Decor

A Romantic Home: Home Design Ideas

Here is a collection of mood board posts that you can find here on Home Tree Atlas, that will help you create a romantic home:

3 Super Easy Ways to Create Romantic Decor in Your Home

How To Create A Romantic Bedroom – Pictures, Designs, and Decor Ideas

Home Decor Ideas Beautiful Ways To Use String Lights Indoors

Romantic Ideas: Canopy Bedroom Designs

Shabby Chic Mood Board Collection

Romance at Home: Shabby Chic Living Room Ideas

Romance at Home: Shabby Chic Furniture Ideas

February 5, 2015 in Decor, Design Style

Industrial and Rustic Charm: Home Brick Wall Designs

I like seeing brick walls in a room. They add rustic charm, character, makes a space feel cozy, and becomes a decor feature in a space. But having an interior brick wall can be hit or miss, as it is better suited for some rooms vs others. Also having an entire wall in exposed brick can overwhelm the design and look of the room. So here are some design notes and advice when it comes to having an exposed brick wall in a room.

The Size of the Room

From the images in the mood board above you can see that almost all of the rooms that have exposed brick walls are not your average sized rooms. Exposed brick walls are better suited for rooms that are taller, double height or 1.5 in height, vs normal rooms. Having a brick wall is bit of a feature piece, and you need space to let it really shine.

A kitchen (1) or bathroom is a good space to have a brick wall, while double height bedrooms and living rooms will look good too.

Less is More – A Feature Piece in the Room

If you look at pictures that have brick walls in their natural color (red), you won’t find just plain solid brick walls. Having a wall just of red brick will be overbearing – and will dominate the look of the room. So you want to mix up the design of the wall.

One way to break up a brick wall is to have wainscoting, like the bottom black wainscoting in the bedroom in picture (2).

Use columns, or frame a portion of the brick wall texture. Mix up textures. Mix in plastered sections, or even fabric (3), to tone down the rustic nature of the brick wall.

Have some parts of the wall plastered and painted, leaving space for a little of the rustic exposed brick – just like in picture (4). You don’t want to over do it. Be selective, and place the brick wall in a feature area, such as a kitchen backsplash (5), the headboard wall of a bedroom, as a room divider (6), or as a background for shelving (7).

The Importance of Color

The color of the brick you use will really determine how the room looks and feels. Have a look at the kitchen in picture (8) – see how the wall blends with the decor and style of the room (from the floors to neutral colors of the table, cabinets, and chairs). Imagine how the space would look if it had your typical red brick – the color would dominate the space.

You can get bricks in all shades of red, from bright glossy reds, to more natural hues. You can also get concrete bricks too. You’re gong to want to use a color that blends well with the design of your room.

You can always paint over the bricks. Having the bricks painted over tones down the rustic nature of the design. White brick wall interiors are popular, as most walls are white – but you are left with a nice subtle brick texture just like in picture (9). Going with black creates a luxurious rustic style (10).

How to Build Your Own Interior Brick Wall

There are two main ways to create an interior brick wall design. If you have indoor brick walls, then you can strip back the plastering and expose the old bricks.

Another way is to use thin slices of brick to create a faux brick wall. You can get these thin slices as individual tiles pieces, that you attach DIY to the wall. Or you can get large panels that interlock to create panelling for the wall.

Other Design Notes and Ideas

If you do have a decorative brick wall in one of your rooms, highlight this decor feature by fitting down lights to the ceiling – pointing towards the bricks
Don’t forget you can play with patterns. Check out the herringbone fireplace design in picture (11)
By using exposed bricks as a design feature in a room, you are creating a rustic/industrial/natural design style. So the other decor pieces in the room should blend well together with this style.

Image Credits: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11

Other rustic decor mood boards:

June 20, 2014 in Decor

Creative Ideas: How To Hide Wires and Cords

The biggest problem areas when it comes to wires are in the living room with the TV, tech items like the router, and any wires along the floor. Here are some creative ideas, from the simple to the heavy duty, on how to hide wires in your home.

Starting With The Simple Ideas

Why are all wires black, when most walls are white? The simplest way to get rid of that ugly wire look is to spray paint them so that they blend in with their surroundings. Or replace the wire with another one that has the right color.

