Decorate Your Home with Shabby Chic

Are you ready to redecorate but have a limited budget? Do you have some great furniture but nothing matches? Do you love antiques but not stiff formal decor? Then think Shabby Chic, a fun decorating style that solves all these dilemmas and more.

Shabby Chic is one of the hottest trends in decorating, and for good reason. It is versatile, easy, and inexpensive. Shabby Chic is based on simplicity -- simple color themes combined with your favorite furniture and art.

Shabby Chic can be anything you want it to be, and is a great way to bring your personal style to any room. Most Shabby Chic decor is based on a white-on-white or beige-on-beige theme. Soft pastels are often used as accent colors, but with a little creativity, you can add just about any color you want. A classic example of Shabby Chic would be to cover couches and overstuffed chairs with white slipcovers, whitewash your wood furniture and hang white airy curtains. Then hang your favorite painting or artwork in the most prominent place in the room.

Choose one or two colors in the painting as accent colors, and repeat the colors in throw pillows, flowers, soft throw blankets, and candles. Another great feature of Shabby Chic is the worn and well-loved look. That side table that has an interesting shape but has seen better days is perfect for Shabby Chic. Simply whitewash it and put a vase with flowers on top. Better yet, use an old china teapot or your grandmother's favorite vase for the flowers. It's the little details like this that make Shabby Chic work so well.

If you're on a tight budget, Shabby Chic is a great choice. Make your own slipcovers with any durable white or beige fabric, and cover couches and chairs to match. Pick up interesting accessories at yard sales and flea markets, and paint them all the same shade of white. Pull out your favorite pictures and put them in frames painted white or coordinated accent colors. Throw in a few candles, flowers, and pillows, and you've got a beautiful Shabby Chic room.

Shabby Chic is also perfect for highlighting single pieces of furniture. Do you have a gorgeous, beloved antique but nothing else that goes with it? Decorate the room in Shabby Chic and let your antique be the center of attention.

Whatever your style, whatever your budget, whatever mismatched furniture you own, there's a Shabby Chic look for you.

About The Author

Johann Erickson is the owner of Online Discount Mart (http://www.onlinediscountmart.com). Please email the author and include an active link to this website if you'd like to use this article.

marketing@4intrepid.com

MORE RESOURCES:

RELATED ARTICLES

Entryway Benches - Why Theyre a Must Have in Every Home
One of the easiest ways to leave a lasting, warm impression on first-time visitors to your home and to make those visitors feel welcome is to place an entryway bench just inside your main entryway. Not only do entryway benches create a warm and inviting atmosphere, they are also very beautiful and are practical pieces of furniture as well.

Simplicity with Your Home Wall Decor
I can still picture my roommate as she lay stretched out on the floor, rummaging through a pile of Martha Stewart magazines. It was our mutual friend's birthday and we preferred to deliver our own personalized birthday gifts.

Pot Racks - Make a Statement In Your Kitchen
One of the most beautiful, versatile and efficient accessories that you could incorporate into your kitchen is the pot rack. The addition of a custom pot rack brings style, grace and organization to your kitchen's workspace, and makes a stylish, sophisticated statement that is unsurpassed by other accessories.

Area Rugs - Accent Your Rooms with Area Rugs
One of the easiest ways to accent and decorate your home is with the use of accent rugs and area rugs. Rugs are far more than just something to cushion your feet and keep them warm in winter.

Bar Stools & Counter Stools - Tips on How To Select the Right Style for Your Space
If you have a breakfast bar or wet bar in your home, then you need bar stools or counter stools. With so many designs from which to choose, you can be sure there are many styles that will look beautiful while offering complete functionality.

A Review of Popular Massage Chairs
With so many massage chairs available on the market, where does one begin to choose the best massage chair? Several online sources are available that give consumer massage chair reviews. Perhaps a good way to begin your search is to use Google for the query "massage chair reviews".

Creating Positive Environments for Home and Office
From the office cubicle to the executive penthouse suite and from apartments to mansions, people are trying to carve out spaces to call their own. Outside, the world may be a stressful place but inside these spaces, people strive to create positive environments where they can live and work happily and peacefully.

Discount Mini Blinds
As with other discount items you want to buy, discount mini blinds are available, but sometimes come with a tradeoff between quality and price.For that reason, consumers should seek out the best-priced mini blinds - rather than the cheapest.

Kitchen Island Sizes
Kitchen island sizes vary considerably from moveable cutting and serving tables to installed free-standing cabinets with a full complement of storage and workspace options.Nearly 80% of all home buyers consider a kitchen island essential, according to one survey, but knowing which kitchen islands sizes are best is another matter.

Interior Decorating With Picture Frames
There are many ways to decorate the interior of your home, none the least of which is with picture frames. Picture frames have the unique ability to personalize a house in more ways than one.

An Upholstered Bench To Incorporate Style and Function
How do you envision your dream home? Is it rich in color and texture, romantic, cozy, warm, comfortable and inviting all at the same time? Would you love to incorporate colorful fabrics and rich textures in your home's d�cor but are not sure how to pull it off? You are not alone. The truth is: Many people long to incorporate the use of textured and patterned fabric into their decorating style but are not sure where they should begin.

Unique Tin Can Candle Holders
Ah yes the good old Tin Can. The tin can has been around for years, providing many different projects to be made from tin cans.

Decorating a Childs Room - 8 Simple Strategies to Make You Both Happy!
When it comes to decorating a child's room, your approach should be much different from decorating an adult bedroom.For kids, their bedroom is where they play games, read, listen to music, day-dream, or just go to be alone sometimes.

Oriental Area Rugs - Know Before You Buy an Oriental Rug
Did you know that you can usually tell the country from which an Oriental rug originated from its design and style? While we often think of 'Oriental rugs' as having an overall defining style, the truth is that there are many styles of Oriental rugs, most of them growing from traditional patterns and materials common to the country or area in which they originated. Experts in Oriental rugs spend years learning the variations of patterns, materials, colors and weave that are characteristic of the different areas of the Orient.

Decorating Your Kitchen With Accessories
Just like a nice outfit, your kitchen can benefit from accessories! If you are thinking about redecorating but don't have a lot of dough to put into your kitchen, try simply adding some accessories in a matching theme or color and see how it transforms the room!Now before you rush out to the store, you should probably decide what sort of theme you are going for. Do you want the look of old Italy? How about a cottage theme? Why not try a country style kitchen? You will want to buy different accessories depending on the theme you choose.

Contemporary Rugs Can Transform a Room
When tackling a do-it-yourself home decorating project, you can use rugs as a relatively inexpensive means of enhancing or transforming a room. There are practical considerations in how to use rugs to advantage, and how to get good value for your money.

Liven Up Your Walls With Decorative Plates
Decorative plates are often overlooked when decorating a home. Yet, it's the details that really make the elements of a room come together-and decorative plates are a detail present in most rooms.

Color Psychology: The Joy and Pain of Yellow
Warm and luminous like sunlight, the right shade of yellow brings cheer to dreary rooms. Some bright yellows, however, cause people pain in interior design.

The Magic of Color
Deciding what colors to use when decorating your house can be a real challenge. Do you want a soothing atmosphere, vibrant or warm and cozy? The choice does not have to be complicated if you understand the workings of the theory of color.

Decorating a Bedroom for the Subconscious Mind - Psychology of Colors
Psychology of colors - the bedroomColor can have an astounding effect on perceptions, feelings, and interactions. Different colors evoke different memories and different ideas.