One of the best things about buying your first home is that you finally have the freedom to do whatever you want to it. You no longer have to follow the landlord’s rules or worry about not receiving your full deposit back after you’ve painted or hung frames on a wall. You can make whatever decorative decisions you want to. This newfound freedom, however, can be a bit intimidating. With the whole world of decoration open to you, where are you supposed to begin?

Start by checking out these top decorating tips for first-time homeowners. These tips cover almost everything, from paint colors to creating design cohesion within your home. By applying these top decorating tips to your home’s interior design, you can create a home that is both stylish and comfortable.

Keep Paint Colors Neutral and Light

It might be tempting to pick out the boldest colors possible now that you control the colors of your walls, but this can lead to design trouble down the road. When you call up residential painters to give your walls a fresh coat of paint, try to stick to colors like gray or beige, especially on the first floor. Creating flow is very important on the first floor since this is likely where you’ll host guests and spend a lot of your time. Neutral walls will allow you to minimize jarring transitions while giving you the best decorating flexibility, as you can easily switch around your accessories.

If you have two small rooms next to one another, painting them the same neutral color can be a great trick to make them feel larger. If you don’t want the same exact color in every single room, you could use a paint strip and move up or down a shade or two to create subtle variations throughout your home.

While neutral wall colors can help give your home versatility, anyone who wants to use bold, bright colors when painting their home should feel free to do so. This is especially true for children’s rooms, where kids love to express their artistic side. You can always re-paint a room if that bright pink or sunshine yellow your child picked out isn’t their favorite color in a couple of years.

Use the Front Door to Set the Tone

Your home’s front door is key to making a good first impression, so making sure that it is styled as a reflection of your tastes is among the top decorating tips. A great way to style your front door is to paint it a fun, glossy color. Many people choose red for their front door, as red is a lucky color in many cultures and represents a safe haven for churches. Orange and yellow are also rising in popularity for front doors for their associations with joy and warmth.

As you determine what color you want for your front door, take a look at your garage doors as well. These doors will also influence a visitor’s first impression of your home. If your garage doors need some repair work, be sure to call residential garage door services. Once they work properly, you can paint them to match or complement your front door. By doing this, you’ll create a cohesive look for the outside of your home.

Strategically Arrange Your Living Room Furniture

The arrangement of the furniture in your living room is going to impact the flow of that entire room. When you’re determining how to set up your living room, think about groupings that will invite conversation. You’ll often see these groupings in places like funeral homes or hotel lobbies, which are set up for small groups of people to talk with one another without distractions such as televisions or computers. A U-shaped seating area is common in these spaces, in which there is a sofa with a coffee table in front of it and two chairs at either end that face each other. An H-shaped seating area is another good option, in which two chairs face a couch and have a coffee table in the center. Not only are these arrangements convenient for get-togethers, but they also add a sense of balance and intimacy to the space.

One of the top decorating tips for living room furniture that many people don’t know is to float furniture away from the walls. Most people will push all of their furniture against the walls in an effort to make the room look bigger. However, keeping your furniture away from the walls will actually make the room feel larger, as it adds more negative space to the room.

Appropriately Scale Artwork to the Wall

Placing framed artwork or photos on walls is a challenge for many new homeowners. You may have a lot of items that you’re excited to finally display on your walls without worrying about making nail holes that are too big, but once you have expanses of free wall space you may not know where to put everything. A big mistake people make when decorating their homes is hanging frames that don’t actually fit the wall. When you have a large wall, go with one oversized piece or group smaller pieces in a gallery style. Keep in mind that when you’re creating a gallery wall, you should only leave two to four inches in between pieces. Spacing them too far apart will disrupt the scale again.

Another mistake people often make when hanging items on walls is putting small pieces too high on the wall. If you look at contemporary interior designs, the middle of a picture always hangs at eye level. This helps keep the room in balance. If the people in your home have drastically varying heights, average them so that the items on the walls hang correctly for everyone.

Invite the Sun into the Kitchen

Nothing is better than a sun-drenched kitchen. It makes the space feel warm and homey and can encourage you to make some delicious meals. Let in as much sun as possible by choosing window treatments that are on the sheerer side. If you still want some privacy, you can pair sheers with full-length panels. The best lightweight fabrics for panels are cotton, linen, and silk blends. These all hang well but don’t feel heavy or outdated. If your kitchen gets a lot of sunlight, choose curtains in light colors that won’t fade over time.

