joannemaranta's ideas
2. Pretty in pastelsFor timeless elegance, you can’t go past a classic, two-colour palette. Pairing a muted pastel on the walls with a white trim looks clean and fresh, and is particularly well suited to weatherboard homes. Picking out window frames, fretwork and other architectural details in crisp white conveys a Hamptons feel. Read how to light your front entrance
Permanently angled slatsThese work well in indoor/outdoor rooms when you need a fair amount of light, but wish to shield the area from a nearby building. They add interest and beauty to the space, the only downside being that they’re fixed, so you have to be sure you’ll be happy with the amount of light and air they allow through.
Greys can be warm or cool, so a good strategy is to select a grey based on existing colours of the immediate environment, such as greenery and pathways. Grey teams beautifully with warm, natural finishes such as sandstone, timber and slate.Read more decorating stories
If your budget is around $5,000 Along with updating the cabinets, installing new benchtops is one of the biggest-impact changes you can make to your kitchen. There’s a wide range of options when it comes to great-looking kitchen benchtop materials – there’s a huge cost difference between, for instance, a timber benchtop from Ikea and marble – so hunt around until you find something you like that fits your budget.
If your budget is around $500Paint, hang art, get new lighting and add open shelves. Open shelving certainly has its fans – and its critics – but one thing is certain: it does wonders for small spaces. Even replacing one small upper cabinet with a set of open shelves can make your kitchen feel more spacious, and provides an opportunity to display favourite dishes and accessories.How Open Shelving Can Solve Your Kitchen Woes
Ooze country living. Whether this front zone is in the bush or the inner-city, its decorative touches provide an inviting, country-inspired ambience. Hanging baskets and freestanding pots provide real vibrancy, while the decorative wall hanging utilises similar tones. A quick paint job gave an old folding chair a real wow factor, and the final element of the space is a striped mat that gives the area a warm and welcoming feel.MORE17 Easy Ways to Maximise Your Home’s Kerb-AppealExpert Tips for Planning a Welcoming Small Front YardLight Up: 10 Good Reasons to Use Outdoor Lighting
Indulge with red. Neutral colours add sophistication to any home but a vibrant red door makes a strong statement. Hundreds of shades are available, from rich crimson to dark burgundy, so try a few swatches first to see how it looks at different times of the day. Here, a white trim adds extra impact to the modern exterior.Here is how you can revamp your front door
3. Low-growing succulentsFor hot, sunny, bare areas in the garden, why not plant a selection of mat-forming succulents like here in this Adelaide garden? They look ideal planted with taller showcase plants such as dracaena, yucca and aloe. Most have attractive foliage and are very low maintenance, needing little water, pruning or feeding. Succulents that make good ground covers include low-growing varieties of Senecio serpens, which has stunning blue leaves, kalanchoe, Sempervivum, sedum and Echeveria.
5. Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides)Usually grown as a climber, versatile Star Jasmine is now being grown as a ground cover and clipped shrub. Its popularity is due to a number of factors including its stunning scented white flowers, attractive dark green foliage that looks good all year and its ability to tolerate sun, shade and some frost. Planted in this Sydney garden is a variegated form of Star Jasmine, (T. jasminoides ‘Tricolour’) which has been bred to grow only as a ground cover. It has lovely green, cream and pink leaves and grows to about a metre wide and 40cm tall. The downside is that it does not produce as many (if any) flowers as does the species form of Star Jasmine.
6. Connect to the boundaries This pergola over the front gate creates a strong visual link with the traditional character of the house. Setting the gate back from the footpath a little provides an inviting porch-like space that mediates between the street and the green private world beyond.
Go for sheer Swedish appeal When your view is uninspiring and you aren’t looking to reveal it too often, try a Swedish blind. To maintain both privacy and light, choose a pale fabric that’s opaque when two panels are layered together, as this is how blinds like the one pictured are constructed.Swedish blinds are available in two variations: the simplest are designed to remain in a fixed position to ‘dress’ your window, rather than being operated on a daily basis (as they need to be rolled up by hand). They offer a straightforward project crafters can try at home. The second variation is more complicated, using a corded system to raise and lower the fabric.
7. Location: Milan, ItalyWhy we love it: No room for a bath? Why not create a generous walk-in shower instead, as the owner of this compact bathroom has done.
6. Location: Singapore Why we love it: Running the striking black-and-white tiles from the floor to a single wall at the rear of this narrow bathroom draws the eye the full length of the room, creating the illusion of space.
To achieve the faux facade, Smith explains how portions of the villa were carved out, while masonry retaining-wall structures were constructed inside to facilitate the car stacker installation. “We cut through the joinery and lined up the boards so that from the front, the facade is seamless,” says Smith.While maintaining the original character and streetscape presence, further drama unfolds at the rear of the property…
5. Eye-catching entrance, for all the wrong reasonsThis beautiful, wide hallway with the perfectly slim console, and the cheerful yet elegant rug, accented by matching paint job on the door, invites people into this home. It makes me think that the people who live there don’t dump all of their things right there, at the door. Sadly, at my house, things can sit at this convenient spot for weeks at a time. Sporting equipment, shopping bags, all manner of family detritus.
Plants can be used to great effect inside the house, too. Here, potted plants have been used in conjunction with a slatted screen, which offers a fair amount of privacy as well as creating the effect of bringing the outdoors in. You could also consider arranging a row of tall potted indoor plants across a window that needs shielding.
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