Decorating Inspiration

[Julie-Ann]

When you are thinking of decorating a room where do you getting your decorating inspiration from? Does it just come naturally to you and you can visualise the ideas in your head? Or do you rely on magazines or TV shows for ideas to use in your decorating? Or perhaps you come to a certain forum and ask some friends for ideas;):D.
I find some of the decorating shows have fantastic ideas. It is hard sometimes to take it all in and I often wish I had recorded the show. Mind you if I did that we would be drowning in DVD's in this house:D. A lot of the time I am lucky that I can just come up with the ideas. But I love being able to come here to bounce ideas around and see things from a different perspective.
So where do you get your decorating inspiration from?

[decorheaven]

I can't help myself as I like things to match. So here is an example of inspiration at work: Our current house came with loads of browns and wood surfaces in every shade so I had to start matching as many of the surfaces are permanent and not easy to change. Loads of brown might sound messy but it actually works. Plus we have put very dark tinting down one side of the house to protect from the hot morning sun. This makes the rooms dark so I wanted to lighten up the decor in one spare bedroom. It had two pale walls and dark brown walls so on Sunday last I wallpapered the 2 dark walls only. I selected a paper with large flowers and a trail with off white/cream background to add a more organic look our decor.
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DH put together the new bed and it was all finished in the day. See before, another after and a close up of the design as it is quite textured.
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Now it is just finding the time to do a feature wall at our entrance and one over the fireplace would look fab.

[Julie-Ann]

That looks gorgeous Decor Heaven:love it:. I love the texture of the wallpaper.
So did the inspiration come from the wallpaper?
What colours are your feature walls going to be?

[decorheaven]

I do find the pattern books give inspirations especially the roomsetting. However it is hard to actually get on with the decorating before you see another fab wallcovering and change your mind. In the current house it is the brown shades that are the starting point.

Yes the texture is an important part of wallcovering design currently. Not just paintable textures in one colour but the design and varying colours have textured shapes.

I will post the other walls as they happen. I waiting for the perfect match for brown, beige and silver ornaments. Yes more odd colour groupings but it seems to work.

[Milena]

I had to think about this question:)
When it comes to decorating my own home I have my own style so pretty much know what works and what doesn't. We have been renting for the past three years so I haven't done lots of decorating lately.

I like Freedom so I regularly visit the Freedom store and I use their catalogue for inspiration. I love looking at modern expensive houses on realestate.com.au as well as display home websites.
I subscribe to two different magazines but hardly read them only flick through the pages.

I have always been interested in houses and real estate and built up a library of photos and images of houses and rooms that I like. I don't copy anything directly that I see but it does give me ideas and thoughts I can try. I also try to buy what is in fashion and change things every few years.