Home Improvement

Deciding on materials for your home furniture is a difficult decision as there are many factors you need to consider.
Top 5 Considerations:
• Practicality
• Cost
• Style
• Durability
• Colour
Different people will always prioritise different factors, and everyone has an individual taste when it comes to colour and style.
But while there is no one simple answer to which kind of furniture you should buy, the guide below will give you an insight into what certain materials are likely to say about you!

Image by Boa-Franc

Oak
If you have lots of oak in your home you are likely to be family orientated. Oak suggests a warm, traditional, country style of living.
Oak’s durability makes it great for families with children!
An oak dining table is a beautiful centrepiece at the heart of your home and oak living room furniture can extend your countryside theme further into the house.
There are two types of oak furniture available – solid oak and oak veneers.
Solid Oak: If you are looking for an investment piece, then choosing solid oak is a great option. Solid oak will last a very long time, and can always be re-sanded and re-finished. It is also unique and has lots of character.
Oak Veneers: But if solid oak is too expensive for your budget, oak veneers may be a better choice. Veneers improve the look of cheaper materials, and while not as durable as solid oak, they are still visually appealing.
Oak comes in red and white varieties; red is the most popular, white is the most durable.

Glass
A home with lots of glass furniture is likely to belong to someone neat, modern and fashionable. The owners of glass dining tables are people who enjoy entertaining
If you have young children it’s best to avoid glass furniture; it may be easy to clean, but it is also easy to break!
A glass dining table looks elegant and sophisticated; perfect for wining and dining, and little need for decoration. Glass topped coffee tables offer a lovely way to display photographs or artwork. Great if you’re creative!
Furthermore, glass bookshelves offer an elegant way to display your collections, without taking attention away from the rest of the room.

Dark Wood
Dark hardwood suggests confidence and power. If you have lots of dark wood in your home it is likely that you are high flying, with a good sense of style.
Dark wood can easily overpower a room, so if you are not knowledgeable about interior design, try to use it in moderation. It is also best used in rooms that get a lot of light.
Two popular dark hardwoods are walnut and mahogany. Walnut is available in light brown to dark; mahogany comes in a range of colours, from tan to a reddish-brown. While not quite as durable as oak, these woods have a good resistance to wear and tear.

Plastic
If you have lots of quality plastic furniture in your house, it is likely that you are a risk-taker on the cutting edge of modern design. If, on the other hand, you have adapted plastic garden furniture for home use, it is likely that you are extremely budget conscious!
It is difficult to analyse a home with plastic furniture, as plastic is usually found at either the top end or the low end of the furniture scale.
If you want your home to look warm and inviting, solid plastic is not the material to use. But its durability makes it the ideal material for a child’s playroom.
Alternatively, PVC veneers are a great way to introduce bright colours into your home, and used in moderation they can still make a home look comfortable. They are very on trend at the moment, and particularly good on kitchen units, for an instant design statement!
If your goal is to create an ultra-modern living space, then plastic could be the ideal material for you. It is also a great choice if you have an eye for design and love mixing and matching bright colours.

Which Should I Buy?
Ultimately it’s always going to be down to personal choice, and every material can look great in the right setting.
But before you go shopping, try ordering the bullet points at the top of the page from 1-5. As long as you know from the start what is most important to you, you’ll be sure to be happy with the end result!

Which is your favourite material?

Estelle Page is a freelance interior designer and design-conscious blogger, on a mission to make interiors everywhere stunning, one home at a time.

Controlling the humidity in your home is one of the most important things you can do to ensure that mold does start to grow, and it’s not very difficult to do. You do not want to allow air in your home is too dry, but because it causes nosebleeds and other forms of nasal irritation for members of your household. Very dry or too wet, it can cause problems for each airway to maintain moisture in your home at an intermediate level is optimal. Keep humidity in your bathroom is down pretty easy if you install an exhaust pipe, which will take the steam out of the room, if you need to take a bath or shower. Steam is watered by the tops of walls and ceiling, causing it to be shaped and finally jump and hide.

This can lead to injury if you are in the room at the time, so that the installation of a vent pipe is a good idea. Building codes normally intend to have a bathroom that is either a window or vent, but the windows are completely ineffective in the release of steam from the room as it reflects on the ceiling instead of the center of the room. If the window is located near the ceiling, it is not as good as the outlet works.

Basements are also vulnerable to problems with moisture and you can do this by installing an exhaust duct to solve here too. This is not the only solution, however, since you can replace your basement windows to make the most energy efficient and therefore allow less moisture from the outside to inside the house. Dehumidifiers can help take care of moisture problems that simply because the play is the underground stem. Keep humidity in the house for ways to reduce moisture in all areas of the house. Wash and dry your wet clothes to keep them as soon as possible to the moisture evaporates in the laundry room and never dry on those wet clothes dirty. Mold likes warmth and moisture, so that you can not help their cause by doing this. It’s really a bad habit to let you, so try to wash the wet towels at least once a day rather than dry in the laundry of course.

If I asked you to think of a unique storage system, shelving probably wouldn’t be the first thing to spring to mind. The humble shelf is probably the most basic and traditional of storage ideas, designed with function rather than style in mind.
However, with a little imagination you can create a shelving solution that is not only practical but adds an eye-catching and unique feature to your bedroom too. Here are my top four ideas for super-stylish shelves…

Image via Jeremy Levine Design
1. Think Outside the Box
Do you have some old wooden boxes you’re not sure what to do with? Turn them on their side, fix them to the wall and you’ve got instant shelves that no one else can copy! You can line up identical boxes in rows, mismatch larger and smaller ones or even fix them almost randomly up the wall for a funky, contemporary appeal.
Try painting them in colours to match your bedroom’s decor – a cool tip is to paint the inside and outside of each box a different colour or you could decorate them with scraps of wallpaper and fabric.
2. Hang Your Clothes on Your Wall
Wardrobes are so passé – when you’ve got beautiful clothes to show off, the last thing you want is to lock them up where they can’t be seen.
Install railing, metal shelving, units and shoe-holders together on your wall for a makeshift floating wardrobe, then line your clothes up in rainbow order and trust me, your friends will be green with envy!

