Hazaad.com’s Blog

How To Decorate Your Home – Basic Interior Design Ideas
By Angela Sullivan

For many homeowners, learning how to decorate can be a challenging endeavor. There are so many factors to consider; where to start, how much to spend, how to layout awkward spaces, what type of furniture to buy. We hope that this article will bring some insight to home decoration and give you some interior design basics to help with decorating your home without too many hassles.

The first step in learning how to decorate is to determine your goals, style, and budget. Ask yourself a few questions about your interior design project. Following is a list of questions that should help you self-explore, and determine where to begin with your project.

1. What is the room or area you are decorating?

2. What is the style you would like this room to have?

3. What is the color scheme you would like to use?

4. What pieces of furniture & accessories will you need for this room, and what do you already have (and how much money are you willing to spend)?

5. How will you layout the space?
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At different stages in our lives we face different hazards. As we grow older a fall can become a more serious threat. However, there are some small changes that we can make to reduce the danger.

Because I deal with rugs, I will start with the rug related precaution. Rug pads can make having area rugs around your house a much safer proposition. They are placed between the rug and the floor. A rug pad can add extra padding, making it less damaging to fall, as well as preventing the rug from sliding and thus making a fall less likely.

To accomplish this important duty, rug pads don’t have to be overly fancy. One can find some excellent rug pads at department stores like Target.

Another precaution that one can take to reduce the chances of a hip fracture is to stay active. If one is worried about falls it may be tempting to reduce the amount of walking one does. However, in this case physical activity is a good thing. Continued exercise from activities like walking help keep ones bones strong and reduce the likelihood of hip fractures.

So this is a post about a flat light. A light emitting capacitor in fact.

Sounds like something that is both totally cool, and could have some amazing uses in interior design. You could wrap light around almost anything!

There have been some rumblings of late that the home furnishing market is facing a bit of a downturn. This may be the case. Both Pier 1 and Cost Plus have seen their same-store sales dip. It is also believed that the home furnishing industry market is dependent upon the home market, which itself has been seeing a bit of a downturn.

However, there are still several reasons to support a rosier view of the home furnishings market. To encourage people not to jump to conclusions based on the sales figures of Peir 1 and Cost Plus, lets look at the reasons the home furnishing industry might be doing better than the rumblers say.

The Housing Market Has Cooled

While it is often believed that the state of the housing market partly determines the state of the home furnishings market, I beg to differ. In many situations these two markets may indeed be correlated. When people buy a new house, they may find that they need various new furniture. However, when times are tighter and the housing market isn’t very good, people stay home more. Generally individuals like to spend money on the places where they spend their time. Thus by causing people to spend more time at home, a downturn in the economy could have a built in counter-balance against a downturn in the home furnishing industry.

Target’s sales are up

It is important not to overstate the meaning of this number because Target sells a lot more than just furniture. However, a healthy Target does seem to be a sign that the ‘durable household goods’ market is doing well.

Explaining Cost Plus & Pier 1

Instead of a general downturn in home furnishings, these numbers might show something that has been building for some time. Many middle class consumers are starting to shy away from the middle priced home furnishing market. They are looking to the cheap goods and the very high quality goods. As this trend continues, one could easily see the numbers of middle market retailers decrease.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that these points do not support a predicted upturn in the home furnishings market. However, it does counter some of the recent rumblings about a fall in the home furnishings market. These points do supports the old-sounding saying “limited numbers do not a good prediction make.”

It looks like some parts of the home furnishing industry might be focusing on children as the key to purchasing decisions. This is similar to what the fast food industry did a while ago.

I can see how the fast food industry was able to cash in on this. Food is regularly needed and has an intrinsic value to children. However, furniture seems a bit more abstract. It is important for a much less immediate form of comfort and on a different time scale.

In order to sell furniture properly to children it seems one would need to create social pressure. Children will need to feel about furniture like they did about teenage mutant ninja turtle gear 20 years ago. Somehow a kid needs to feel more valued if he has certain furniture.

Such a campaign strikes me as possible, but much harder than if one where selling something that could actually be carried around with children (ipod). The influence of children is indeed mighty when it comes to purchases. However, selling racecar beds seems much harder than selling video game consoles.

Does it seem like some aspects of the style of the 70’s are coming back into vogue? Just looking over products on home design blogs like Design-sponge I get that feeling. I wonder if there is some reason this is happening.

Perhaps it is just the elevated use of lime green.

For the record I would like to state that shag carpets are actually really annoying. They are very hard to clean, absorb things better than a sponge, and can make you trip.

I read an interesting article the other day on the rediscovery or quality rugs in the UK. The author argued that this revival of rugs has been the result of new designers taking chances with stylish new designs. I would agree that this has helped draw people’s attention back to the rug as key part of any room.

However, on the other hand I would be careful about underestimating the importance of a rise in home-ownership and home pride.

I am proud to announce that we have just launched a new look for hazaad.com. The background is now a nice repeating geometric rug design.

Along with this new look has come somewhat of a change in business plan. Now instead of relying heavily on pictures, we encourage people to see (and feel) our rugs for themselves in Scottsdale, AZ.

It might be just me, however, I feel like the bold colors and large patterns of the 1970’s are back in style again. For example, check out the wallpaper used in Lucky Number Slevin.

Here is an article that claims it is not in fact the 70’s that are making a comeback, it is what is called “Granny Chic”. Things like needlepoint and lace back at the top of the cultural dog-pile.

Nice theory, but I’m not quite convinced.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/home/15129552.htm

Here is an interesting article on some modern rugs, such as ones with curved abstract shapes and flowers. Some of these designs are quite beautiful.

It all strikes me as very…San Francisco.