off-white, beige or grey are always in vogue. However, not every wall of the house needs to be the same colour. Start with the biggest and most centrally located room and work your way outwards. Note which room walls are visible through doorways and make sure these walls are painted in colours that complement each other. A good way to build a colour palette for an exotic home interior is to pick lighter or darker shades of the same hue you have chosen for the central room as colors for adjoining rooms. An alternative way to go about picking a colour palette is to use the environment around the house as inspiration. For example, an eggshell blue would be the ideal primary colour for a house on a hilltop, while a sandy beige would suit coastal home decor.

Choose simple furniture

When it comes to furniture, the simplest, sleekest forms are the best suited to exotic home interiors. A single heavily carved piece can be used as an accent piece, but multiples of this style will give your house interiors a heavy, dated look. Look for furniture with clean lines, streamlined shapes and interesting handles that add interest to the piece. Pay attention to the material being used to construct your furniture and ensure that the wood is well treated and termite-proof. Check the wood for knots that are susceptible to cracks and avoid materials like particle board, MDF and pressed wood. Also, pay attention to the wood joinery and avoid anything held together with staples or nails. For upholstered furniture, look for foam layered with cotton and fiber instead of foam only cushions. For a truly exotic look, avoid painted furniture and instead polish it to reveal the beauty of the wood grain.

Create a layered light scheme

There are three types of lights required to give home decor an exotic vibe; ambient lights for the overall lighting of the house, task lights such as study lamps and accent lights such as focus lights for paintings and table lamps. Light sources should be placed at varying heights and across the room so as to achieve a balanced light scheme. Bouncing light off walls can make small spaces look bigger while lighting small zones of a large room independently can section a large room into smaller cozier spaces. Dimmers give instant flexibility to all types of lights and are an essential tool for homeowners to create a well-balanced light scheme. It is also advisable to use energy efficient light sources such as LEDs in place of incandescent or CFL light bulbs.

The beautiful chandelier here is by Asco Lights based in Stockport, United Kingdom.

Indulge in luxurious materials

From being used as curtains to upholstery, fabrics are the most exotic elements of home decor. While the furniture is kept simple and clean lined, go bold with fabric prints and patterns. Play with textures that reflect your personality. If silks with intricate prints speak of delicate regality, velvet with bold damask patterns are plush and warm. With upholstered furniture, pay attention to joints especially if you are using fabric with a large motif. Be liberal with your use of metallic tones to highlight different aspects of your home interiors in the form of metal accent pieces as well as metallic highlight tones on fabrics.

Add prints and colour

Prints on wallpapers and fabrics are a beautiful way or perking up home interior spaces. When choosing prints for home interiors, vary the motifs, pattern repeats, color and expanse to create interest. However, ensure that there is, at least, one element that binds all the different prints together. Bright bold colours are also ideal ways to accent a house. Take inspiration from your holidays and travels when picking patterns and prints. Given the neutral colour base that has already been built up, don’t shy away from large bold prints and patterns for rugs and wall art. At the same time, to achieve a balanced look, create an impact with bold patterns on one or two pieces and used subtle prints through the rest of the room.

Pick unique decoration

Avoid mass-produced artifacts and curios if you want your home décor to make a statement. To put the finishing touches on your home interiors use unique decoration pieces. Curios and souvenirs from holidays make for excellent showpieces as not only are these unique but they have a story that goes with them. The way something is used to decorate a house also makes a difference to its perceived value. Using a hand woven rug as wall art or as an upholstery throw draws more attention to it rather than if it were to be placed on the floor. Recycling or upcycling artifacts to create something new is another way to decorate your home with something personal and unique.

For more tips on creating a unique home, read 5 exotic decorative styles from around the world!

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