Image via Rubbermaid Products
3. Stack Tables Together
Tables make great surfaces for writing on, so why wouldn’t they make equally great shelving systems? All shelves are is surface space after all! Combine the display-surface of tables with the mess-hiding practicality of drawers by buying a set of small side tables that come with a built-in drawer, then stack them up on top of each other and fix together securely. Voila!
4. Wonderfully Wonky
There was a time when wonky shelving meant bad DIY. If you’re not sure you can put them up perfectly straight, go all out and fix them to the wall at crazy angles – you’ll need to buy L-shaped shelves or install fixed book ends at the lower end to stop things sliding off, then line them with your favourite books for a pretty bedroom feature.
Girls note – you can also install funky bookends at regular intervals, leaving just enough space for a pair of shoes between each one, then show off your Jimmy Choos in style!
Can you think of any other unusual shelving ideas that would look great in a bedroom?
Guest blog by Estelle Page.

If you are considering doing any work on the home, one of the things that you will want to think about is the possibility of replacing the windows in the home. Quite obviously, this is something that can help in a number of different ways, including lower electric bills and providing greater comfort in the home. When replacing the home Windows, there may also be other benefits that are not as obvious, such as tax benefits, which will help you to save money at the end of the year (Source: AAA Windows and Doors – Home Windows). Obviously, there are many reasons why replacing the windows will be of benefit, but deciding on whether to replace with wood windows or vinyl windows is something that should be considered before your decision is made.

In some cases, the choice of whether to go with wood or vinyl is going to be entirely due to a statistic. Some people like the look and feel of wood as well as the idea of having that type of window install. Vinyl, however, does have some benefits over wood that you would want to think about before making your choice. For one, there are many colors for you to choose from, and these are deeply embedded into the vinyl so that painting is unnecessary. Additionally, the ability to clean your windows easily, including the trim, is also something that is going to be available with vinyl as well. In fact, spray them off with a hose and wipe them down with the sponge and that is all that is really necessary for you to have clean windows, 365 days a year.

If you’re planning to sell your home, of course you will want to get the best price possible. Spending a little bit of money now could increase the value of your property by more than enough to cover your expenditure – but only if you spend it wisely. If you want to make a profit, here’s what to improve in your home and what you shouldn’t bother with…

1. Exterior
The front of your house is the first thing that prospective buyers are going to see when they turn up so it’s got to be good – a shabby exterior can leave a bad first impression that can put buyers off from the start and they’ll fail to see what a lovely interior your home has. So, re-paint that front door if it hasn’t been done for some time, mow the lawn, trim back any imposing bushes and make sure window frames near the front door are in good condition too.
2. Hallway
If you’re thinking of buying some fancy furniture such as a new coat rail to impress visitors when they step inside, don’t bother. The first impression of any home should be spacious, so when it comes to your porch and hallways the most important thing is to de-clutter them. This means putting those coats you haven’t worn since last year into your wardrobe, hiding shoes away and finally sorting through all that junk mail and those pizza flyers that have been sitting by your front door for months.

Keep the bedroom clutter-free – image via At Home Network
3. Bedrooms
The master bedroom is very important when it comes to selling your house – prospective buyers will be imagining themselves living here, so even if you’re selling the place unfurnished you still want to show off just how good that room can look. If it means popping to Ikea to buy a pretty cabinet to hide some junk away in, so be it. You’ll almost certainly make your money back here.
Kids’ bedrooms have a tendency to get messy, so tidy them up – don’t just shove everything in the built-in closet either as people will probably want to look in there! Instead, take this opportunity to have a big sort out with your children and help them pick a bag or two full of toys to give to charity.
4. Bathroom
Believe it or not, the bathroom is probably the most important room of the house. It wields massive influence over buyers – even if the rest of the house is great, a grotty, old-looking bathroom is a real turn-off. Ideally, you’d like to renovate if yours is quite old, and trust me when I say you’ll get your money back in the sale price, but if you really can’t afford it here are some low-cost tips: replace taps rather than the entire bath or sink as shiny new faucets will instantly transform the look of the room, buy colour-coordinated hand and bath towels (you’d be surprised how much nicer the room will look!) and, again, tidy!
Kitchen
Another room that could make or break a sale, the kitchen needs to look good but, above all, clean and hygienic. Make sure you give it a very deep clean before you start viewings and – this is a very important one – empty your bin so that there are no unpleasant smells the moment visitors step into the house! Do your washing up too, as visitors really don’t need to see last night’s dirty crockery. This is another room however where, if you can afford a full renovation, your money will be very well spent.

Don’t forget the garden needs to look good too! Image via Laudu
5. Garden
Last but not least, don’t forget to make sure the outside of your property looks as good as the inside. I’ve already mentioned you need to tidy up the front of the house, but if you have a back garden viewers will definitely want to take a look. They’ll be imagining themselves sitting outside in summer, so create that perfect summertime setting for them with a freshly-mown lawn and a bit of landscaping too. If your garden is looking a little bit boring, take a trip to your local garden centre and buy some colourful flowers to plant around the edges.
I hope these tips were useful and if you have any more to add please leave me a comment below!
Estelle Page writes for Rapid Racking who offer a range of storage solutions for the home, such as home office storage, so that you can tidy that clutter away and keep it looking beautiful when prospective buyers are visiting!