When you want to be able to make your home the one place you’d always rather be, it’s all about fine-tuning and continually making adjustments. The problem is that too many of us make a couple of simple mistakes, ignore them, and then try to work around them for years and years. You might not even know where you’ve gone wrong, just that something about a particular space or room in the house annoys you. To help you on your way to interior bliss, we’ve put together a quick list of the most common mistakes, why they’re frustrating, and how you can quickly and easily put them right in no time at all.
First up, there’s the issue of not enough mood lighting for winter months. A room that works great in the summer and spring can quickly feel dark and gloomy in the winter months as the evenings draw in. The problem is that you can’t redecorate every time the seasons change, which means the secret is to look at the way you light your room.
Winter is all about warm, snug and cozy lighting and that means throttling back the use of bright overhead lighting for something more subtle and understated. Warm white fairy lights that are battery powered and put into a couple of large mason jars would work nicely. Adding candles on the mantelpiece and a projector on the ceiling would also be an option worth considering if you want to add light without feeling like you have floodlights. Perfect when it’s about making the winter months feel snug and cozy.
Another classic issue is losing heat due to the choice of thin blinds and curtains that may look great in the summer but add little to no insulation in the winter. Having a set of full-length winter curtains in a fabric that matches your bedding or the scatter cushions on the couch would be a great idea. They’ll only take five minutes to hang each season and you can store them away in your blanket box without any real effort. You’ll also find that they pay for themselves within a couple of years because of all the money they’ll save you on wasted heating bills. Ideal if you want to fine-tune your interiors in a way that pays off in more ways than one.
One of the most frustrating mistakes is putting your router too close to a window or stone wall that will stop the signal reaching the other parts of your house. Before you know it, you’re developing all sorts of rituals and ‘hacks’ about when to turn it off and on and how long to hold in the reset button for. No one wants to live like that!
Just imagine the frustration of seeing your favorite online casino game freeze as you place a big bet… Or how about trying to submit that urgent report when your boss has trusted you to work from home for the day. Should you just stop for the day, log off and explain the issues tomorrow morning? These are the endless questions that will be popping into your head just because the router is in the wrong place. It’s time to put that right.
The trick is to put the router in as central a space in the home as possible, with the downstairs hallway or living room entrance often being the best choices. You can then add in repeaters and boosters at key points in the house to create as close to uniform coverage as possible. It will take a little trial and error, but with some patience and a free speed testing app, you’ll be able to fine-tune the quality of your connection right throughout the house. Ideal if you want to be able to FaceTime your relatives or beat your friends at some online MPG sessions without constantly reaching for the router.
Last but not least, colors that only look the part in certain ambient light levels is a classic error. If you find that your winter colors soon feel glum or washed out when the summer sunshine comes flowing through the window, you’re going to be a little disappointed with your decor choices. Like we said earlier, you can’t constantly redecorate, but you can add some accent colors using a few small accessories and additions.
A piece of wall art on the feature wall, a blanket on the foot of the bed and some scatter cushions on the couch are all worth a little food for thought. Take your time with it and you’ll soon find that you can add the finishing touches to the room of your choice with next to no effort. Good news for those of you looking to make sure your house feels like home!
