Artistic Touches Make A Southwest Living Room
Posted: Monday, May 25, 2009
by Craig Chambers - Mission Del Rey
Mission Del Rey
Your living room should be a special place in your home that surrounds you with things you love, not a lifeless drab place you simply endure. It really doesn't matter where you live in order to turn your living room into a dazzling southwest haven. Choosing where to begin, trying to create a lovely welcoming southwest atmosphere, is the toughest question to master.
A good beginning point is to choose a color of paint for the walls that you feel creates a southwest feeling. Deep reds, oranges and yellows are popular southwest colors. Turquoise, browns and rust also work well if you are leaning more toward a western or Indian theme room. Take this exciting first step! Chunky wooden furniture is a good choice when purchasing furniture for your southwest living room. These items seem to work well no matter which way you lean when deciding on a southwestern theme for your living space.
To make a bold statement in your room, choose unique items to accessorize. Accent pieces are like placing pieces of your personality around the room, so be sure to incorporate accessories that you love. Things like throw rugs add warmth and character and are able to add texture and color to your room. If your room has a fireplace, consider using a woven wool rug either in front of the hearth or above the mantle. In a southwest environment, both look fantastic. An area rug under your coffee table is another great way to add color and pattern and will be a unifying force, blending colors from within the room. Throw pillows made of animal hides make great accent pieces and look so at home.
Artwork will definately complete a room. Look for pieces you are fond of in any of the southwestern themes such as Mexican, western, or Native American. By purchasing a piece of art from a starving artist, you'll be helping them pursue their dream and end up with a timeless treasure. Who knows? Maybe someday you'll own a painting created by someone famous! It seems that in a southwest room, rustic wooden frames complete the picture.
Before you can actually call your southwest room complete, you must add interesting artifacts. Artifacts could be unusual things you have collected throughout the years while traveling or something you may happen to run across at a flea market that lends a taste of the southwest. Family and friends will love talking to you about such objects of realism you have added to your southwest room. Native American baskets or hand made wooden dolls, mission style bells or religious statues, a cowboy's used lasso or a branding iron or Mexican pottery or burro baskets are just a few ideas to help you get started. It always creates more of a home-like feeling if you make your purchases from the actual craftsman that made the item.
What a pleasurable experience it will be to create your own southwest living room. Planning helps to create a room that seems to take you away to travel destinations all within the comfortable walls of your very own home.
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Craig Chambers is the founder of Mission Del Rey Southwest, offering unique hand crafted southwest living room decor. Visit his website to get money saving rustic decorating tips and his popular Free Book - The Rustic Southwest Decorating Guide: Southwest Living Room Decor
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