Art deco is a style that was predominantly developed in the 1930s. The style was heavily inspired and influenced by Egyptian finds during the same era, and geometry. Elements such as ocean liner inspired windows, gates, doors and windows baring a design of the sun, white-rendered frontages, and flat roofs were all common features of the art deco home in the 1930.

Some of these wonderful features have now been lost due to redecoration, renovation and double-glazing. However, it is quite possible to create the same style in your home today, if you are willing to search for appropriate pieces and do the relevant research.

Mirrors from the period and also decorative, ornamental objects echoing the same themes as used in art deco, such as Egyptian, naval and all things to do with the sun, will add the right touch to any aspiring art deco room or home.

As with most things during the era, interior design was heavily influenced by the British Empire and archaeological finds in the Middle Eastand the orient. Therefore the colour schemes for any art deco home are those inspired by the east. The most popular colour in the 30s seemed to be green and most appropriate shades to use would be jade green, mint green Chinese green and foam green. To this green background you can add some the colours used in the period such as dark blue, pink, vermilion, black, gold, silver and different shades of brown.

When starting out with an art deco style for a room, look at images that you can find in books, websites or any national trust examples. This will help you to put together an idea of what you want in your room.

A wonderful way to decorate to create a very homely and welcoming environment is to follow the English country style. This style welcomes a lot of nature inspired fabrics, colours and furnishings to your home. The typical “chocolate box” English country cottage would have thatched roofs, lawns and a well manicured garden with a warm floral interior. It is not entirely necessary to have all these features to bring a touch of the English country to your home.

The English country home focuses more on practicality and prettiness than exaggeration and over the top elements.

The colours that are usually employed in this style are pastel pinks, yellows, blues and lilacs. This does not mean that the room or home has to look particularly feminine, but the idea is to be influenced by a summery English garden. So for a more subtle version of the English country style, you can opt for a cream or pastel yellow as your background colour and work with the other colours for decoration and furnishings, which can then be very floral, patterned or colourful. Try to keep from using too many colours in one room, three or four at the most in enough if well placed and planned.

The English country style cannot be achieved without the use of appropriate fabrics, as they are very much part of the curriculum. Use fabrics that are patterned, floral or chintz with lace and ruffles to add more of an authentic touch. Cotton or damask is usually the best fabric type to use for this kind of decorating. Matching table clothes, cushions, curtains, sofa upholstery and other accessories will be very becoming for this style.

When considering the appropriate furniture for an English country style room, look at the detail of the room. Period details such as ceiling beams, wooden floors and fireplaces are very in keeping with such a room. If you do not have these features in your property, then you can help the style take more shape by using the right furniture. Use traditional styles of furniture made of light coloured wood. If you are happy to, then stencilling the furniture and/or the walls is also a wonderful way of tying a room together to create the perfect ambiance.

Every year the colours and shades that are in fashion changes. For the fashion and trend conscious it is important to stay on top of these changes. In interior decoration there doesn’t seem to be the very narrow trends that they have in fashion, instead you find a variety to suit all personalities and homes.

One of the key trends for this year seems to be greens and other outdoor colours, bringing some of your garden into you home, so to speak. These colours do not tend to be very strong colours, but the more “sunny” shades of glassy blues, soft pinks and botanical greens. The move in the social conscience towards green issues could be the reason that we are seeing more and more eco colours in the home. There are many ways to approach this trend, either by following the styles of the “English country garden” or a less subtle approach with the “forest” look. Either way greens, blues and other natural colours are definitely in season for interiors this year.

Another popular concept for 2008 is the monochrome effect. This is a very elegant and sophisticated way of decorating your home, making not only the walls but the furnishings and all appliances black, grey or white. Chrystal, glass and mirrors are also used a great deal in the monochrome home, with metal and high sheen finishes to most surfaces. For the more adventurous it might be a good idea to break up the monochrome theme with one item of shocking colour, say red. This can be very eye catching indeed, and works a treat when well executed.

Though these are two of the most popular trends for 2008, with so much consumer confidence in what they want, there is a great variety in what is being done in the modern home. At the end of the day no matter how good it looks in a magazine, you have to live with it and what better way to decorate your home than in a style that makes you comfortable and happy.

