Alternative Ways To Decorate Without Paint
The vertical spaces in your home are rife with potential for design. Yet, homeowners usually defer solely to painting walls, believing that a simple change in color will be sufficient to satisfy their desire for a change or upgrade. Bringing varied forms, textures, and motifs to your walls can be even better, though, as these can add layers of complexity and interest that a plain coat of paint lacks by itself. There might also be scenarios where you’re satisfied with your walls’ colors, but you still desire something more. Consider these alternative ways to decorate without paint as you plan out your interior design.
Hang Art Pieces and Framed Photographs
Hanging art pieces and framed photographs is a familiar practice that probably comes to mind when you think about embellishing bare walls. Normally, people may place a singular image on a wall, or perhaps line several photos along a hallway—however, you can get more creative than this. Instead of matching the size and shape of every photo, print, or painting on the same wall, you could intentionally make them different from one another. Diverse dimensions can give a set of art pieces or photos a lively, collage-like feel. You can also use differences to your advantage by coming up with unique arrangements where every piece fits together with the rest to form a larger shape on the wall. If your style leans more towards eccentricity, having frames in assorted materials and colors can also enrich a room effectively.
Utilize Curtains in Fitting Styles
Curtains are appealing because they’re functional and decorative at the same time. On top of allowing you to adjust lighting, they can also make a space appear larger when you extend them from the ceiling to the floor. Furthermore, curtains contribute a depth and texture that both contrast beautifully with the hardness and straight lines of the window frames and surrounding walls. Based on what you want, you might select translucent, off-white curtains for a summery mood, or thick velvet drapes in emerald green or maroon for a cozy and lush ambiance. Besides solid hues, everything from nautical stripes to lacy Victorian patterns to upbeat florals exist in curtains. Mull over what will interplay best with your rooms’ color schemes and design qualities to choose curtains that will fit your home.
Suspend a Tapestry on the Wall
Tapestries come in a wide range of designs and can therefore slot into many homes impeccably. As opposed to most two-dimensional art pieces, tapestries have more texture due to the fact that they’re woven from fabric threads. Their composition can also give them a visual weightiness or an airy flow that is similar to what you find in drapery. To illustrate, a traditional tapestry that depicts old European art can feel opulent and heavy, with its soft surface and warm burgundy, yellow, beige, and black color palette. Yet, another tapestry that is thin and full of cool blues and greens set to a bright white backdrop can communicate refreshing modernism or casual nonchalance. Of course, tapestries can also follow bohemian or abstract aesthetics, so you can definitely find one that suits your style well.
Install Eye-Catching Floating Shelves
Another alternative way to decorate without paint is to install eye-catching floating shelves. Since you directly attach floating shelves to your walls, they can act as wall-specific decorations in themselves, while also holding other decorative items. Books, potted plants, bowls and cups, small art pieces, and photos can all find a platform where they’ll be able to shine on floating shelves. Unlike regular standing shelves, floating shelves don’t take up much space in a room, which can make them highly attractive when you already have quite a few furnishings as well. Moreover, you have more room to customize them to your liking since they aren’t necessarily part of one continuous structure. Some choose to place simple panels straight above one another for a neat look, while others create staggered steps with them. Others go for square, diamond, or hexagonal cubicles that enclose their contents. Floating shelves that are reminiscent of mazes or that extend onto two walls by sitting suspended at corners are also options when you’re searching for a design with immediate impact.
Adorn Blank Spaces With Mirrors
Mirrors’ reflective properties make them great candidates for adorning walls. As with artwork and photographs, you can arrange multiple smaller mirrors together on a wall to create a pattern or larger shape that demands attention. Since you can buy mirrors with all kinds of frames and dimensions, there’s a lot of room to coordinate them with your style. You can also affix a large mirror on a particular wall to make your room appear more spacious. Because it shows another image of the space, it will extend the room’s edges to the eye beyond their actual endpoints. When you place them strategically to catch the natural light from windows, mirrors also make your walls look brighter. This can be an invaluable characteristic when you’re trying to maximize the degree of illumination in the space without resorting to artificial lights during the day.
Put Up Wallpaper That Speaks To You
In many ways, wallpaper is the most comparable counterpart to paint out of all the methods for decorating walls. Most of the time, it covers an entire wall surface as paint does. However, wallpaper has several advantages over paint. For one, wallpapers can possess sophisticated and large-scale designs that would take exorbitant amounts of time and skill to produce through painting. Think of the intricateness of damask or the complex array of hues in a typical floral or busily patterned wallpaper. You can include these designs in your home by simply putting up wallpapers that feature them. Wallpapers can also impart a room with subtle texture. If you select a woven variety, such as a patterned grasscloth wallpaper, you can give your walls a stimulating presence instead of a flat, unremarkable appearance. With this type of wallpaper, imperfections on your walls also become easy to cover up. Additionally, there are peel-and-stick wallpapers that make installation extremely quick and painless, whereas paint will always take a certain degree of time and effort to apply properly. For all these reasons, you should always weigh whether to use wallpaper when you’re decorating your home’s walls.