Anchor Area Rugs Under Furniture Feet

This is one of the top decorating tips that also make your home safer for your family. An area rug that slides around becomes a slipping hazard and can cause serious child injuries as they play in the house. Keep your rambunctious little ones safe while creating an aesthetically-balanced area by anchoring area rugs under the feet of your furniture.

If the space and rug are big enough, try to get all four legs of the sofa and chairs in a seating area on the rug. At the very least, rest the front two legs of the sofa and chairs on the outer edges of the rug. This helps keep the rug in place and it defines the seating area. When you’re picking out a rug, be careful of going too small with the rug size as this can make everything look out of scale. Most living rooms, even those on the smaller size, will require an 8-by-10 foot or 9-by-12 foot rug to properly accommodate a seating area.

Fight the Urge to Match Everything

Many retail stores sell matching sets for nearly every room in the house, so it can be convenient to follow their guidance and buy your decor in these matching styles. However, one of the top decorating tips is to avoid matching absolutely everything. Having some items with the same styling — such as a matching sofa and armchair — is fine, but matching every single item can make your home look like a generic furniture showroom. Allow your personal style to shine through and tie your decor together with color instead of style. You can easily make your decor cohesive yet diverse by using pillows, curtains, and other accessories in a common shade throughout a room.

Transform Outdated Eyesores

When you move into your new home, you may notice that there are some features that are essential to your home’s functionality, but don’t look aesthetically-pleasing. These elements could be anything from unsightly ducts that provide your heating service to exposed plumbing in the bathroom. Luckily, you don’t have to live with these eyesores and have a couple of options to transform them.

The first option is to undergo a major remodel. This can be a good option if you are willing to invest to update your home and raise its value. You could hire a luxury home remodeling service to help reroute ductwork or plumbing as well as make any other renovations you want to the home. If you don’t have the money for a big remodeling project, you can use some top decorating tips to cover up the eyesores. Try painting whatever you can to camouflage unsightly areas or use solid materials to create barriers in front of the eyesores.

Spruce Up the Exterior

Home decor isn’t only about the interior spaces. You’ll also want to follow the top decorating tips for your outdoor spaces as well. Start evaluating the exterior of your home by taking a look at the roof. Your home’s roof has a huge impact on its curb appeal. If your roof is missing shingles, call a roof repair service to fix it. If your roof hasn’t been replaced in about 20 years, you may need to invest in total roof replacement. This is an expensive investment, but it’s important for the structural integrity of your home and it gives you the opportunity to make the outside of your home look sleek and clean.

Once you’re happy with the roof, work your way down the outside of your home. Update your siding if it looks worn or weathered and make sure your windows look clean. If you have a porch or a deck, you can freshen it up by power washing it and staining it. You can use air compressors with a washing attachment to power wash or invest in a tool specifically for power washing. Then, decorate the space with outdoor furniture that makes it a cozy space where you want to spend time. As you decorate your outdoor space, apply many of the same top decorating tips for interior design so that you create a space that flows well and is aesthetically-cohesive.

Don’t Clutter Up Your Shelves

Whether your new home has built-ins or you’re planning on hanging shelves, you may be looking forward to displaying all of your books, trinkets, and knick-knacks. However, shelves and bookcases can quickly become cluttered with objects and make the room appear smaller and too busy. People often pack shelves with about twice the amount of items that they should hold.

When you’re decorating your shelves, you can either go into it with the mindset that you should only put half of the objects up that you had planned to display or you can place everything on the shelves that you want to display and then go through them to remove 50% of the items. If you’re decluttering and removing items that you realize you don’t really need or want in your home, consider donating them. You could donate them to secondhand stores like Goodwill or charity organizations. Once you’re left with the items you do want, create a dynamic look on your shelves by mixing horizontal stacks of books with the vertical rows and interspersing decorative objects among them.

With these top decorating tips, you don’t have to fear tackling the interior design of your new home. If decorating the entire house seems overwhelming, just go room-by-room. Start with your bedroom, as that will be the place where you go to rest and relax, and work your way out from there. And at the end of the day, remember that the most important of the top decorating tips is that you decorate your home in a way that makes you happy. If you feel a spark of joy every time you walk into your home, you’ll know that you’ve decorated it correctly.