Making your home look as grand as Buckingham Palace can be done, and you need not spend £1000 or over to do it! Don’t believe this? Well, read on and you might just become a believer.
Pay attention to all the trimmings
No, the trimmings on your Christmas dinner aren’t the only ones that you should be focussing on in the coming months if making your home look as grand as can be is your plan — you should also be paying attention to the trimmings in your home. Specifically, this means having trimmings such as skirting, cornices, beams and crown moulding fitted in your living room. Crown moulding, especially, is something that you should be seeking to have fitted within this room because it is a cheap fit, but it brings with it a style of Regency elegance that every grand living room needs.
You should also seek to have wood veneers fitted to the cabinets and worktops found in your kitchen in order to give it a rustic and old-fashioned look. You should do this because, more often than not, grand is itself deemed to be somewhat rustic and old-fashioned.
Don’t be afraid to fake it, and be clever when you do
In order to make your home look as grand as it can when you are working on a budget, you’re simply going to have to fake it in parts. But, faking it isn’t as bad as it sounds — well, it isn’t as bad as it sounds if you are clever with the way you fake it. More to the point, faking it doesn’t have to be as bad as it sounds if you are clever with where you fake it.
A clever place to fake grandeur in your home, for instance, is your bedroom simply because there is more of a free reign to do so in there. There is more free reign to do so in there because it is the room that will attract the least amount of guests in comparison to your other rooms, seeing as though it is a very private room. And because it so secluded and private in this way, you need to adorn it in expensive and grand trimmings and decorations because nobody will really be able to appreciate them. So, this means that you should go ahead and decorate your bed in decorative pillows, but not ones made of silk or satin. Instead, you should stick to linen.
The colour scheme is important
The colour scheme is an imperative part of every grand design, so great precedence needs to be given to it! And, if you are clever with the choosing of your colour scheme and know exactly what you are looking for when you are in the hardware store looking for paint and wallpaper, then you will be able to choose your colour scheme without spending too much on it.
In regards to what kind of scheme you should be going for, well, you can’t go wrong with a neutral palette when it comes to a design or grandeur. What the colours in this palette, such as bronze and cream, do is accentuate everything else that sits in the room with them. What’s more, they help to induce a right royal feel in the room.
However, if you are feeling a bit more adventurous than neutral, you can go for far for more drastic colours and still create a grand, royal feel in your home. Colours such as purple or royal blue are great choices when you want to go dark and bold with your choice. And lilac is a good choice too, if a softer colour scheme is more to your liking.
The point is, you have to choose your scheme and exactly what colours you will be adorning your walls in before you buy them. By doing so, you stop yourself from unnecessarily eating into your budget and wasting money on paints and papers that you neither want nor need.
Accessorise, accessorise, accessorise
But no colour scheme would be able to survive without the accessories that it accentuates, and is in turn accentuated by. And, like when choosing the accessories that you are going to adorn your grand home in, you need to be careful with what you buy before you end up wasting money on things that neither fit your style or are to your liking.
There are many accessories out there that, when bought and fitted into a home, instantly increase the grandeur of it. And, it’s down to you to decide which of these accessories fit your home the best. For instance, chandeliers are always going to scream grandeur — there are just no two ways about it. When they hang from a ceiling, the whole room is made to look Regency-esque and look as if it wouldn’t look out of place in a palace or abbey. But, before you take the leap and have a chandelier fitted to your ceiling in an attempt to make your living room look grand, you need to decide whether your room will actually benefit from you doing so. You need to take into consideration the size of the room, and whether a chandelier will just not suit it. You also have to think about the practicality of such a venture in regards to the light it will provide you. So, basically, make sure that you accessories, but make sure you do so cleverly so as to ensure that you do not waste any money on doing so.
Introduce wood into your home
The previously mentioned wood veneers aren’t the only pieces of wood that you should be introducing to your new grand home. No, you should be introducing more wood into it. In fact, you should be introducing a lot more wood into it! And you should be doing so because wood induces a feeling of grandeur in a home wherever it is introduced.
However, you should only introduce wood into your home where you realistically and practically can. One way to do is to purchase a mirror with a sophisticated wood frame to hang in your living room, rather than purchasing and hanging one framed in metal or iron. You should do so because this an instance where wood can be introduced practically. What you should not be doing, however, is being impractical with your introduction of wood and putting it in silly places, such as places where it can easily catch fire. Because, if that were to happen, your grand endeavour would all be nothing, and you’d have to pay a pretty penny in repairing your home.
Don’t be boring, but don’t go overboard
If there is one thing homes with grand designs are not, it’s boring. So, when you come to injecting your home with grandeur, try to do all you can to not make it boring! But, whilst doing so, make sure you are not going too overboard with your styling, because doing so will get you a tacky end result.
What you should do is pinpoint boring areas of your home, and spruce them up in as stylish and low-key fashion as possible. This could mean swapping the boring white boxed radiators that you have in your home for something a bit more modern — view this range of vertical column radiators to find the radiator style that suits your home the best. This could mean swapping out your old dingy dining table for one that is lacquer coated. Or this could mean bringing a classy Chesterfield sofa into your living room, but one that is coloured red or yellow or green.
By taking heed of the grand design tips above you are sure to create a grand atmosphere in your home. And, by doing so, you are sure to save a pretty penny too!