Home Decor – Using Stripes In Home Decorating

Stripes in home decor are for the bold hearted. Those with staid choices prefer sober colors and settings, while the dashing prefer stripes. Here’s what you need to know before you take the plunge into home decor with stripes.

Stripes in home decor are extremely popular with people who have a bold outlook towards life. This does not mean it is only meant for them, though. Whatever be your outlook, a dash of stripes in your living room can add that exotic touch you have been looking for.

When it comes to using stripes, however, there are some ground rules you must understand before you step into this uncharted territory.

Why Stripes, and Where?

Stripes in your home decoration plans are all about making a style statement. And remember, too many stripes are not formal.

Your living room presents plenty of options for adding stripes. You could use stripes on your walls, on your upholstery, on your window drapes, on the floor rugs, and even in the numerous decoration pieces that adorn any normal living room.

What Kind of Stripes For Decor?

Then there are a large variety of stripes you can choose from as well. One way to classify the stripes are the direction. There are the vertical ones, and there are the horizontal ones. You can even use slanting lines in your stripes.

The next option is size – there are thin and thick stripes. In case of smaller rooms thick stripes look better as they add to the volume of the room, and vice versa. Thin vertical stripes tend to make the roof look higher than it actually is.

Then there are the options in colors. You could use bold or light colors. Contrast colors do well in certain places, but for first timers it is best to stick to the same color family as the stripes themselves are less glaring. Thus you can have a combination of dark brown, light brown, orange and shades of yellow, just to quote an example. In case of contrasts, blue and white stripes are amongst the most popular.

Keep it Light

If you are using stripes for the first time, it is best to keep it light, as in going in for only an item or two for the changeover. Do not fill the whole room with stripes at one go.

Change the upholstery, or the window drapes, or the walls into a striped pattern one at a time. If you like what you see and continue to like it after a while as well, you got a winner on your hands. Now you can go for the next step and add other pieces to your overall striped home decoration design.

Vary Your Options

When looking for a pattern, try to mix and match. Too many stripes may actually become overbearing, so go for a combination of plain and striped decoration. For instance you could have plain upholstery against striped walls.

Window drapes are a great way to create stripes without investing an extra penny. You could create stripes with plain window drapes by using a combination of contrasting plain drapes. Thus a beige colored window drape sandwiched between two dark brown drapes would create the impression of stripes. No loss to your pocket, and you continue to hold the cards in your hand as you can change the combination at will as well!

OMG! I started off writing a small piece but there is so much to share it isn’t fitting in one article. So see you around next week for some more basics about using stripes in your home decoration plans!