Modern Interior Design Tips

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Sometimes, you can live in your home for so long that it starts to look and feel outdated. What once seemed like a great design choice is now downright embarrassing. Or, and this happens a shockingly high number of times, you move into an older home and don’t redecorate. You might have had bigger things on your plate when you moved in – like the birth of a child. Or, you lacked the money to decorate after just buying a home. In any case, you inherited some older decor that you just grew to live with. Over time, you basically forgot about it, until you paid a visit to someone else’s house and marveled at their modern decor. 

You returned home, only to realize just how old and outdated your house is. So, your natural reaction is to liven things up with some modern interior design. But, what’s considered modern – and what should be left in the past? How do you make your home look brand new without going overboard and spending too much money? Here are some handy tips:

Find Out What New Houses Look Like on the Inside

This seems like a pretty good place to start, right? To decide how to style your house, you should find out what new houses look like. What are the common themes and trends you see in modern homes? The easiest way to do this – without wandering through loads of open houses – is to check out different real estate websites. They will list brand new properties for you to look at, with plenty of photos of the inside. Here, you can get an idea of the colors and decor trends that are common throughout. 

I know, I know, you will have to do a fair bit of research! However, it is pretty fun looking at new homes – and it’s a lot cheaper redecorating yours to look brand new than it is to buy and move into one of the new houses! Look through lots of listings and spot common themes amongst them. 

Make Your Walls Neutral

Most of the time, the guilty party in making your home look old and ugly are the walls. Your wallpaper is outdated, and it makes the entire home seem generations older than it might actually be. What tends to happen is you have loads of floral or patterned wallpaper. Yeah, these are things of the past – no modern home will have highly patterned or floral wallpaper anymore. 

Instead, the most common aspect of contemporary design is the neutrality of it all. Specifically, you should make your walls neutral. Use neutral colors as they are the best to match with everything else – like your furniture and decor. Whites, grays, and cream colors seem to work the best and be the most popular.

Use Bold and Colorful Accents

We’ll continue talking about the color scheme of modern homes, and things don’t always have to be neutral. The walls should be, but you can have colorful accents around the place. Things like bright and bold curtains or cushions will really stand out in a modern home. 

Essentially, this is one of the reasons neutral walls are always used. If your walls were bold and colorful, it would be impossible to have these bold accents around the place. They’d simply blend in with the walls, creating a mess of bright colors. Here, the little spots of brightness stand out and really pop against the neutral walls. 

Generate Natural Light

You might not notice this when you’re browsing the web and looking at different new homes on real estate sites, but they’re all designed to be really well lit. Newer homes are built with more windows – and larger ones at that. They almost always have a patio window of sorts in one room, and the whole design and window placement is meant to get as much natural light into the home as possible. 

You could argue this is done to help save electricity by meaning you don’t need to turn the lights on until it’s dark. That might be a reason for it, but another is that natural lighting enhances the visual appeal of homes. Especially when combined with neutral walls and bold accents; it helps to bring everything together. If you want to make your home seem more modern, try to find cost-effective ways of generating more natural light in your interiors. 

Create Clean and Bare Living Environments

Okay, maybe bare isn’t the best word to use. You don’t want rooms that are completely empty and overly spacious. But, you do want rooms that are clean and as neat as can be. Contemporary interior design revolves around the idea of clutter-free environments. If you have kids, this is easier said than done! Still, do whatever you can to get rid of as much clutter as you can, keeping your home tidy and minimalist. 

Doing this will have an impact on the way your home looks – especially when combined with the other tips. All of a sudden, you have a house with neutral walls, bold accents, natural lighting, and much less clutter. It just looks and feels so brand new. Honestly, you could take pictures of your house, post them online, and people would think you’ve moved into a new build!

Space-Saving Room Designs

Furthermore, modern houses are all about space-saving designs. Part of this comes from a clutter-free environment, but it also revolves around furniture choices and room layouts. You see a lot of modular design in modern houses, meaning things fit nicely together to save space. Ideas such as nesting tables are the perfect example; you have three or four little coffee tables, but they all fit under one another to conserve space when only one needs to be used. 

Other ideas include footstools with storage inside them, folding tables, and built-in wardrobes. Then, you have to design the layout of each room to maximize as much space as you possibly can. The end result should be rooms that look more spacious than they were before, despite not actually increasing in size. You don’t need to spend money on an extension to get more space in your home!

Add Some Statement Accessories

One last thing for you to consider! Adding statement accessories to your interiors can really make your house seem newer. You don’t need or want to go overboard with this; one or two things per room are all you really need. We’re talking about lamps, mirrors, art, flowers, etc. 

Pick whatever you think will suit the room, and the stylish design will stand out in a more neutral setting. You see this sort of thing in modern homes all the time; the accessories are often the statement pieces, demanding more attention than the furniture. There’s a very intriguing idea behind this, and it’s that the accessory detracts attention away from the larger things in the room. If the first thing you notice is the bold lamp in the living room, you don’t give much attention to the large sofa. As a result, it can help to create this feeling of spaciousness within rooms. 

Modern interior design is all about being bold and simplistic at the same time. Much revolves around space-saving design and creating a bigger and brighter home. The good news is that you can implement a lot of these ideas in your house, without needing to undergo massive renovation work. So, you can save money and still have the modern home of your dreams.