Creating a feature wall is about making one wall in your room stand out from the others. The wall makes a statement and accentuates the room’s focal point. You can do this in a loud and bright way or you can create a feature wall that is subtler.

Benefits of Creating a Feature Wall in Your Room

• Adds vibrancy to the room and makes the general décor stand out.
• Adds personality to the room and makes it unique from the rest of the house.
• Can be used to hide imperfections. For example, you can hide an uneven wall by making it the feature of the room and decorating it with wallpaper that has a bold pattern.
• Adds space to the room, particularly if you add stripes to the feature wall. You can add stripes with wallpaper or you can have them painted on. Vertical stripes make the room appear taller while horizontal stripes make it appear wider. In both cases, however, the room feels more spacious. It is hard to achieve the same effect by adding the stripes to all the walls as this would be overbearing. Adding the stripes only to the feature wall is the best option
• You can give the room a tone or atmosphere by your use of the feature wall. For example, you can add energy to the room with a bright and confident colour or you can go for softer colours to make the room more relaxed.
• You can use the feature wall to define a space in the room. For example, to define the part of the room that is used for dining.

Tips for Creating a Feature Wall

• Whatever you do and whatever style you choose, make sure the feature wall doesn’t overpower the room. It should be the focal point, but it should not make it look like you have gone too far with your design ideas.
• You can create a feature wall using paint or wallpaper, or you can use textured wallpaper that you can then paint on to get the desired colour.
• Make sure the colour you choose complements the rest of the room, i.e. don’t go for a bright colour just because it is bright. The colours you use should work together.
• Pick the right wall to make a feature of the room. This will be the wall that is the focal point, i.e. the wall that the eye is naturally drawn to when you go into the room. This could be the wall with the open fire or it could be the one where your TV is located. The wall at the head of your bed is usually best in the bedroom.
• Avoid creating a feature wall if the room is already busy, i.e. with lots of items on the walls, shelving, a lot of furniture for the size of room, etc.
• Feature walls work best in big rooms. Conversely, in very small rooms, a feature wall will make the room appear smaller.

Finally, you can stretch your décor bravery to its limits with a feature wall. If you are unsure of the colours to choose, however, or how the feature wall will impact the room, you should get advice from a professional.

Here’s the challenge: you don’t want to paint all the rooms in your house the same colour but at the same time you want the different rooms to work well together. This objective applies whether you live in a traditional property or one that is more open plan. In other words, you want different colours to flow between rooms.

To achieve this, try following our tips.

Keep Connecting Spaces the Same Colour

You can make the different coloured rooms in your house flow together in a more cohesive and pleasing way by keeping the connecting spaces all the same colour. This includes the entrance hall, other halls in your home, room connectors, and more.

Single Colour Thread Throughout

Use a single colour throughout your house in a subtle way. This can include on window frames, for example, or on ceiling mouldings or door frames, i.e. you could use a white trim throughout your home and then different colours on the walls of the rooms.

In some situations, you can also achieve this by using fabrics or soft furnishings in the room.

Think About Sightlines

Colours can look most out of place when you can see one room while standing in another. These rooms should have colour schemes that complement each other and look well together, rather than colour schemes that contrast.

Use the Floor

You can also use flooring in hallways to connect the different colours in a room. An example is to use a rug that is a similar colour to a wall or walls in one room. Of course, this point follows on from the last. For example, if you have a hallway that connects a room where you have a clear line of sight between the two. To make a better flow between them, you can use rugs to bridge the gap.

Use Colour Groups

Sticking to a single colour group throughout the house is another way to ensure there is a good colour flow between rooms. This means, for example, using warm colours in all the rooms (oranges, reds, yellows) while avoiding colder colours (blues, greens, greys). You can also do this the other way around, of course – using colder colours throughout with no warmer colours. This lets you have variety, but maintains consistency.

Use Variations of a Single Colour

This option goes further than the point above. Instead of selecting a colour group, you select a specific colour and then use variations of that colour in the different rooms of your house. This also keeps consistency while maintaining variation.

Repeat a Colour in the Next Room

To get colour flow, you can also repeat a colour in an adjoining room. For example, use one of the two colours you have in one room as a colour in the next one.

Exceptions to the Colour Flow Rule

There are some rooms where you can abandon flow and instead do something completely different and out of context with the rest of the house. Crucially, these should be rooms where there is no line of sight with any other. An example is a bedroom, like a child’s bedroom.

The objective of having a colour flow is to create consistency and continuity throughout the house. Your painter will be able to help you achieve this.

How many times have you done this: look at the outside of your house and think it would benefit from being repainted only to decide it will do for another while as it is? We all do it, and we all do it more than we should.

