Tranquil Design Ideas

Intimate Colors

• Light blues and greens provide deep tranquil feelings to your room. Blues and greens are natural colors, representing water and plants, and suggest relaxation and comfort. Use analogous colors -- colors close to each other on the color wheel -- to create gentle contrasts between colors and establish a room's color scheme. Devise a full color scheme and use them as a guide for your wall colorings, furniture and flooring. Mix and match different analogous colors, but make sure to use lighter shades for your most prominent features, such as your walls, and accentuate with darker tones for smaller touches, like pillows or window treatments.

Pictures and Photographs

• Pictures and photographs help establish a loving feel in your rooms, but you have to plan their implementation. Use personal photographs or relaxing landscapes in your bedroom or pictures of family and friends in communal areas such as your living room. Select photographs that show people smiling, happy and vibrant. Use heart-warming photographs from vacations, family events or familiar memories. As an example, you may want to use a few enlarged photographs from your wedding in your bedroom that show you and your spouse happy, in love and sharing your warmest memories together.

Plants

• Plants create a lasting tranquil effect in any room. You can add natural or artificial plants to the inside of your room, depending on the amount of maintenance you are willing to give them. Do not overlook the outside of your windows, either. Tall plants located directly under your windows or hanging plants down your windows can give you the peaceful feeling of the outdoors. For instance, you can select flowers that match your interior color scheme and plant them directly outside your window to support your interior scheme.

Lighting

• Establish tranquil lighting effects in your home by reducing the contrast between light and shadows. Locate your lighting sources and decorate outward, away from those sources. As an example, if you have a large window in your room, face your furniture toward the window and make sure that none of your furniture blocks the incoming light.