You will know that the styling of your home is boring when you don’t feel anything positive when you walk in.
You are not uplifted, rejuvenated or inspired. Neither are you put into a peaceful or reflective frame of mind.
You are feeling ‘bleh’ because the styling of your home is ‘bleh’. And it is ‘bleh’ because you didn’t pay attention to what is in it. Or what is not in it.
Here are four reasons why your home looks boring, and what you can do to make it exciting:
Your sofas are a matching set
Matching your three-seater main couch to its two-seater and one-seater is the styling equivalent of those Russian tea dolls that are nestled into one another.
Local fundis and furniture stores are still stuck in the era of crafting and displaying matching sofa sets.
Most get iffy when you suggest you break the set. They ask, ‘What will I do with the other seats that don’t match to anything else?’
To fix this boring styling look, don’t match your sofa sets. Get your main couch – and two-seater, perhaps, if you have space – in one colour and style. Then get a third accent chair that is a completely contrasting style and colour from these two.
If your living room is small, then just get a main couch and an accent chair.
Get contrasting styles and choose colours that complement one another. Complementing the styles and colours brings cohesion into your home.
Another way to bring cohesion is to use the upholstery for the accent chair as the cover for one or two throw pillows on the main couch.
Also avoid using the sofa set upholstery for the dining chairs. It gets very boring, very quickly. Instead, select contrasting but complementing colours.
Plants bring greenery into your space (quite literally, the colour green) and inject it with the feel of living breathing things.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
Everything is the same colour
Another styling choice that makes your home boring is choosing the same colour for your furniture, rugs and curtains.
Especially brown. Brown is a very popular and safe colour for a home. Homeowners never feel they can go wrong with the colour brown. Or with black.
Grey is also another popular colour, especially for the homeowner seeking a contemporary style.
There is a popular misconception that you can never go wrong with brown, grey or black and yet…you can.
You can fix this boring styling in two ways. One, use the same colour but in varying tones.
Brown looks quite gorgeous when it is varied: from dark chocolate to walnut brown to nudes. So does black, especially when it segues over to become a charcoal grey.
Blue as well, from navy blue to denim blue to ocean blue. Ocean blue actually looks like green, there is a lot you can do with this segue.
Another way to fix this boring styling problem is to have accent pieces in stimulating colours such as red, green and yellow. Yellow matches well with grey and black furniture. Red matches with blue. Green with brown.
Beige, especially on curtains and drapes, is a sure styling bet no matter what is happening with the rugs and furniture.
Your walls and shelves are bare
Walking into a home where the walls and shelves are bare feels like walking into a room where the sounds bounce off the walls in a lonely spiral until it comes back to slap you in the face.
Bare walls and shelves are downright boring. Your eye has nothing to fix its eyes on when it is wandering across the room. You will find yourself sighing dejectedly.
It’s fair to assume that you may not know what to do with your bare walls. A simple place to start is to hang up a functional piece such as a wall clock or framed picture. The bigger the clock or picture, the better.
Add more framed pictures then continue styling from there – work outwards from the clock to other non-functional pieces whose job is simply to add aesthetics to your home.
Collect these pieces as you find them: Mirrors, some odd-looking abstract metalwork. Then go bolder with artwork on canvas and modern print work in minimalist frames.
For your shelves, just nip into the home décor stores dotted across the city and shop around until you find something you like.
There are lots of pieces you can display on your shelves. From something as simple as framed photos and candles to something more advanced like statuettes and styling trays.
You don’t have any plants
Plants bring greenery into your space (quite literally, the colour green) and inject it with the feel of living breathing things.
You can place a houseplant pretty much anywhere in your home and it will instantly add a pop of enthusiasm, at the snap of a finger.
The thing with natural houseplants, though, is that they tend to die indoors. The lack of sunlight and fresh air usually kills them. Some also get overwatered and die, others are attacked by disease.
If you live in a home that kills natural plants, then go for artificial plants. They cost much more than natural plants but your home can never kill them because they are already dead.
