Online resources to give your house a stylish interior

Internet is a great design resource, provided you know where to look. It provides you with a huge arena of ideas at the hour of need. Take for example the concept of interior design.

When you are designing a room, gone are the days of purchasing hundreds of decorating books. And one no longer has to pay expensive decorator fees just to design a room.

The advent of the Internet has given us a wealth of decorating information and tools at our fingertips, and it is now possible to completely design a room online.

With these great online sources, anyone can get helpful information about the basics of decorating principles.

If you have no clue about choosing furniture, selecting colour, or what style of decorating you like, help is at your fingertips.

But while it can be a fantastic resource, the web can also be a labyrinth.

Whether you are looking for tips about decorating a child’s bedroom on the cheap or simply after some good, old fashioned interiors, it can be tough to know where to begin.

If you do know where to look, however, you will find repository of tricks, ideas, practical advice and sumptuous imagery.

In this article, we share some online resources by interior design gurus for both budget and luxurious designs.

Houzz.com is billed as the largest online collection of home improvement ideas. This “Wikipedia of interiors” has designs for every room in the house. Its formidable database contains more than a million pictures.

Users can create an “ideabook”, where they save their favourite images for reference. If you can’t find a sexy new kitchen here, you won’t find it anywhere.

Then we have icreatived.com. It is an enigmatic and endlessly browsable blog dedicated to high-concept interiors, where “15 interesting floating staircases” and unusual steel chairs are held in quiet reverence.

The fixation with multipurpose furniture, such as the teardrop-shaped bookcase that doubles as a reading seat, adds to the general kookiness on display.

If you want to sample some good deco, then visit the blog roomenvy.co.uk. This easy-grazing blog showcases the height of home. It features “cool kitchens”, “desirable dining” and “beautiful boudoirs”.

On designspiration.net, you will connect with a design-savvy community, where users share interiors inspiration, from room looks and architecture to typography and retro advertising.

Just click to be sent updates on Facebook and Twitter.

FREE APPS

That’s not all. There are free Android and iOS application that lets you access thousands of professional designs which you can also categorize according to your design preferences.

That way you can instantly look for references, try out furniture pieces before buying them, check the right colour schemes and even get the measurements accurately.

You can also check out apps including Ikea, BEHR and Pantone, Photo Measures and iHandy Carpenter.

Before you start tearing up tile or hanging large, heavy objects on your walls, use the inspiration app Houzz Interior decorating ideas (free; Android and iOS) to tap into your personal style.

For those of us who are colourblind — literally or figuratively — MyPantone can be a lifesaver: The app lets you browse thousands of Pantone shades and then automatically generates harmonious colour palettes from your choices.

It also lets you capture and extract colours from photos on your photo roll, which is a handy feature for people who are inspired by the world around them.

So, if one of your resolutions for 2015 is to bring a new look to your home, you’ll find photos, tutorials and helpful advice about decorating for just the right look guided by online resources. Happy New Year!

Sam Wambugu is a monitoring and evaluation specialist. Email: [email protected]