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How to make any room feel lighter and brighter on a budget

How to make any room feel lighter and brighter on a budget
How to make any room feel lighter and brighter on a budget

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With summer right around the corner, chances are that many of us are considering revamping our interior decor to reflect the warmth and buoyancy of this season.

Unlike other seasonal decor swap overs, however, shifting from spring to summer tends to be less about what new decor you include and more about what design elements you remove from your home's interiors.

Aussie summers tend to speak for themselves, so redesigning your home is really all about making sure that all the lightness and brightness of this season can be effortlessly reflected in your home's interiors.

The summer interior design tips we'll be outlining below are both low-cost and quite low-maintenance, meaning you'll be free to enjoy this coming season without a care in the world.

Here's how you can pare back your interiors on a budget to place emphasis on light and space this coming summer.

Incorporate a healthy variety of light sources

Ideally, the only thing that you should be adding to your home's summer redesign is a good selection of outdoor fairy lights, floor lamps, and other playful and highly variable sources of ambient lighting.

You can keep your interiors feeling fresh and dynamic by swapping between your different light sources depending on how you're using the space.

For instance, some dim smart lighting can be used to accompany a dark action or thriller film, whilst fairy lights can perfectly complement a cheery alfresco dining experience.

A good floor lamp can be positioned in a myriad of ways, including over a cosy armchair to create a reading nook, or beside a selection of indoor plants to cast interesting shadows across an otherwise blank wall.

Having multiple sources of light in any interior space will also ensure that your home reaps all the many benefits of light layering, an elusive practice in interior design that entails building layers of light using a variety of sources.

Light layering is a subtle yet powerful practice, which boosts the dynamic feel and atmosphere of interior spaces with minimal hassle. In essence, light layering is considered to be a staple design practice for complementing short and sweet summer nights.

Boost your natural light availability

Of course, as this season is accompanied by the longest days of the year, boosting your home's natural light availability is also a major component in keeping your interiors feeling lighter and brighter both in summer and through to other seasons.

One of the simplest ways of boosting your home's natural light availability is simply by keeping your windows uncovered during daylight hours.

If you're lucky enough to have some east-facing windows, your home is likely to be bathed in the soft early morning sunlight at the beginning of every day.

West-facing windows will naturally be able to soak in the pinks and oranges of luscious sunsets, too, although they can be notorious for overheating your interiors too, so these windows are best fitted with a good pair of light-coloured Venetian or sunscreen blinds to keep your home cool in the summer.

If your home is a little starved for natural light due to the placement of your windows or any tall trees that may be keeping your interiors in perpetual shade, you can still fake natural light using some fairly simple design hacks that include using mirrors to reflect natural light throughout your home, as well as using light or pastel colours in your home's design over darker, light-absorbing tones.

Declutter and deep clean

The most pressing obstacle you'll be likely to face when you're looking to elevate the lightness and brightness of your interiors is clutter! There's nothing like clutter to make your home feel stuffy and uninviting.

Cluttered interiors are always more likely to feel heavier than rooms with a lot of floor space, which brings us back to our earlier point that preparing for this season will naturally always entail paring back your interiors rather than adding to them.

You can declutter your home by going from room to room and looking for any objects or decor that don't seem to have either a place or a purpose.

Your decluttering process may involve simply removing trinkets and tabletop accessories or even removing whole tables themselves.

Regardless of how you declutter, chances are high that once you're done with this process, your interiors will already begin to feel infinitely lighter and more refreshing.

You can double down on these light and fresh feelings by taking some time to deep clean your surfaces following your decluttering process.

If you have carpeting or an area rug in any of your interiors, you can give it a little TLC on a budget by using a carpet shampoo cleaner of your choice, followed by a thorough vacuum cleaning.

Even citrus-based homemade cleaners can work wonders on freshening up carpet fibres and furniture and ensuring that your home stays light and breezy all throughout the summer months.

Introduce some leafy friends

Finally, it's well worth noting that indoor greenery plays a vital role in the transformation of any interior space from a dark, gloomy setting to a vibrant, light, and generally refreshing space.

Having little plant friends in your interior spaces will facilitate the flow of a summer breeze through your open windows during the day and provide your home with glorious silhouettes on idyllic summer evenings.

Alongside being cheery companions all throughout the season, your indoor plants may also help to keep your home cool this summer as well! You can essentially cut your cooling bills in half by adding a few happy, little indoor plants to all of your home's interiors.

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Regardless of whether you're looking to boost the lightness and brightness of one room or all your home's interiors this summer, following the tips and tricks outlined above is likely to keep you and your wider household experiencing all the natural warmth and vibrance of this season to its absolute fullest.