Articles Tagged "decor"

Interior design trends come and go. But one that has gained popularity in recent years is a modern twist on farmhouse style.

Our real estate agents see this style frequently in the homes they show, and many buyers love this look. Here are a few ways to create this look yourself by adding farmhouse details to your modern decor.

• Choose Neutral Colors
  Like many other popular styles, modern farmhouse decor tends to feature a lot of neutral colors. This doesn't mean everything has to be stark white, though. Look for softer neutrals such as off-white and beige. Don't feel like you have to make everything monochrome, though. You can mix and match neutrals and textures for a layered look.
  
  
• Opt for Natural, Weathered Finishes
  Cut through smooth modern lines with rustic-looking finishes. Weathered-looking wood cabinetry, trim, and furniture are perfect for achieving the farmhouse vibe. Shiplap and beadboard are popular for giving walls that quaint country look. If a little light remodeling is in your budget, consider removing plaster and drywall to expose the brick in the walls and the wooden rafters in the ceiling.
  
  
• Create a Gathering Place in Your Kitchen
  Farmhouses revolve around food and family, so to pick up that farmhouse vibe, so should your home. The kitchen is one of the top things that buyers focus on in Richmond homes for sale, so if you're planning on selling yours, pay close attention to how welcoming your kitchen looks. A central island with bar stools or a table with ample bench seating promotes the idea that the kitchen is the heart of your home.
  
  
• Install Sliding Barn Doors
  You may have seen the trend of installing "barn doors," sliding top-mounting doors with a country look. These doors are designed to look similar to the doors you see on a barn but more indoor-friendly. They can be installed as single or double doors, depending on space, and typically feature a farm-like construction with rustic hardware. If you've got the space, barn doors are easy to install and a great way to bring strong farmhouse vibes to your home.
  
  
• Repurpose and Reclaim
  Farmers save and reuse absolutely everything. You can too, and give your home a stronger farmhouse feel while you're at it. Turn glass jars into rustic light fixtures and soap dispensers, scour thrift and antique stores for vintage signs and other decor, and find ways to reuse old brick and wood in your renovations.
  
  
• Pull in Traditional Linens
  Don't forget to soften the rustic look by making your home cozy, too. Traditional linens and textiles are a great way to capture that farmhouse feel, plus they give you the opportunity to vary the texture and get away from the smoothness of everything modern. For instance, you can find a vintage or antique quilt at a thrift or antique store and use it either as a wall hanging or a bed covering. Knit and crocheted blankets are another option.

With the recent popularity of the modern farmhouse style, staging your home with some light but trendy rustic vibes can be a great way to attract interested buyers. For more ideas on effectively staging your home before you list, contact us today.

Redecorating after moving into a new home can feel like an insurmountable task. Let's say you've finally closed on one of these Richmond homes for sale and are looking to change up a few things to fit your style better. Now, where do you start?

Let's take a closer look at the trending paint colors that will inspire you in 2022. Make sure to consider the mood you want to inspire and the types of rooms you might want to use these trends for in your home.

• Bring on the Energy with Red
  Red is energetic, lively and just happens to be the color of good luck. While many people associate the color red with exteriors, country barns, and farmhouses, red is undergoing a renaissance in interiors. Red is becoming a pretty popular color for dining rooms, living rooms, and entryways because of its ability to awaken appetites and spur conversations. When you first paint a room red, it can feel overwhelming. Here, the key is to pay attention to what colors, materials, and décor pieces you pair red with. Red, of course, makes a great accent color. You can paint one wall red or just the ceiling to give the room a nice, cozy feel without overwhelming it. 
  
  
• Evoke Happiness with Yellow
  ​​​​​​​Yellow is the color of happiness and is considered the strongest color psychologically. It brings positive vibes and can instantly lift your mood and energy levels the minute you walk into a room. The shade citron is a muted yellow that's grounding and calming without being draining. It's a beautiful color that's abundant in nature. Plus, it pairs excellently with olive greens. Yellow can make a room feel bigger. Moreover, wooden furniture looks great with yellow walls. Yellow is a great color for living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, and bathrooms. It can awaken a space by inducing excitement and enthusiasm.
  
  
• Green for Calming Shades
  Green is the most prolific color in nature. Painting your walls green can bring about that same calming energy you get when walking in nature. There's a reason actors and TV show guests relax in greenrooms before appearing on talk shows. It's a calming color that brings a sense of relaxation, safety, and security into a space. For this reason, green is a great color for your bedroom, living room, or kitchen. It's also one of the easiest colors to decorate around.
  