Feng Shui is a very complicated art that requires some study and understanding. Bringing harmony to your home with a few Feng Shui changes to each room is not difficult. Here are some real Feng Shui faux pas that you can correct in order to achieve some harmony in your home without going to too much effort or expense:

1) Old eyes: you may now be so accustomed to your home that you no longer “see” it and all that is in it. To get a new perspective, take photographs of each room from many angles and inspect them. You will see many things you might want to change.

2) Negative memories: don’t be tempted to keep items in the house that only bring you bad memories. There is no need to keep those ones alive, so remove it from your house, throw it out or give it away and release those negative memories from your life.

3) Back to the door: do not place a desk so that you have your back to door. Sitting in this position will mean that part of you will be on guard the whole time you sit there, therefore taking away from your concentration on the job at hand.

4) Broken items: like items that associated with bad memories, do not keep broken items. If something you want to keep brakes, fix it immediately without storing it for a long time in the hope of one day fixing it. These items will make you feel ineffectual and anxious.

5) Bedroom items: it is unwise to keep too many items in the bedroom that do not need to be there. This will clutter up your room, and make it mush more difficult for you to relax.

6) Storing unnecessary items: keeping things just in cast they are useful one day is a one way street to clutter. If you are working in a project and therefore need to keep things just in case they are useful then have a limit, say one storage box. Storing all these items gives you the feeling that you may never have what you need and that you will never be able to achieve it.

7) Entering the house through the garage: the garage is designed for use by your vehicles, or machines. Therefore using the garage door as your everyday way of entering the house chisels away your humanity.

Air: air your home as much as possible removing stale energy from the interior connecting you to the outside world and nature.

9) Out of sight, out of mind: storing things in a cluttered fashion where you cannot see them does not mean they stop affecting you. Knowing that there is clutter in the house, whether seen or unseen, will drain energy from you.

10) Imagery: the images that you display in your home have a huge impact on your emotional well being. You see these images everyday so absorb something of them, so ensure that you have pleasant and uplifting images at your home.

While Feng Shui uses colour to a high degree, it also associates these with 5 elements. These are fire, earth, metal, water and wood. Feng Shui practitioners use a “Bagua” chart to help map a room or location and see how the different sections correspond to different aspects of a person’s life. The chart is a visual representation of the different colours and the different elements that they are associated with. These elements symbolically embody different activities, emotions or conditions.

The following shows how some colours are connected to different elements and what activity, emotion or condition responds to it:

Wood: Green - growth, expansion, thought, ideas etc

Water: Dark Blue and black - stillness, something un-contained, yielding, fluidity, flexibility etc

Earth: Yellow, terracotta and other earthy colours – stability, dislike of change, security etc.

Metal: Red and Bright Orange – inspiration, heated moments, action, conflict.

These elements are separated into either catalyst elements or content elements. Content elements such as wood, earth and metal are shaped by catalyst elements such as water and fire. When considering a small explicit change in your life using a content element is useful. When considering a change on a greater scale, you must employ a catalyst element, as this will induce a change big enough. And so the elements can be used in harmony with the colours to achieve the desired result.

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In the orient, and particularly in china where Feng Shui originates from, colours have very definite meanings and therefore effects on people. For instance, black is considered to attract abundance and good luck to your professional life while blue is helpful to developing wisdom and new skills.

This very specific understanding of colours and their effects is very important in Feng Shui where different colours are considered to be better or more harmonious for different parts of the house. Black is believed to be best for the northern part of your home, blue for the northeast and the south in red, which is the colour of celebration and fame. Green is best for the east as it signifies family and purple, the spiritual colour, for the southeast. The southwest is best in gray as it is the colour of people and travel while white is usually best in the west representing creativity and children.

Though these are the colours that are suggested for various parts of the house, you can change these to aid you in whatever part of your life you with to improve. For problems in love and romance, pink is used in the southwest while if your health is the matter then yellow in the centre of your home is said to help.

Using many colours therefore can be very healthy for you according to Feng Shui. This can be a problem when designing and planning the interior of your home, as this many different colours can cause disharmony visually. Therefore it is worthwhile remembering that these colours do not have to be the main colour of a section of your home, as long as an object is there to represent the colour, then that is sufficient.

