Italian Home Decor

Italian Home Decor

Home Decorating Themes: Focus On The Mood

How do you choose a home decorating theme that you know you are going to be able to live with over the next few years? You could go for ultra-modern throughout your whole house, or totally traditional. You could aim for the cottagey look, or the Italian villa theme, go for the Greek farmhouse or the Spanish hacienda - come to that, you might just want to focus on one style per room and, as I have, choose an ultra-modern look for your kitchen, a cosy comfortable bathroom where you can hide away and feel cosseted, am elegant lounge area and a lived-in family room where the dogs feel comfortable lying on the settee, with a cat draped across the back of a chair.

Even my bedrooms have different themes: I have one spare room which is very feminine and warm, with a sumptuous feel to it. This room is in shades of red, ivory and matt pearl grey. It feels expensive just walking in but, in fact, the 'look' cost me not quite $200.00 in total, including the carpet. The master bedroom is neat, with less what I call 'frippery'. This room is based on shades of blue, with the actual focal point being the handmade silk blinds which are a deep royal blue and three of the walls are eggshell blue. The wall behind my bed is a much deeper blue, in french-navy and the fabrics are french-navy and white, with a deep pile dark blue carpet.

My third bedroom I use as an office, although there is a fold-up bed in there if I need to put somebody up. This room is purely a functional room and I have deliberately kept this room bright. It is at the back of the house and doesn't get an awful lot of natural light so, to make up for this, I have decorated this room in sunshine yellow: the walls are a bright canary yellow and the curtains in here are an equally deep shade of yellow but with tiny flowers all over. The blinds in here are an ivory color and the carpet on the floor a deep beige. My hall is only small, quite a narrow hall really and, to keep this light, I have decorated it in Wedgewood blue and white, with classic moldings and cornices in white. I have hardwood floors throughout the downstairs, including the hallway, as I find it is easier to keep clean and always looks nice.

That's my little house - I haven't gone for way-out anything because I wouldn't be able to live with it after a few months. I have taken each room individually and focused on the individual characteristics of each room, then developed an appropriate theme around the feel of each room. Rather than have my rooms accommodating my decorating themes, I have attempted to address my decorating themes to each room's individuality and develop my theme accordingly. I seem to have got it right for my home because, whenever I walk into a room, I feel exactly how I intended to feel when I decorated it. I wanted to feel cosseted in my bathroom and for my kitchen to feel bright, clean and spacious, for my hallway to feel neutral and for my pets to feel comfortable in my family room. An overall decorating theme, I believe, should be appropriate for your own family's personalities and each theme should be adapted accordingly.

Home Decorating Ideas offers quick cheap tips on how to decorate your house. Includes tips on decorating the office, living room, bedroom, kitchen and more.

About the Author

Relocating to Italy, what business can I start there?

I'll be moving to Italy. I like to start a business there. I'm toying with 3 options; opening a delicatessen or even a small outfit selling oriental antiques/home decor artifacts etc and lastly maybe an online business. I know, no brainer and pretty lame ideas. Anyone can give me better ideas or approach on the hows, what, where, when etc. Any bits, views, opinions and info (even a potential biz partner is in consideration too) .. is most appreciated. I'm just starting to learn the lingo and know the bureaucracy to starting a biz is a real test of one's patience with the Italian authorities.
Incidentally I'm Malaysian of straits chinese descent, of course it will be a Malaysian Deli selling our famous Malaysian delights which is virtually non existence in the city where I'm moving. I'm thinking of introducing Malaysia to the Italians through our food. Most of them doesnt even know where Malaysia is! I'm quite a good cook .. very creative and not afraid of challenges or hard work.

Malay Deli is the best in my opinion, it is new to italians, not too many competitions, but better operate your shop in a wealthy city than a small village. Make sure the employment rate is high there, so that people can afford to try your dishes, when they like your food, they would come back, it is a repetitive business. In fact, I myself like good food and always ate in one of the Malay resturants in downtown Boston while I was living there, it was good.

There was one phenomenon I had noticed when I was visiting my boy friend in italy. We always ate in a local chinese resturant where it served the "non authentic" cantonese food, and the owner was from a place close to shanghai. If it was run in either Hong Kong or any big cities in the usa or canada, it wouldn't be able to survive and would close business in less than 6 months, but that resturant got quite a good number of customers daily, because many italians still don't know what good Asian food are tasted like.

That resturant also tried to offer Japanese food such as sushi. I looked at them, it didnt look like sushi at all, and the soy sauce that resturant used that to go with their "sushi" was a chinese dark soy sauce instead of japanese soy sauce. I hesitated but i really wanted to eat the sushi, so I talked to one of the customer, an italian, who was trying those. He gave a thumb up and said " buono". I then ordered that too, oh well.........I regreted I had ordered those...........i guessed the owner or the chef had never tried sushi before...........

This story is to give you an idea how easy it is to survive in a place where people are still uable to make the difference between good food and the poor ones.

Tell me where your shop will be, I would want to go and taste your malay deli next time when I go to italy. Oh.........I can smell your food.............they smell good !

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