Give your place a lift…

Where you live now is usually called your home, and if you are renting, or newly moved into your own home, sometimes you inherit someone else’s tastes. You might gasp in horror at green walls or purple doors, or it might be a faceless beige that looks dated and dull, perhaps a bit grubby around the edges, but you have to see past all that and ponder its ‘potential’. Perhaps the room has no furniture in it, and it’s hard to imagine what your stamp on it will look like.

Redecorating

If you are thinking of redecorating or restyling, it doesn't require all new furniture and accessories. You can completely revamp your space by understanding how to decorate with what you have. For a low-cost update, refresh your existing furnishings and work ordinary objects into your decor with these easy tricks – a lick of paint is a start to cover up a colour you don’t like, or to refresh scuffed walls.

Pillows or cushions

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to ramp up a dull room with a pile of pillows, but make up your mind about your core colour, then it doesn’t matter if they don’t match in design, as long as that core colour is there. Sofas look great with cushions and add comfort as well as colour, and an old-fashioned chair can be immediately updated by a cushion with a stunning design that deflects the eye away from the tired old chair!

Hang up oddments

Sometimes a blank wall can be enlivened by adding something you wouldn’t normally display on a wall – for instance, the wooden bowl you fell in love with on holiday somewhere might be too big to store in limited cupboard space, so fill an empty space on the wall with it. The same goes for carpets or rugs, they can look just as good on walls if they are of an interesting design or fabric. If you have a collection of beaded necklaces or bracelets for instance, a table decoration of a small ‘spriggy’ branch can be hung with them in a glass vase or earthenware pot filled with stones for support, and on a windowsill will catch the light and add a little charm to your room. And of course, mirrors work well on walls too, different frames, shapes, colours, all can add depth and reflect light.

Kitchen cabinets

This trick works particularly well in an older kitchen. Instead of fretting that the kitchen cupboard doors are old, or the wrong colour or style, or won’t close properly, simply just take them off completely, and rearrange what is inside to show everything off - stacked mugs, even a small pot plant (real or plastic, it won’t matter) mixed in next to stacks of plates or bowls will look nice. You might need to repaint the inside of the cupboard to give it a fresh clean look, which is easy enough to do. And hunt out quirky jars in sets if you can for storing all the stuff that usually sits in packages (with a peg closing the top!) – pasta, flour, sugar, cereal, etc. These can look attractive whether inside your cupboards or just on your counter space if you have the room.

Books

I just love the look of books and have been known to scour second-hand shops just for books with interesting covers or titles. These look good piled on a coffee table, and I have even seen them stacked up inside an unused fireplace for a quirky look.

None of this is cast in stone, and a lot depends on the size of the space you are trying to update, and whether you are starting afresh with furniture or using what you have. There might be a predominant colour there that just can’t be changed – in my own case there are a lot of beautiful Portuguese blue tiles that give the house its own character - but you can work with the colour, adding in shades or contrasts.

Have a plan to work towards. It will all come together in time and become your own style.

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan