Fun with Feng Shui for Peaceful Interior Design

The Chinese philosophy of arranging items in your home for good results is named feng shui, pronounced “fung shway.” According to this belief system, rules for object placement maximize cosmic energy, called chi. Whether you believe this premise or not, its results are loved by designers and homeowners around the world. So for this blog post we at Roberts Furniture & Mattress will apply this idea to some furniture in the Hampton Roads area to give you ideas to add some life to your decor.

The Feng Shui Living Room

According to feng shui, energy is masculine (yang) or feminine (yin). Living rooms use masculine energy because they are so active with new people and conversational buzz. To make the most of the yang circulating in this room, proper placement of your living room sofa is important. Have a wall behind it and place it strategically in the “command position” so that sitting on it you can see the door. However, do not have it directly facing the door. This can get tricky! Because you want to turn up the energy in your living room, it ought to be one of your home’s brighter rooms. Ideally this should be sunlight but artificial light will do in a pinch. Beware mirrors: even if they’re not broken they’re bad luck here! However, potted plants draw good chi into your living room. Finally, try to configure your living room furniture so that it has “four corners,” so arrange it in a square or rectangular fashion. According to feng shui, this attracts good people.

Successful Home Office Feng Shui

Everybody works in the hope of succeeding, and feng shui principles are here to help with arranging your home office furniture to do just that. First, pick decor that pumps you up, making you feel successful. Place your desk in the command position. Try not have it facing a wall! The south side of the room has fire as its feng shui element, which governs fame and reputation, so fan those flames with warm colors such as yellows. Cool colors are bad for your home office. The southeast corner should have a theme of abundance!

Feng shui promises gradual change as you apply it. For your home furniture and accents, stop by our Hampton, VA store or any of our other state locations.

Make Your Too-Large Room Livably Smaller

It’s hard to believe there can be too much of a good thing until you’re faced with it. That goes for a room in your home that seems to have more square footage than you know what to do with! Never fear, dear readers. Hampton Roads’ furniture specialists since 1960 are proud to share with you some designer’s tricks to scale down that behemoth into something more human, a space that’s even intimate if you want.

Smart Furniture Tricks for Instant Coziness

A common rookie design mistake is to manufacture smallness by trying to employ small pieces of furniture in a big space. This backfires because the first thing you notice is all the dead space around them. Actually, if you pick furniture that fits the room’s real proportions well, such as long sofas and consoles, it makes the room appear smaller. Placing the furniture along the walls, as though it were part of the wall, works wonders as well.

Doing the Shrinking-Room Shuffle: Arrangement That’s Magic!

An obvious solution to a too spacious room is to break it up into two or more rooms. Don’t want to bring in the contractor to add walls? No worries. An accent folding partition (room divider) can inexpensively do the same thing while giving you flexibility if you change your mind or your needs for the room shift. Another designer’s tip is simply to treat the room as if the dividing walls were there by clustering furniture for different uses in various spots: sofa and loveseat combo gathered around the TV, bistro counter-height table and chairs in another spot, and so on. How about your whole home bar taking up a third of the floor space? Your eyes will focus on only one section at a time and thus you won’t be overwhelmed by the room anymore.

Light and Color Tricks

A standby for interior designers is light creating the illusion of space. So what do you do when your room’s too big, brick up the windows and light the room with candles? While we’d love to sell you accent candle-holder sets, you don’t need to do anything that drastic. Just choose more subdued, less reflective colors for your room’s palette, from the furniture such as a living room sofa to your area rug. Recommended hues to turn your echo-ey airplane hangar of a room into an inviting space for your friends are charcoal gray, burgundy, deep green, and chocolate brown.

Patterns and Textures That Fill Your Space

Big, striking patterns on your furniture and draperies, again agreeing with the room’s proportions rather than trying to fight them, fills the space visually, scaling down your brain’s impression of it. Good old-fashioned wallpaper works for this too. Another design trick: avoid anything with too much shine such as chrome. Stay away from lacquered wood, for example. Try painted or stained finishes instead. Metal should be dull or wrought-iron. Mirrors in these cases are a no-go.

For home furniture suggestions to fill a room affordably, check out Roberts Furniture & Mattress in Hampton, VA or one of our many other locations.

How to Choose and Place Your Coffee Table

When you’ve got your living room seating picked out, put some thought into this space’s second most sought furniture, the coffee table. It can be your room’s centerpiece if you desire, rather than the sofa. Here are a few placement and style suggestions for yours.

The Rule of 2

Most living room coffee tables are 16 to 18 inches tall. It’s generally recommended that your coffee table be 2 inches lower than your seats such as your living room sofa or loveseat.

The Rule of 18

Some interior designers say your coffee table should be 18 inches (a foot and a half) away from your sofa, making it close enough for you to set down plates and drinking glasses but roomy enough for you to stretch your legs, so consider that when measuring your floor space to pick the size of your coffee table.

The Rule of 30

Consider which part of your living room floor gets the most traffic as a passageway. Your coffee table should be narrow enough to allow about 30 inches of space from the side facing away from the sofa to accommodate this.

Use Contrast

If your living room sectional or sofa blends in with a simple design and neutral color, make your living room’s decor “pop” by using contrast: make your coffee table interesting, for example, with a dark finish and/or intricate woodwork. Likewise if your living room furniture uses bold lines and primary colors, consider a nearly invisible but still handy glass-topped metal coffee table.

Child-Friendly Coffee Tables

If you have young children running through your house, consider getting a coffee table without sharp edges; round or oval designs might be better for you.
For an incredible selection of living room coffee tables visit our Hampton, VA furniture store and other Virginia locations.

Refresh Your Interior for Spring

Spring is finally upon us, which means it’s time to pull back the curtains, raise the blinds, and crack open your window to let the cool spring breeze into your home, after months of wintry darkness. The change in season brings with it excitement, renewal, and of course, lots and lots of cleaning. After you have finished removing the dust from every surface in your home, and aired out each musty room, one of the best things you can do to refresh your interior for the springtime is to decorate with seasonal home accents. New home décor is ideal for giving your home the cheery makeover it truly deserves.

Bright and Colorful Home Accents

With the springtime comes feelings of newness and vibrancy, so decorate your interior accordingly. One of the simplest decorating tips that the experts swear by is to stock up on fresh throw pillows. These can really bring some much needed pop after the gloom of the colder months. The myriad colors and designs make for easy arranging in pretty much every room. Choose throw pillows in muted pastels and primary colors, like mint green or canary yellow, to bring some of the freshness of the outdoors into your home. Similarly, pick patterns or prints that evoke nature, like organic paisley and flower designs, or even animal prints. 

Another simple design trick that seems obvious when mentioned, but is often overlooked, is to hang mirrors in various sizes throughout your home. With mirrors, you can capture and direct the emerging sunlight to break away the winter shadows. Also, mirrors give your home a sense of depth, and are particularly ideal for smaller spaces. Hang them opposite your windows and in hallways to take advantage of both elements. Choose a frame that is organic or colorful to really usher in the spring season.

You can find colorful home accents like throw pillows, mirrors, and lots more at Robert’s Furniture & Mattress. Visit us in Yorktown, VA, or any of our four other furniture store locations for springtime home decorations at unbeatable prices.