After all, painting the exterior of your house is an essential maintenance job. This is because there are important reasons for getting your house repainted when it needs it. Here are our top five.

1. Saves You Money on the Cost of Painting

The longer you leave the painting job, the more work will have to be done to prepare the external walls. This will increase the cost of the work when you eventually get it done. In other words, getting the outside of your home painted when it needs it rather than delaying will save you money over the long-term.

2. Saves Time

Following on from the last point, it will also take longer to complete the painting job if you delay. Again, this is because delaying can cause the development of additional problems with the exterior. These will have to be resolved by your painter before they can apply the necessary new coats of paint.

3. Protects Your Home

The paint on the exterior of your home makes it look good, but it is also essential for the protection of the structure. Good quality exterior paints protect the building from the harmful effects of water and UV rays be acting as a barrier to both.

Water damage, in particular, is something that can happen to your building but often remains unseen until it is too late. Once you do detect it, fixing the problem can be very expensive and disruptive. It is much easier to prevent this sort of damage from happening in the first place, and painting your home helps to achieve this.

4. Makes Your House Look Great

The practical reasons are compelling enough for getting your home painted, i.e. the savings in money and time plus the additional protection that painting affords. Having a home that looks good is important too.

In fact, a well-painted house will lift your property, giving it a wow! factor.

5. Increases the Value of Your Home

This one isn’t important if you are not selling your home but if you are, it is essential. Having a well-painted property gives the right first impression to potential buyers. In addition, it demonstrates you have looked after and cared for the house. Of course, painting your house won’t, on its own, get you the sale, but it can help to sell your house faster and you may even get a better price.

Maintaining Your Home’s Exterior

While it is important to get the outside of your home repainted when it needs it, you should also maintain the exterior after the work is done. This will ensure it lasts for as long as possible, maximising the time between painting jobs. Of course, you can’t make the paintwork last forever, but by maintaining your home’s exterior, particularly through keeping it clean, you can extend its life.

In general, don’t neglect the exterior of your home. While you may not need to tend to it as often as other elements (such as the interior paintwork), it is equally important.

Choosing paint colours in your home is not easy. You only have to look at the number of colour options available to see how overwhelming it can be. Here are our top seven tips that will help make the process easier and ensure you choose colours you will love.

Choosing Paint Colours: 7 Top Tips

1. Look at What’s Staying

Start by looking at things in your home you will need to work with. This includes flooring and furniture if you are not replacing them. In the kitchen or bathroom, it could be the colours of your units and fixtures. In other rooms, it could be something as simple as the colours in a piece of artwork. You don’t want a colour scheme in your room that works against anything that is remaining, so taking them into consideration will reduce your options to make colour selection easier.

2. View Your Home Holistically

The rooms in your home should flow from one to the next. This means taking into account the colour scheme in other rooms of the house when deciding on the colours for a particular room. Of course, you don’t have to use the same colours throughout, but the flow should not be disjointed.

3. Read and Research

Read interior design and decorating websites, blogs, and magazines for design ideas and inspiration. Don’t worry if you don’t want a colour scheme that is on-trend as you will still get ideas from looking at professionally designed schemes.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Go Neutral

Neutral doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, you can add impressive effects by using colourful artwork, furniture, and/or furnishings in neutrally painted rooms. Also, it is much easier to alter the colour scheme in a room by change furnishings than it is to get the room redecorated. In other words, neutral colours give you flexibility. Neutral colour schemes are also good if you plan to sell your home in the near future as they are more likely to be accepted by prospective buyers.

5. Light is Important

The lighting in the room will impact the effect of painted walls. Therefore, you must consider how the paint will reflect light and how much natural light the room gets.

6. Half It

Do you really love a particular colour but think it might be too strong, vibrant, or dominant when on the walls of your room? One option you should consider is going for a colour that is half the strength of the colour you like. You can even go down to quarter strength to dilute the impact further. This lets you keep the colour but in a subtler way.

7. Get Help

If in doubt, you should get a professional to help you choose the colour scheme in your home. This could be an interior designer but if you don’t want to go to that expense, your decorator can help. Decorators paint walls and ceilings in homes on a daily basis so have seen almost every imaginable colour and colour combination possible. A quick chat with your painter, therefore, can move the colour selection process along considerably. In addition, don’t forget to run your plans past your friends and family – they can be a good sounding board for your colour scheme ideas, particularly if you know someone with a flair for interior decorating.

Over to You

Here’s one final tip: don’t get overly stressed when choosing colours for your home. It should be an enjoyable process and one you should take your time completing.