How to Arrange Furniture For A Picture Perfect Moment

Making your room tidy can be easy and you can reap the rewards for many days. So pump up your music and stay tuned to find out how you can bring back the va va voom of your home.

It used to be that a camera took many components to work. It took suitcases to lug all these elements around, and finding the perfect light and perfect pose took hours. The end result was black and white or sepia faces locked in a sour countenance that would withstand many years and many petting hands for us to look back and say, “My, how times have changed. How dependent we have become on technology.” Fast forward several years and we were graced with the allure of the compact, handheld disposable camera.

From there, the digital era swept over us and we all fell head over heels with a non-film roll concept. The ability to snap a picture, edit it, zoom in, crop out, delete and retake a picture all in a matter of seconds. And as always with technology there is the wave of minimizing the size of a gadget, then rising to the challenge of being the biggest once more.

But when the camera became a sleek, thin pocket sized companion that made less of a dent than a broke mans flat wallet, well it was impressive. Then came the day that having a camera on your digital music players was an expected mandatory part of the gadget and finding a cell phone without a rear front facing camera and features that put Cannon to shame. But it gets better. In the virtual shopping world of apps there is a downloadable answer to nearly everything and one of the most app-etizing being the photo enhancing and cover up of cover ups: Instagram. This app enables you to use a wide selection of filters to enhance your picture and hide the summer splotches in an effort similar to staging.

Staging is a term we DIYers are familiar with. We stage for many purposes: For selling, for investments, and even for parties. But if I were to take a picture of your room now, well my filter could only block out so much with its color and framing options. Your room, like many others, needs some tangible Instagram moments. It needs staged. It needs filtered. And it needed it like, yesterday.

So here’s to filtering your room under streamlined settings:

1. Hide Wires
Despite living in a wireless era, there are so many loose cables entangling themselves from the power source to their owner. Clean this up. Wrap the extended parts that you aren’t using, and try using receptacles where you can hide any excess wire and cabling. Not only will this prevent tripping and is a method of baby proofing, it will keep eyes from tracking the wire to its mysterious owner, a game I often play when I visit homes where excess wire is most prominent.

2. Update Light and Receptacle Covers
Broken, cracked, paint splattered, blackened from blown fuses, these eggshell plastic covers bring dinge rather than bling to your room. Take a walk done the hardware isle of your home improvement store, and you will find literally dozens of options for improving your covers. When you choose the appropriate color, size and shape, you will find that these small contributions can build up the theme and layout of your room just as easily as a rug wil.

3. Fix Nail Holes
Here’s another severe case of dinge. And while dinge may not be contagious it has ripple effects that can cause other disorders like lackluster appeal, inconsistency, and aversion to enter a room. If you need to tackle an entire wall with new paint, or have small target areas of nail punctures, fixing these will do more good than you can imagine. In a day where we come in contact with photo shopped and air brushed imagery we have learned to find the imperfections first, and compliment later. Small imperfections like nail holes are those imperfections we find first, so give it a real photo shop treatment and seal it up!

4. Open the Blinds
Natural light streaming in is always a boost to your interiors immune systems and if we benefit from Vitamin D, how much more will our lacquered décor? To take advantage of this light try to develop a seating arrangement near or in direct line of your best light as this makes conversation more pleasant in a bright setting invigorating our minds with sunny cheer.

5. Remove Clutter
Like tweezing your eyebrows, or shaving your four day shadow off is a way we perfect our face for our photo-shoot, there are things that are accumulating within our rooms that need dispersed with to show off the cherry floor, or marble countertop of your mini bar. Make sure that your room always has a clear balance of functional and decorative. Anything else needs to go. Too much and too little can both give off the wrong impression but can easily be fixed.

ultra-modern-kitchen-with-white-and-gray-cabinets

6. Sweet Scented
There are so many things a camera can’t capture but the first impression that is burned upon our minds the first time we walk into a room can be a system overload on our senses in a positive way. A fresh, clean scent that teases your nostrils rather than infects them with overwhelming sickly sweet odors will follow your around and can brighten your. Plug in one of hundreds of scented fresheners and have your guests baffled that you have an indoor pet!

7. Pick Up and Dust

It’s easy to forget to dust, much less to pick up our décor and dust under rather than just around. Polishing your wood, stainless steel, and other surface materials offers an instant glow that we all are looking for under the intense heat this summer, right? This filter? Illumination!

8. Bring out the Angles
It’s natural and expected to always put our best foot forward. To show the camera your best feature, and expose your best side. A quick re-arrangement of your room can easily make a room seem larger, or bring out the warmth. When you take time to consider the space and the puzzle pieces called furniture, you can design a room that offers the maximum and turn ordinary into unexpected. Just like wearing the right colors will bring out your eyes, finding the perfect niche for your loveseat will bring out the architecture rather than have it fade out.

ultra-modern-living-room-with-black-wooden-walls

9. Mix Old With New
Few of us have the privilege like the Seattle, WA couple to tear down and completely demolish and level a 2 million dollar home in pursuit of rearranging not the furniture or vase collection, but the location of the…. garage. Realistically our homes are compiled of both old and new elements. Sometimes upgrading and Instagram-proofing your home can be as simple as indulging yourself and treating yourself to one profound new item that will enhance rather than steal the show. Choose a piece that will make a statement and the picture perfect award might just be yours for the taking!

10. Reinvent Flower Power
Fresh cut flowers that are often guaranteed to last a week or more under proper care will add color, life and sometimes a little bit of number six. And while the rose among thorns always adds a testimony of beauty surviving the beast and instills that great things can come on the coat tails of ugliness, there is a much simpler attribute flowers can add to your home designs. Like I mentioned, they add color and life but if you find they don’t work you can easily move them. They are not permanent and therefore are a great way to experiment with boldness or dip your toe in décor you normally wouldn’t without having to endure the chance it might be an “off” look.

We take mental photographs subconsciously and even if we can’t claim to have photographic memory, some of these images leave a greater impact and resurface in our dreams, our thoughts and eventually the choices we make. Let your home, your new Instagramed room be the place that sticks in the minds of your friends and inspires them to DIY greatness as well.