  
• Bring Richness with Pantone's Color of the Year
  Soft lilac is going to be everywhere in 2022. It's a shade of purple that's soothing and relaxing. In fact, all shades of purple have this effect to varying degrees. However, deeper shades like plum can make a room feel more luxurious and dignified. The elegance of purple is undeniable, and while it's not the color you expect when walking into a room, it's more versatile than you think. Pantone has released a new color, Very Peri Pantone 17-3938, a vibrant shade of periwinkle designed to pique creativity while bringing warmth and joy into a room. It's been named the Pantone color of the year for 2022, designed to merge the calming qualities of blue with the dynamic presence of a violet-red undertone, making it the perfect color for absolutely any room in your house.

2022 is your year! Our real estate agents are well-versed in Richmond real estate and can help you find a home that suits your style and needs. Contact us today so you can start searching for a home where you can utilize your favorite interior design trends.

Finding the perfect gift can be a challenge, no matter what the occasion. One occasion that may have you scratching your head is shopping for a house-warming present for a new homeowner.

Is your friend or relative settling in among Richmond homes for sale? Our real estate agents have vast experience helping homeowners acquire the home of their dreams or selling their homes so they can move on -- but they also know a thing or two about what a new homeowner might welcome in the way of a gift.

Here are a few suggestions your friend or relative will love having in their newly acquired home.

1. Every Home Chef Needs One: an Instant Pot
   There are lots of Instant Pots on the market, so you'll have to decide about how many functions (do your friends/family members need the frying function?), and how big (will the 3-quart do for a couple, or does the growing family need a 10-12-quart model?). Regardless of size or number of functions, your giftee will love how fast an Instant Pot can cook dinner so that they can get back to unpacking boxes.
   
   
2. Chip in for a Robotic Vacuum
   A robotic vacuum is perfect for the folks with a big, shedding dog, multiple cats, or just a family with kids tracking dirt in and out. Maybe you have one, and you've seen the amazing way these self-propelled vacuum cleaners go about ensuring the floor is dust-free. They're pricey, though, so maybe this is a gift a couple or more of you can go into buying together. Your giftee will be forever grateful.
   
   
3. Celebrate Their New Space with Wine
   After moving, your giftees may want to break out their new wine glasses and give them a try. There are all kinds of wine glasses on the market these days, and if you didn't know, some are for white wine -- that's the more traditional shape we think of a wine glass having -- and a bigger, more balloon-like shape, which aerates red wine better, bringing out the flavor. What might really work as a gift is a set of four, good-quality wine glasses with pretty patterns etched on them. Consider gifting with a bottle of their favorite wine.
   
   
4. Give a Polyethylene Chopping Board
   These are sturdy enough to stand up to strenuous chopping chores but you can find some pretty ones too, in an assortment of colors. Some are so pretty they can do double duty as a cheese tray. Add in some local cheese to encourage them to use their new chopping board as a cheese tray. Polyethylene chopping boards are easy to clean with soap and water.
   
   
5. Cook up a Present for Their New Kitchen
   The kitchen is the heart of the home, so gifting something for the kitchen means you're giving the new homeowner a great gift! There are plenty of things you can gift to encourage the new homeowner to utilize their new cooking space. Consider spice mixes, olive oils, or fresh pasta from a local farmers market. They'll appreciate the gift when they get to try it out in their new kitchen. 

Need tips on buying or selling a home in the Richmond area? Contact us today. 

The traditional way to decorate your walls is to hang a few select pieces of artwork or mirrors, leaving a lot of empty wall space. If this seems a little boring to you, you'll love an alternative approach we often see in well-staged Richmond homes for sale: the gallery wall, which is where you hang many pieces of artwork together for a collage-like effect. While some of these gallery walls might look haphazard at first glance, usually they're well planned out with a theme and with an eye for balance and design. They're great for family photos or eclectic displays of artwork. Here are a few tips for bringing this savvy look into your own home.

1. Create your collection.
   The first thing is to determine what's going to be on the wall. You want to emphasize variety, so don't make them all the same style or size. Use a common theme to pull everything together. Family photos are another frequent choice for a gallery wall, although if you're staging a home for sale, our real estate agents recommend replacing the family photos with framed artwork for a less personal effect. 
   
