Do you crave a home that is warm and inviting? Have you ever looked at beautiful rooms on Pinterest and thought, I can never get my home to look or feel like that! Well, I am here to say you can achieve a more cozy and inviting home and you don’t need a big budget to do it. Below are 5 ways to make your home (big or small) cozy and inviting.
It Starts with the Proper Lighting
Lighting is instrumental to good design and lighting creates a mood. If lighting wasn’t crucial to design why would they ever have a saying like “mood lighting?” Lighting can be broken up by functionality: ambient, task, and accent.
You will have ambient (overhead) lighting in a room automatically, at least you should, but you will need to layer in additional lighting.
For a cozy feeling, think about lights that can be turned on to highlight small parts of the room without needing the overhead (ambient) lighting. In a living room, you will probably want a task light for every 6-8 ft. Since living rooms come in all sizes, consider a living room that is 16×20, you would want no fewer than 3 task lights. Take the largest number in the square footage of your living room (length or width) and divide by 6 and 8, the larger of the two is the ideal number of lamps. The smaller number is the minimum you need!
This is how I determine the number of task lights needed. If I take 20 and divide by 6 I get 3.33 (so I would round down). If I divide 20 by 8, I get 2.5 (I round up). Both equations dictate I need 3 task lights!
This formula doesn’t include accent lighting.
Accent lighting is a separate feature and will create an intimate space. Consider picture lights or sconces to introduce accent lights and further enhance the cozy factor.
You also need to consider the color or warmth of the light. Stay away from cool white bulbs, those are the lights used in clinics and hospitals (some almost look blue). The warmth or coolness of a bulb is measured in kelvins (k). Select bulbs in the 2700-3000k range, this will give your home a warm glow.
Generally speaking, manufacturers label the bulbs as “warm white,” but pay attention to that range. Be sure you make a conscious effort to keep all of your bulbs in the same kelvin. You don’t want a kitchen with 4000k bulbs to then be adjacent to 2700k recessed lights in your living room.
Lastly, dimmers are your best friend, I put dimmers in every room and I love that it gives me total control.
Ever turned on a light and felt blinded? Me too.
Dimmers allow you to crank up the brightness when work is to be done, but after dinner and cleaning the kitchen, who doesn’t enjoy dimming the lights to signal the end of the day? Bedrooms deserve dimmers too… I’m just saying.
Cozy up with the Right Color Palette
The key to a cozy and inviting space is to have visual peace. What does that mean?
Your eyes should be able to have resting points throughout a room. There also needs to be cohesiveness in the space, this is perhaps most influenced by the color palette. The colors and number of colors used are equally important. If you want a cozy place, you need to stick to a color palette of 3-5 colors. Too many colors can make for a bold statement, but it is unlikely to make a room cozy.
Remember, we are talking about making a space worthy of relaxing and enjoying a book or cup of tea.
You don’t want too many colors that compete for your attention. You can’t go wrong with earth tones (colors associated with nature), but feel free to use a color palette you love.
The key is to choose a palette and then stay consistent in your selections. A rug or favorite piece of furniture may inspire the direction you go!
Choose Lovely Scents
Smell is an extremely important, but often overlooked sensory experience. When you smell butter popcorn or warm chocolate chip cookies, you tend to have instant memories or reminders of something. If a loved one always wears a particular scent, you associate that smell with them.
Your home is where you create so many memories. So give your home a special scent that you love. An aroma that invites you and others to sit down and relax.
Comfortable and Durable Furniture
To have a space that is cozy, you need furniture that is inviting and comfortable. Scratchy upholstery or hard surfaces don’t inspire us to relax and enjoy the room.
Would you want to snuggle on a couch if it was rock hard? Do you want to sit for a dinner party if the chairs are uncomfortable?
No.
To make any space more enjoyable it needs to be comfortable. Furniture can look pretty, but it must first be practical. You also want to pay close attention to the fabrics used. Soft velvets, chenille, linen, and performance fabrics really help evoke cozy. Make leather more inviting by placing a throw blanket on it or pillows. Regardless of your fabric choices, the furniture needs to beckon us to sit. You don’t need a cloud sofa to feel like you can kick up your feet and watch a movie.
Just remember, your furniture will either invite or deter you and guests from relaxing.
Bring in Nature
Having greenery and flowers (faux or real) is going to be a quick and easy way to increase the comfy factor in a space. If you are not committed to keeping a plant alive just know that MANY designers do use faux in their homes. A faux tree in the corner will make the space inside feel more connected to the outdoors. When done correctly, a tree will also help draw the eye up and add interesting elevations to your design.
Consider real plants that are low maintenance if you want the benefit of improved air quality, but you don’t have a green thumb.
So, how do you create a cozy home? Start with these 5 tips and be amazed by the difference it makes in your space.
From the time I was a young child, I have loved interior design and beautiful things. Ten-year-old me would create “floor plans” on notebook paper and design the dream homes of my siblings. We would have an initial meeting and after jotting down their wish list, I got to work creating the home of their dreams.
After designing the layout, I would take the Sunday newspaper ads (are those still a thing?) and cut out pictures of furniture, lamps, and accessories to create mood boards for each room in the home. When I was all done, weeks and weeks later, I would showcase my work and pitch my design ideas to a sibling.
If you too enjoy beautiful things and the process of turning a vision into a reality, welcome! If you love watching homes transform, but just don’t know how to start or have the resources to buy everything you like, stick around. I love finding affordable and practical design solutions to give YOU a gorgeous home you can be proud of.
Together, let’s reveal what’s possible.
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