With all the time you've been forced indoors during the cold winter months you've probably found some aspects of your interior design that you'd like to change. Well, there's still another month of cold weather ahead of most of us, and being stuck indoors may provide the perfect excuse for making some much-needed changes to your interior design.

Interior design professional Emmy Spreng has a wealth of cheap and easy tips for improving the interior design of your home. This week she'll walk us through color and layout, and next week she'll offer some guidance on lighting and accessories.

Spreng, who lives in Chicago and who has degrees in interior design and historic preservation, says that color is probably the most important interior design element homeowners should consider. It's also the place where they most often drop the ball.

"A lot of people are afraid of color and get stuck with creams and whites, and that can get monotonous," Spreng says. Instead of going all out and repainting your entire interior, she recommends picking a specific color and creating an accent wall. "An accent wall painted with a strong color can make a room warmer or cozier, or just more exciting," she says.

As far as colors choices go, Spreng recommends a deep red or gray-blue, but your color choice should depend on what the rest of the room you're working on looks like. One surefire way to pick a pleasing color is to choose one from a painting you have hanging elsewhere in the room and use that to paint the accent wall.

"It doesn't have to be a dramatic choice," Spreng says. "Just taking one wall and making it a few shades darker will have a strong effect."

Spreng also warns homeowners not to forget to paint the ceiling. A great way to add warmth to a room is to dilute the wall color down to around 15 to 20 percent of its strength and use that to paint the ceiling. "It will include your ceiling in your design and make the room feel a little bit more connected," she said.

After you have your color squared away, Spreng recommends playing with the layout of your furniture.

"If you're bored with your home, move your furniture around," Spreng says. "Your layout doesn't have to be just square. If have a square table, turn it 45 degrees and it can give the room a whole new feel. Or turn a square seating area diagonally. The bottom line is that your furniture layout doesn't have to be at right angles."

Spreng thinks that a square layout is common because people naturally gravitate towards symmetry. But balance, not symmetry, is the ideal homeowners should be striving toward with their layout, Spreng says. The key to balance is to make sure all of your large pieces (or for that matter, visually striking pieces) are not grouped together.

"Balance is when you walk into a room and your eyes aren't just drawn to one thing; you want to inspire movement throughout the room and not to feel static," she says. "Rooms that are square can have a sort of static feeling."

Make the color and layout changes that Spreng recommends and you'll be well on your way to a more satisfying interior design. We'll be back next week when Spreng will offer some guidance on two more important elements of interior design: lighting and accessories.

Design questions? Contact Emmy Spreng directly at Emily.spreng@gmail.com.

About Author: Drew Johnson is a writer living in Washington, DC.

Published: February 23, 2010

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