   
2. Frame it right.
   Once you have your collection assembled, it's time to decide how you plan on framing it. Most interior designers recommend museum glass because it will minimize reflection and keep damaging UV light from your photographs and artwork. The frames you choose are also important, as they are a part of the overall aesthetic of your gallery wall. Subtle, matching frames can tie everything together and help provide balance if the wallpaper or collection is very busy. A variety of interesting frames can provide a more eclectic look or help draw attention to favorite pieces.
   
   
3. Maintain balance.
   Balance is how you can hang an entire wall's worth of photos and make it look interesting and pleasing instead of cluttered. Start by paying attention to where the permanent furniture will be on your gallery wall. Large artwork should be placed first in a balanced fashion, and then smaller artwork can be used to fill in the spaces around it. The space between frames should be narrower than the artwork and fairly (although not perfectly) uniform. Don't cram something in where it doesn't fit; instead, shift the other pieces or find a different place.
   
   
4. Do a trial run.
   Many designers recommend that you start planning a gallery wall by laying everything out on the floor the way you'll want it on the wall. You can arrange and rearrange to your heart's content, making sure everything looks even, balanced, and interesting. You can even mock it up on the wall when you're done by measuring and creating outlines of each pieces on the wall in blue painter's tape. 
   
   
5. Leave room to grow.
   If your gallery wall will be up for a long time, leave room to grow. Many people start with a smaller area of the wall and build it into a larger area, especially if it is something like family photos. Or you might eventually decide to turn an adjacent wall into an extension of the original gallery wall. Just keep in mind that you'll need to maintain the same principles of balance as you expand.

A gallery wall is an excellent way to express yourself and your sense of style, but it also can be a useful tool for staging your home as you get ready to sell. For more staging ideas and information about selling your Richmond area home, contact us today.

When it comes to your home decorating style, do you struggle to pick out pieces because you don't know what to focus on? Do you feel pulled around by trends? Or do you feel like you can't put your finger on it because everything is mismatched and pieced together? Identifying your home decorating style can be a minefield of indecision and procrastination.

Our real estate agents believe that our homes should be a reflection of our personalities. It has to do with trusting your intuition instead of following the crowd. The following tips for finding the right style of décor for your home will help you create spaces that look beautiful, feel authentic, and make you happy.

• Look in Your Closet
  Take a good, hard look at what's in your closet. Pay attention to the colors, textures, patterns, and fabrics you turn to again and again. Are they mostly neutral?  Or are your favorite clothes made with bold patterns and lots of colors? Let the colors guide you when choosing textiles and décor items for your home.
  
  
• Design a Style Vignette
  A style vignette is an arrangement of objects displayed together in a pleasing, balanced way. The grouping is typically made up of homeware pieces but can also feature craft objects, art, natural elements, flowers, and other mementos. Walk around your home and gather anything that tickles your fantasy and captures the look you're going for. Arrange them and live with them for a few days to help you define the decorating style that appeals to you. If you end up liking the overall vibe, tone, and color scheme, you can spread that style across your entire home.
  
  
• Get Inspired
  You can also use outside inspiration to find your design style. You might want to create a Pinterest board with places and rooms you love or scroll through home décor hashtags on Instagram. See if you can spot a color scheme, trend, or theme that you're most drawn to. Sometimes, however, Instagram and Pinterest can be a bit overwhelming because there are so many beautiful images at one time. Instead, you can just flip through a magazine to find out what you love. Next, look through your magazine and Pinterest boards to decipher commonalities among the photos.
  
  
• Take an Online Decorating Quiz
  There are tons of online decorating quizzes that can help you discover and pinpoint your tastes and preferences, so you can start designing your dream home. Some quizzes will also reveal the paint colors, types of furniture, and accent pieces that you should have in your space. Consider taking multiple design style quizzes at your leisure. You know you've found your style and are ready to start designing if the quizzes end in similar results.
  
  
• Think About Your Current Décor
  It's not common to start decorating from scratch. Walk through your house and make a list of all pieces of furniture, accessories, or art that have to stay. Separate what you love from what you wish you could replace. Next, review the list of things you love to see the common traits and write those down. This will serve as a guide to keep you true to your style.

Need some additional advice about decorating your home as you think about buying one of the Richmond homes for sale? We can help you. Contact us today to schedule tours of beautiful homes in the RVA.

