Spending the first few days in a new home can be a strange experience, and it can feel as though it still belongs to someone else. Making yourself at home is always important, especially when it’s yours. If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve got a guide on how to accomplish this.
Familiar Feelings
It’s the simple things that make a place feel like home: from cozy couches to memorabilia and even scents. While a new place often means a fresh start, it can help to bring in familiar touches, such as favorite household products or a few small items such as throws or lamps. Scented candles or other fragranced items are another great way to make your new place feel more like home (just be careful around pets and humans with allergies or asthma).
Find Your Style
Moving into a new home can be a golden opportunity to discover, rediscover or even reinvent your own decor style. Fortunately, inspiration to add to your digital (or paper) moodboard can be found everywhere:
- In your Wardrobe: Be a style influencer and let your decor reflect your dress-sense.
- Around the world: You can take your inspiration from other places (quite literally, if you’re well-traveled).
- Onscreen: From Wes Anderson’s pastel palettes to the quirky aesthetic of Tim Burton, take your cues from the silver screen.
Magazines and websites are also great sources, but try not to worry about following trends: home is where the heart is. Your home should feel like you, so let your decor reflect your personal style.
Magic Moments
Bringing happy memories with you from your old abode can provide the perfect foundation for creating new ones. Here’s how:
Create a “Cabinet of Curiosities”
They say you can’t take it with you, but in some cases, a cabinet of curiosities is the perfect way to start displaying the little things you love.
Style Your Shelves
With shelf styling you can gather items in various shapes, sizes and textures that fit with the rest of your decor, such as ornaments, knick knacks and framed photographs.
Turn Your Home into a Gallery
Speaking of frames, hanging photos, artwork and other memorabilia on the wall is a lovely way to make your home feel welcoming. Just don’t forget to leave some space for future additions. For layout inspiration, search Pinterest for “gallery walls”.
Plant New Memories
House plants not only enhance the look of your home, but they also improve air-quality and even mood. If you’re a pet owner, be careful as some species can be toxic to animals. Echeverias, Boston ferns and Areca palms are just a few low-maintenance, pet-friendly options to choose from.
Favorite Features
Remember what made you fall in love with your home in the first place, and make it the star of the show. It could be a beautifully polished parquet floor, or a stained glass window (if you’re lucky enough to have one, paint the opposite wall in a shade of white and let those colors glow). Whatever your chosen feature, find ways to make it shine.
Find Your Flow
Unpacking your furniture (and putting it together) can be quite a task, let alone knowing where to put it. The Chinese practice of Feng Shui can help you to achieve a sense of harmony in your home, and you can even use it to welcome in certain qualities, such as health or wealth, all while helping your home to feel balanced and well-organized.
Life and Soul
Decor aside, it’s the people that make a house a home: so start making those memories by throwing a fabulous house party. It doesn’t have to be big: a simple evening dinner with a few old friends (and new neighbors) can help bring some liveliness to your home, so get out that heirloom dinner set (or purchase a new one), lay down the welcome mat, and hone your hosting skills.
Endnote
If you’re looking forward to moving to a new place, your local investment properties group can advise you on those first vital few steps, offering advice on everything from finding the perfect place to the cost of selling a house, so you can look forward to personalizing your new dwelling with a style that’s uniquely yours.
