Design Ideas for Spring

Get a Jump on Spring Sprucing

1. Paint one wall. It’s easy, inexpensive and fun and you can finish in a weekend afternoon. You can’t go wrong picking which wall to paint: Just remember, color on a windowed wall will appear darker than it would on the opposite ones. Ask your friendly home improvement store staff for help with supplies, and take the fear out of choosing paint color by going no darker than the middle shade on a five-tone paint strip.

2. Replace your lamp shades—even those tiny individual chandelier shades—to a lighter, breezier color. The light cast through them will brighten any room. Also try swapping standard light bulbs for colored ones: Pink bulbs lend a romantic glow to furnishings and faces, while “true light” bulbs throw a splash of daylight into the corners, even at night. Also consider adding or augmenting uplights. As designer Christopher Lowell reminds us, uplighting is vital for creating dramatic shadows and contrast: “As much lighting should come from the floor as from the ceiling,” he says.

3. Change interiors like you change your clothes. According to designer Chris Madden, swapping out rugs and curtains is a custom our forebears brought from Europe, where they hailed spring—and fall—with a therapeutic cleaning. Madden suggests we update our rooms like we do our wardrobes: Keep basic pieces the same and use color and accessories to create a new mood for a new season. In warmer months, she favors a palette of blues and whites, evoking cooling water and sky. Together, they act as a neutral backdrop for the hot summer brights that can be introduced with fresh flowers and produce.

4. Go for the green. Adding plants to your décor brings instant life and vibrancy to any room, and living plants actually make the indoors more healthy. Also, since the eye interprets the green of plants as neutral, they create texture and interest in any space, regardless of color scheme. If your thumb is black, choose from the high-quality artificial flora and greenery available now, and, whether they’re real or fake, be sure your plants’ containers are quality decorative pieces as well.

5. Edit your rooms. Removing pieces, large and small—those textural accents and furnishings you added to family areas to make them cozier, closer and warmer for fall and winter—will make the same rooms more open and airy again, ready to embrace spring and summer.