With the end of the year approaching, prospective homebuyers have holiday cheer on their minds as they tour Richmond homes for sale. This doesn't mean you should make your home into a replica of the North Pole though! Successfully staging your home for the holidays takes subtlety and class. Here are a few tips for tastefully staging your home for the holidays.

1. Decorate the front door. 
   The front door is your best place to make a good first impression. Hanging a cheery holiday wreath on the door can set the stage for your prospective buyers to imagine themselves in your home for the holidays from the moment they step over that threshold. Don't clutter up the yard with a lot of decorations, though, as it doesn't take much to cross over the line into the realm of tacky. Instead, focus on improving your curb appeal.
   
   
2. Match your decorations to your decor. 
   The best way to achieve subtlety and class is to make sure your holiday decorations blend seamlessly with the existing decor. Opt for holiday colors and styles that complement your themes and furnishings. If you've done your job with staging, these should be fairly neutral, setting the stage for a subtle holiday display.
   
   
3. Remember that less is more. 
   The rule of thumb for staging isn't any different around the holidays. As always, you should minimize the decor as much as possible. Instead of adding holiday decor, replace what you had used for staging before, as you don't want it to appear too cluttered by trying to squeeze everything in. And don't break out your entire collection of holiday ornaments! Just a few tasteful touches, such as a bowl of pinecones on the coffee table or a holiday greenery arrangement, will be just enough to encourage your buyer to envision themselves in your home.
   
   
4. Keep the decor impersonal. 
   Staging your home needs to be impersonal at any time of the year, but perhaps most of all around the holidays, when people are thinking about entertaining and celebrating with their families. This means that not only should you remove family pictures from the walls, but you also should make sure not to hang any holiday decorations that are too personal. We all have our own ways of celebrating the holidays, so keeping your holiday decor subtle and impersonal will allow them to picture themselves and their own traditions in your home.
   
   
5. Highlight your home's best features. 
   Finally, don't forget that the main purpose of staging is to show your home to its best advantage. You can use your holiday decor to highlight your home's best features, just as you would with any other decor. A strategically placed decoration can draw attention to a feature of your home that you want to highlight. Use your decorations sparingly, but use them to help your home shine.

No matter the season, staging a home for sale is an art form. If you feel overwhelmed or are unsure of how to proceed, one of our real estate agents can walk you through it. Contact us today to start the process!

Organizing and decluttering can be great ways to stay productive while social distancing. The only thing more satisfying than an ultra-tidy closet, pantry, or laundry room is seeing what it looked like before it was super organized. And it doesn't need to be spring for us to get overly excited about a good clean-up and organization project. If you need a little inspiration to start your own, these tips and tricks are the perfect motivation to tidy up.

	1. Create Effective To-Do Lists Make a habit of writing down your short and long-term goals. Then create additional to-do lists, separated by task. Listing out the steps you need to work toward your goals will help you reclaim the kind of crisp, results-oriented mindset that builds and sustains momentum.
	2. Make "Mise-En-Place" a Way Of Life The French phrase translates literally to "put in place," and it refers to the practice of gathering all the ingredients and utensils needed before cooking a meal, then systematically cleaning your utensils and workstation as you go. Mise-en-place also beautifully focuses the mind, and, best of all, dramatically cuts down on organizational chaos.
	3. Expose Everything in Your Storage Spaces Stacking clothes up pancake-style means you inevitably only end up wearing (and re-wearing) the few garments that land on top of the piles. The solution: Fold clothes small and tight, and store them in drawers "standing up rather than laid flat," says Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.
	4. Reuse and Repurpose You don't have to leave the house to purchase anything for these organization projects. Get creative by repurposing shoe boxes and bank-check boxes (both lids and bottoms) as drawer dividers, or putting instruction manuals in a three-ring binder and you'll never rifle through drawers again.
	5. Hang and Stash Hanging and stashing can make any space seem tidier. Think outside of the box when looking for creative storage solutions. A wine rack might store magazines and newspapers, while a wooden peg rack can be used to hang brushes or a blow-dryer in a bathroom.
	6. Keep Your Files Streamlined To keep your desk and living spaces clear of papers and documents you're not currently using (both energy-sapping eyesores), try a simple, three-tiered filing system: one file drawer close at hand for current projects, another for research material you may need in a month or two, and a third for documents relating to finished projects you should hang on to for legal reasons.
Photos: Adobe Stock Source: Real Simple