Seven ways to spruce up your living room

You have seen the beautiful African, classy Asian and brightly-coloured Chinese paintings and you want them all in your living room as well. Real art, however, is about using little bits to style up your spaces.

Minimise the accessories
Mind more about the quality rather than the quantity of what you put in your living room. Opt for fewer accessories but aim for maximum functionality of the accessories.

Much as you do not want your house to look like a factory with only cement and wood, you also should not make it appear like a flower garden. Yes, flowers add life to the house, but two potted plants can do wonders. You can use flowers as the lampshade rather filling the house with flowers as this may attract insects like mosquitoes in your house.

Let your colour influence your mood
We go home to relax and so the colour you choose to decorate your house should help you achieve that. Use different shades of colour to suit your taste, bearing in mind that the colour mixes that work in what you wear may not necessarily be applicable in interior designing.

And do not put too much colour either, just a maximum of four. Have a mixture of dark, bright and hot colours. Do not have flowery curtains matched with brightly -oloured chairs with bold patterns.

Decide on the paintings to use
You may have the African and Asian paintings in your house, but one has to override the other. Your sitting room should define your personality and character, so, you cannot have everything in your sitting room.
Decide what kind of furniture and accessories to use
Kawuma, who studied interior designing at Cavendish University, recommends big furniture and paintings for big sitting rooms, where they will not fill up all the space. She says the small sitting rooms should have smaller and thin line furniture so that there is breathing space in the house.

Re-arrange the photos
Rearrange the photographs to have a memory lane by choosing one childhood photograph, graduation and wedding photograph. You cannot have everything put up so put some in the corridor, as people will see them while entering and the rest in the albums.

Don’t get advice from too many people
Different people have different tests and preferences so getting lots of pieces of advice may lead you to having a disorganized house as the advice may not blend.

Divide the sitting room in two parts
For people with bigliving rooms, divide it into two parts rather than crowding it with lots of furniture in the name of catering for the numerous guests that come.
The two parts will cater for different people as the young may be use one side and the mature ones the other.