Feng Shui (pronounced “fung shway”) is a decoration philosophy developed in the Orient to bring luck, and good energy to your home. It is not necessary to use oriental design in your home to achieve feng shui as the effect is entirely in how you arrange the room and not what you arrange it with. Therefore it is entirely feasible to have a room decorated in any style that you prefer and yet be in keeping with the philosophy of feng shui.

The main precept of feng shui is to create an easy flow of energy through your home and create a harmonious atmosphere bringing positive energy with it into your life. According to oriental thinking feng shui balances your energy or “chi” and therefore keeps your own energies in balance and flowing properly.

Feng shui is not simple in any sense. It requires a great deal of study and training to be able to learn the processes and understand it. There are, however, some basics that you can apply to your home in order to create a calming effect. It is wise to learn some basics if you are interested in following this philosophy in any simple way.

The most important factors in Feng Shui are colours, positioning and light. Different parts of the house will require different positionings and colours to be used, as feng shui is not a general philosophy that works blankly everywhere.

Choosing the colours to paint your house or room is not an easy decision. Everyone has a different way of choosing which colours to paint. Some may just see a colour and be inspired and therefore decorate all in that colour. Others may consult a decorator or the paint expert in their hardware store. Others yet may ask friends or consult books and the Internet for inspiration.

A good way that I can recommend is by starting with looking are different room and the different schemes that might suit them. Each room has a character of its own which is created by a mixture of its size, its character, available light and also what you have allocated as the room’s purpose. So a colour scheme must be in harmony with all those points. Then it is a good idea to consider the furnishing that the room already has and decide whether it would be possible to keep them or whether you prefer a completely newly furbished room.

Then of course it is worth considering what trends you want to pursue. If you are interested in older styles, then it is important to do your research into those eras and find out what elements you will use in your room. A very exciting colour trend this year is blue and orange. It gives a sort of retro with a twist look and is very colourful. Sometimes you can find that different colour groups have been used in different periods and that the effect is achieved by how the paint is applied and what furnishings are used in the room.

Once you have made those decisions, then all you have to do is plan the room or the house and get on with decorating it.

Clearing up:

Once you have finished painting, you must clean all your tools correctly to ensure they can be used again. For brushes the best thing to do is to use a brush cleaner, making sure that they are perfectly clean, then stored either flat or on their handles so that the bristles do not get damaged while drying.

With the paint, it is better not to have to store any at the end of a project. But if you must, then clean the rim of the tin and replace the lid and close it tightly. To create an airtight seal, turn the tin upside down and back again quickly, this will help keep the paint fresh for longer.

Never pour left over paint or white spirit down the drain as this can damage the pipes and also contaminate the water supply in your area. It is better to leave the paint in the tin and dispose of it rather than to pour it out anywhere. With white spirit, allow it to sand till the sediment has settled at the bottom then keep the clean spirit for further use.

A few tips on health and safety:

Always read the instructions and warning information of the products before starting on a project.

Wear gloves, eye protection and a mask where necessary, if you have been instructed to do so it s imperative that you do.

When painting make sure that the area is well ventilated, particularly if using solvent-based paints.

Doors and door frames:

In order to prepare doors for painting, first remove door handles and accessories. Rub down the door and the frame to remove any dirt and flaking paint, and repair any imperfections with an appropriate poly-filler. Then wedge open the door to ensure it does not move while you are working on it.

When painting, ensure that you are painting in the same direction as the grain to achieve a better finish. If there are panels in the door, then paint the mouldings first before the inner panels.

Skirting Boards:

The skirting boards should be the last thing you paint when painting a room. The difficulty with skirting boards are that the dirt, dust and bits of carpet can get stuck to the paint or paintbrush. Therefore it is imperative to clean or vacuum before you start each section. Placing some card on the floor in the area that you are working on can also help to keep dust particles and carpet away from the skirting board.

If possible pull the carpet back from the skirting before you paint, this will create the cleanest result. However if that is not possible, work with only a small amount of paint on the brush, being careful not to get any on the carpet.

Radiators:

Turn your radiators off before commencing with the work, and only begin to paint when they are completely cold. Before starting to paint, check that the paint is suitable for heated surfaces otherwise it will flake once the radiator is back on.

Use a small brush to paint all the difficult bits and around the pipes. It is traditional to paint radiators the same colour as the walls, as this makes them blend into the walls creating a more harmonious look.