How To Hide The Ugly Things In Your Home

Get decorative with wall trim and hide wires behind it. Check out the simple wall trim by Julie in picture (1). Or go ahead and create a pattern on the wall – the bottom left and right wall trim in picture (2) have wires hidden behind them.

Hide cables behind other objects – just like the tall books that are covering up the TV wires in picture (3) of the mood board.

For any wires that run along a wall, you can hide them away by using decorative trunking / raceway that lines up with your baseboard or floor trim – just like in the picture below (A)

Heavy Duty Ideas

Build a false wall just like Dana, seen in picture (4). Not only can these walls hide cords, but they can have your TV, speakers or other appliances built into them – creating a more modern and sleeker look in the room.

Depending on the wall you have, you can cut holes to feed your wall mounted TV wires through. This might sound difficult, but just check out House of Hepworths tutorial on how they hid their cables behind the TV – using a simple hand saw to cut holes in the wall. You can go a step further than what they did, and fit wall sockets into your new holes to add a finishing touch.

Don’t Hide Wires, Embrace Them

You could go the other way, and see how you can make the wires a decor feature in the room:

Check out the copper tubing hiding the wires around the living room in picture (5)
Rope can be wrapped around the wires to add a little rustic charm – the rope lights in picture (6) were a DIY project by A Merry Mishap. Twine can also be used (7)
Wooden balls can also be added to wires (8)
Replace standard wires with cloth and or colored wires. Let the wires add to the color scheme of the room, or use a striking neon color just like in picture (9) by Weekday Carnival
More funky wire decor ideas include using the wires to create a design on the wall. Go with a vintage (10) or tech (11) design

Extra

If you need an idea on how to hide your wifi router, a popular idea is to use a hollowed out vintage book (B)

image credits: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11 A/B

Home Decor Ideas: Using Large and Small Logs

Inexpensive DIY Log Furniture Ideas

Logs can be turned into pretty inexpensive furniture pieces. Ben of Homemade Modern paid $2 per log from someone on Craigslist who was selling them for fire wood. He then turned them into stripped down log end tables – seen in picture (1). Follow along with his tutorial here.

What I like about using logs to create coffee and side tables, is that there are a bunch of different ways it can be done. In picture (2) two logs have been used to create more table space in the living room. A thick piece of log has been sliced up into 3 separate pieces to create another of coffee table in picture (3). And for a long coffee table – turn a log on its side and cut off the top and bottom to create a flat base and top. Depending on the thickness of the log, this coffee table might be low down – just like the one in picture (4). For more creative coffee table ideas have a look at my mood board here.

Chairs and stools are other home furniture pieces that can be crafted from logs. They can be solid pieces, or the logs can be carved to create a more stylised and lighter stool (5).

Around The House

The chalkboard made out of a log slice is a great rustic chic idea – and simple too (6). Martha Stewart has a tutorial on how you can make your own colored chalkboard paint here. So you are not stuck with using the traditional black paint.

Stripped down and finished quartered log pieces make for elegant book ends – seen in picture (7).

Wood + Lighting

Carved out log candle lanterns will add some serious rustic charm to any space (8). While the white birch log lamp in picture (9) is ideal for a more Scandinavian styled space.

Back to Nature

I really like ideas that take organic materials and use them back in organic settings. One example is using logs as planters (10). Or how about the crafty log bird feeder in picture (11).

Using Smaller Wood Pieces

Simple Ideas: Planters can also be created out of smaller branch pieces. Just by turning the wood slice on its side, and using the bark to keep it still, the test tube planter in picture (A) above is one designer looking piece. Another simple idea is to use wood slices as photo stands (B). And how about drilling holes into a thick wood slice to create an elegant pencil holder (C).

Adding Color: Add a splash of color to play down the rustic look and feel of wood slices. Just like the candle holders that have been dipped in gold paint for a more lux-chic look (D). Then there are the log bowls in picture (E), which use high-gloss paint to add bold colors.

Log Home Decor On The Walls

I’ve seen a few ideas of decorative log slices being used as wall decor. They didn’t really appeal to me. But this log wallpaper by Rockett St. George really caught my eye. It is so artistically designed and creates a striking feature wall.

image credits: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11 A/B/C/D/E