6 Tips to Brighten Your Home
With spring upon us, many people’s thoughts turn to spring cleaning. But that desire for cleanliness stems from a need to refresh following a darker, dormant season. One of the most appealing ways to refresh your home and promote happiness is figuring out how to brighten up your living spaces. Natural light and fresh aesthetics can go a long way toward boosting mood. Check out these six tips to get started!
1. Rearrange Your Furniture
This is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to brighten a space in your home. Rearranging your existing furniture allows you to make the most out of what you already have, which is the perfect starting point. Plan to arrange your furniture in a way that emphasizes your windows – your home’s only inlets for natural light. Avoid blocking them with heavy pieces and chunky drapes. You should also leave walkways and doors as unblocked as possible. When the flow of your home is congested, it’s hard for the space to feel bright and airy.
2. Add Lighting
After you’ve accentuated your home’s natural lighting, consider playing with the artificial light in your home. This is a great chance to get creative. Warm-toned lamp light can elicit a cheery feeling, while bright LED pendants or chandeliers can greatly improve the mood of a room. Don’t be afraid to mix in a variety of styles and fixtures.
3. Get Crafty with Color
Choosing bright neutrals for your walls might seem a tad dull, but it’s honestly one of the best ways to brighten a space. The amount of vertical square footage created by your walls makes a huge impact on the room’s aesthetics. Light colored walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, accessories, or draperies can all help brighten a space. Similarly, if you enjoy color, choosing the right vibrant colors is a fun way to liven up an area.
4. Clean and Declutter
A very important step toward helping your home feel bright is to keep clutter at bay. Pick up stacks of papers, don’t allow trinkets to pile up on table tops, and embrace the beauty of blank spaces. Any openness can promote a sense of calm, while on the flip side, clutter will create feelings of stress and overwhelming crowdedness.
5. Pot Some Plants
Dial up the vibrancy and freshness in any room by adding house plants. The light green color palette is a refreshing shade to sprinkle throughout and a subliminal way to evoke a bright feeling. Live varieties also help keep the air in your home clean and circulating. Spider plants, ivy, succulents, and lilies are all relatively low-maintenance plants that provide a great deal of air quality improvement.
6. Make Use of Mirrors
Mirrors are a beautiful little decorator’s tip to help bounce light around a room and create a sense of added space. Place them strategically where windows might naturally appear, or hang them at the perfect angle to amplify window light.
Take advantage of a few of these tips while you’re cleaning up for spring and see if your home doesn’t receive an instant mood boost!
