Many of us have an irresistible urge to decorate our homes—to personalise it, and mark it with our individuality.

An inspired choice of fabrics, paper and paints and just a little imagination can transform any room with fabulous effects. It needn’t cost very much and it certainly doesn’t require a fistful of technical qualification —just lots of enthusiasm and a little patience.

Colour and finish in decoration should be fun and exciting. Creating your own individual look for a room, or painting a piece of furniture, is immensely rewarding.

The tools and materials needed could only be a collection of bits and pieces for you to get going, to create decorative objects for your house. Paints, brushes, sewing machines, pins, needles, fabrics, ribbons, organza, sequins, beads, buttons, coloured paper and wrapping paper, shells, pebbles. The choice of materials can be never-ending; just let your imagination wander.

Your light

You can create and design your own lampshade by using good quality, attractive wrapping paper which is inexpensive, to compliment any room in the home and change them as often as you please. But only use a low watt light bulb for the lamp as anything higher may scorch the paper shade. You can also paint the base of the lampshade in any colour you wish.

To give an ordinary curtain a fresh look, you can take a few strands of wired artificial branches with leaves and tie them around the curtains.  Vases can be given a unique look by covering their wires with different paper strips. Experiment with longer pieces, coil it in different shapes and glue it on the vase. To transform an old picture frame, all you need is a small piece of sumptuous raw silk.

Many pieces of wooden furniture benefit from a little antiquing to give them character. There is also an inexpensive way to create a unique look for any room. You can create your own borders and glue it on the wall. You could copy a child’s drawing to create a personal border for a bedroom. If you have an old or scorched table, you can test your creativity by painting it with different colours and creating different designs like fruits around the edge of the table.

Shells or attractive pebbles would look good as a tie-back for curtains or simply hanging them down from a shelf. You can make an old cupboard look great by creating a design and highlighting the wall with a darker textured paint. If you have a worn-out old headrest, you can give a new look by fixing a fabric on it. You can keep changing the fabric’s texture and colour with every changing season, without burning your pockets. You could also paint an art on the headboard, to change the look of your bed.

If you want to give a new look to your dining chairs, stitch chair covers with colourful fabric and tie a satin ribbon bow around, when inviting guests over for dinner.

Below are a few decorating ideas that will help you transform your big and empty rooms into cozy, warm and pleasant surroundings.

Increase the size of the furniture. One of the first things you should do in terms of taking up more space and producing a warm cozy environment is to purchase furniture that is larger than normal in size. This is a great way to take up a lot of empty space.

The best type of furniture would be fabric covered. You can opt for leather and similar furniture coverings, but this new home decorating tip is best with furniture pieces that create a warm feeling in the air, which of course is soft fabric.

A second home decorating tip that will increase the coziness of your large rooms is to add plenty of floral designs and plants. There is just something so serene and tropical when it comes to having nice full plants throughout your house. Palm trees make an excellent choice for filling up those empty corners. However, be careful not to go overboard on your greenery, as it may take up too much space and create a suffocating effect.

A third fashionable home decorating idea that will help create a warmer and snug atmosphere in your rooms is to lay down a large and nicely designed area rug. Choose one that is big enough to connect all your furniture pieces together while at the same time complimenting the rest of the colours in your room. And be sure to avoid colours that clash.

Last but not the least, decorating your home in a modern way should always entail making the most of your walls. In fact, designing your walls appropriately is one of the most important aspects of creating the atmosphere you desire.

There are many ways to do this as you can hang a large painting and other works of art, display fabric designs, or organise portraits and other pieces into patterns, such as circles or triangles. You can do all this, without spending much, as you can use any of your old sarees as fabrics or any leftover plywood pieces, which you can cut into shapes and paint them to suit your interiors.

You can also create a budget atmosphere, that means if you have simple interiors, but want to give it a new and fresh look. When hosting a party or even for yourself, all you have to do is decorate your room with candles and create a mood with scents. Have you ever noticed how the warm scent of a candle wafting through the air, can be uplifting, energising and make you cozy?

Small’n’cute

First of all determine if making your room look larger is really the way to go. After all what’s so great about large rooms? Maybe you want your living room to be comforting and wrap people with warmth when you enter.

Make the most of a small room you wish to make cozy, by using warm rich colours. Drape the windows with fabric. You can buy inexpensive muslin and twist and swag it over a curtain rod for a casual but stunning frame to your windows. It is the special style which will show through not the size of the room.

Reduce the clutter in a small room. This is the no1 problem within small spaces and also the fastest to fix. Take a box and remove all the clutter from the room. Move out accessories, pillows, everything. Now bring things back one at a time and stop when it’s perfect. The key here is restraint.

Use large scale items in a small room. Now, traditional rules about scale in a room would lead you to believe a small room needs small scale furniture, but the opposite is true. Using just a few larger scale pieces reduces clutter and gives the eye a smoother trip across the room. The same goes for artwork. If you are trying to make a room look larger, go for one large print on the wall or hang a decorative rug, instead of small collections.

Here’s a simple tip to make rooms look larger. Keep your windows and slick surfaces sparkling clean? Believe it or not, the clean reflection will make a room look brighter, fresher and larger. Try it!

Paint just one focal wall a rich deep colour to add depth to your room. Leave the other walls either white or much paler version of your accent wall and those walls will appear to fall away. Also keep in mind that cooler colours such as greens and blues tend to recede from the eye, while warmer colours such as reds and yellows seem to close in a room.

Finally remember to use as many double duty items in the room as possible to reduce clutter. A chest of drawers can hold a TV, and store all your magazines and games, a futon sofa can double as a guest bed, and a pine chest makes a great coffee table, while storing extra linen. Remember your house decoration should show through with personality and creativity, not cash.