Decorating your home can seem like a daunting task. With so many affordable homewares available, and countless beautifully styled images to inspire, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So we turned to Canberra’s most influential and obviously ultra-stylish interiors blogger, Gina Ciancio of stylecurator for guidance. She tells us there are three things that are pure magic when it comes to choosing homewares for your house.
“Nothing adds style to a home like artwork, rugs and indoor plants. Whenever a space isn’t working, it can often be solved (or at least the problem minimised), with these three tricks,” says Gina.
Sounds doable, right? More of Gina’s advice below, as well as some items to shop to get you started on your new mantra… artwork, rugs, plants!
ART
From original artworks to framed prints, posters and even do-it-yourself pieces, artwork brings interest, personality and colour to your home.
Hang artwork at eye level and look for ways you can reference it in the space. For example, you might like to pick up some of the colours from the artwork in your decor or soft furnishings to tie the room together.
One of my favourite places to shop for original art is bluethumb. It’s Australia’s largest online gallery and is filled with affordable, emerging artists. They even have free shipping and free returns, so you can see how a piece looks in your home and if you don’t love it within the first week, you can return it with no questions and no hassle.
RUGS
One of the best ways to add warmth, and create the sense of ‘zones’ in your home, is with a rug.
Often in modern homes, we have large, open-plan spaces that can be difficult to style. By simply adding rugs, it can anchor the spaces within these larger areas.
Some tips when buying a rug:
- Go large! A rug should be large enough for the feet of your furniture to rest on.
- Choose carefully: consider if you want to have bold colour on the walls with artwork, or on the floor with a rug. Few people can pull off both.
- Texture is key. If you select a muted colour for your rug, you can add interest with texture. For example, there are lods of rugs with beautiful knotting or weaves, and even tassel details.
- My go-to store for buying rugs online is Rugs of Beauty.
PLANTS
Not since the ‘70s have we seen such a love of indoor plants!
It seems everyone is flexing their green thumbs and for good reason: greenery brings colour and life to interior spaces, as well as a stack of health benefits, such as lowering blood pressure and helping to purify air.
There are countless ways you can display indoor plants; in a pot, stand or hanging planter, on its own or in a cluster, along a windowsill, on a shelfie or as part of a larger urban jungle. If you think you can’t keep an indoor plant alive, you might like to check out the list of the top 20 hard-to-kill indoor plants at stylecurator.
