New year, new home!

A few tips for bringing a fresh look to your home and creating new atmospheres

Every so often, out of necessity or a simple desire for a new look, we resolve to give our home a makeover and bring a fresh slant to the decor. To do so, we don’t necessarily have to turn the structure of our home upside down; we can take a less drastic approach and still obtain a successful result. If we use our imagination, and take due account of the areas we’d like to work on and the budget we have to invest, it’s entirely possible to achieve effective, satisfying results. Changing the colour of the walls, renewing the flooring, arranging photographs and paintings on the walls, introducing some new furnishing elements… these are all ways to give your home a new look, adding a fresh dash of brio. Below are a few simple, practical suggestions for a home makeover, and some useful reading material to make your dreams come true.

Rearrange the furniture

To bring a new look and a fresh perspective to a setting, it’s often sufficient to rearrange the furniture. The idea of moving the sofa or the living room furniture, or the chest of drawers in the bedroom, can help change your overall perception of the room. Banal as it sounds, this operation often helps make a setting more liveable and comfortable, more practical and user-friendly to live in. And if you also fancy taking the chance to make a change to the style, one book you might like to read is Francesca Blasi’s “SHABBY FUSION, COME REINVENTARE LA TUA CASA”, which focuses on the Shabby Fusion style, a new take on Shabby Chic that mixes classic and designer style. The author’s experience offers the reader plenty of ideas and inspiration for transforming their own home decor and adding an exquisitely personal touch.

Buy some new plants

Bringing plants and flowers into the home helps to bring a new look to the whole setting, adding a pleasant touch of colour. Succulent plants, or plants with broad leaves or coloured flowers help renew a room, conveying an agreeable sensation of wellbeing and vitality. Arranging plants and flowers in the areas of the home we use most often, such as the entrance, sitting room or kitchen, helps embellish the setting, bringing a familiar, inviting touch. Make sure your plants get plenty of water, light and air, to keep them feeling fresh and looking lush. A must-read we can suggest is “HOME JUNGLE. DECORARE E ARREDARE LA CASA CON LE PIANTE” by Sonia Lucano, featuring some marvellous pictures and unique ideas for some gorgeous green furnishing looks.

Get some new pictures and photos

Another way to embellish your home is to create a photogallery, using one or more walls of a room. The kitchen, sitting room or bedroom can be the ideal setting for a series of family portraits or special shots from your holidays, precious memories that’ll also give your room a fresh new look in an instant. An alternative might be to choose some pictures of your favourite cities, or a few lines from song lyrics or poems that have a special significance for you. This time we have a website rather than a book to suggest: www.desenio.it, where you can purchase some beautiful black and white photographs, inspirational quotes, landscape views…you’ll find a whole host of ideas to create an art gallery inside your own home, and you’re sure to find something to put in your shopping cart!

New 2019 trends for covering materials: stone inspiration

Stone and rock as a material element, elegant and minimalist at the same time, are among the star features of home decor for 2019. Stone-effect porcelain stoneware solutions offer the advantage of the use of natural materials, part of interior design history, with the added value of the user-friendliness that characterises easy to lay, easy to clean ceramic. The Frammenta collection by Fioranese, for example, brings a 100% modern slant to a material typical of traditional Milanese architecture, Ceppo di Gré, usually found on the external bases of buildings in the city. This is an Italian rock from Gré, a place name that means “rock with pebbles”. The stone-effect porcelain stoneware in the Frammenta collection features a particularly uneven grain, with mini and macro pebbles that make for a striking appearance, ready to bring a highly distinctive touch to residential and commercial settings, both indoor and outdoor. This is a covering material that brings a contemporary slant to spaces and plenty of character to finishing elements. If you’d like to explore the spirit of Milan and its most beautiful buildings, we can recommend this splendid book that illustrates the evolution of homes in the city between 1923 and 1973, taking the reader on a marvellous journey through style and history and offering plenty of inspiration for projects.

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