As the night’s get darker, days seem longer and the summer months of garden parties have become a distant memory, the majority of our days after work are spent indoors, with the family in the sitting room around the television.
By the time Autumn rolls around, according to a study by the world’s largest mood board site (Pinterest), is when over half of Brits are thinking about redecorating their home. This is mainly because they’re spending more time indoors than they were when the better weather was around.
Not everyone has the budget nor the time to redecorate an entire room though. With as little as an afternoon, you could find there are some amazing transformations you can make to your living room using what you already have and some affordable accessories.
Colour Schemes
Paint isn’t always the cheapest, especially if you plan on painting an entire room. You have the walls, the doors, window frames and woodwork because once you tackle one part, the newer paint shows up all the older paint in the room.
A quicker way to bring a splash of colour into your sitting room is to highlight just one area.
Instead of redecorating your entire room, take a look at what you have and see if there’s one part of your room that could be painted and the artwork changed, whether that’s just one larger printed artwork above the mantel or a gallery wall filled with family photos having the backing paintwork changed.
Artwork Upgrades
Changing your artwork is a good way to emphasise the change of seasons. Just as you can bring in brighter colours into your rooms to bring in the feeling of summer, in the Autumn, browns and softer pastel colours can help bring a more natural feel to your home.
Art for the Autumn can be photography of pathways with brown leaves, yellow and darker tones of red such as burgundy. If you enjoy DIY projects, you could even collect a few decent sized leaves from a countryside walk, dry them out and frame them using mount board.
Family Framed Photo Upgrades
There’s likely to be some family photos on display in your rooms that you wouldn’t consider replacing. What you can do with these though is give them a quick makeover by switching out the mount board. You could change the colour, put in a double mount or even a triple mount. If you’re looking for something more festive, a temporary placeholder such as card that’s been decorated with Santa stamps, a little glitter in the corners, or even strips of confetti glued in place to give the frame a celebratory feel could be done.
Mount boards are easily replaced and are much more affordable than changing up your picture frames.
Depending on the photos you’re displaying and the quality of your frame, you could even find decorative fabrics could fit in place of your mount board. For baby and toddler photos, alphabet fabrics could be placed over your mount, and if your frame isn’t thick enough, you could use art stamps or stencils to decorate your mount to give a more authentic look instead of just the one solid colour.
Changing the atmosphere in a room doesn’t always require redecorating every part of the room. Small changes can have a big impact.