Posts Tagged ‘color story’

With the recent debut of Seaboard Junction in Loganville and the upcoming premiere of Gladstone Landing in Snellville, Paran Homes is finding a great reception to its age-restricted communities by Atlanta’s active adult homebuyers. Since the move to a new 55+ community often marks a transition to empty nest-hood, you may want to feather your new nest a little differently than your previous homes. Paran Homes is happy to provide you with a few tips to making your new empty nest feel FULL…

Surround Yourself with Loved Ones

One of the best ways to keep those you love close is by surrounding yourself with photos of their happy, smiling faces. Choose a color theme and stick to it regarding frames, only occasionally mixing in a little metal that coincides with your fixtures and handles – such as a brushed nickel, burnt umber or copper to change things up. If black plays a prominent role in your color story, consider using black frames to highlight several of your favorite photos – then feature them in a collage on a wall or two. Elect to go with all color or black and white in each collection. You can also use standing frames for bookcases and tabletops. Be careful not to overdo it, you don’t want your space to appear cluttered. Clean lines are all the rage these days and fewer frames means less to dust and more time for FUN!

Find Meaning in Mementos

Another way to fill your home with happy memories from your family’s journey is by creating shadow boxes that feature special mementos that hold meaning. Real Simple offers several suggestions for designing beautiful eye-catching shadow boxes that you can cherish for years to come. If your daughter or son played a sport or dance, you could have their jersey or favorite costume quilted onto a backdrop and framed – a great addition to a game room, media space or kids’ room for when the grandkids come to visit.

Choose Happy Colors

Whether for an accent wall or pops of color in your throw pillows and décor, be sure to use happy colors to make your home feel vibrant and full of life. VeryWellMind.com describes this as a modern take on the ancient practice of Chromotherapy and suggests that warm colors like yellow, red and orange are likely the happiest of colors. Although Pink is associated with romance and kindness, purple with wealth and wisdom, white with purity and innocence, green with nature and good fortune, and brown with reliability and strength. When black is used as an accent – particularly in a Feng Shui kind of way to harmonize your home – use it sparingly to have a grounding effect on your environment. It represents power. Blue, on the other hand, is thought to have a calming effect – depending on the shade used.

Incorporate Music to Your Smart Home

If you opt to add the convenience of Smart Home elements to your new home, be sure that music is incorporated somehow. If you have a central system that wirelessly pipes out tunes to various rooms of your home through a series of speakers, you can fill your home with your favorite music. From Mozart to Maroon 5 – and everything in between. According to BeBrainFit.com, “music activates every known part of the brain. Listening to and playing music can make you smarter, happier, healthier and more productive at all stages of life.”

Cozy Up with Comfy Furniture

Although you are an ACTIVE ADULT, you may want to occasionally turn on the boob tube and binge watch your favorite shows. It’s important to have cozy furniture for that reason, but also because inviting overstuffed furniture can help fill a space beautifully without making it feel cluttered. It’s a more practical solution than austere furniture you purchase only for appearance sake. You’ll also want your furniture to rank high on the cozy factor for those grandkid sleepover snuggle fests in front of the fireplace. S’mores anyone?

Create Dedicated Spaces for Future Visits

While your Master Suite, Kitchen and Family Room may be all about you, you can create dedicated spaces for the people you hope to welcome regularly to your home. If you have grandkids, a bedroom themed just for them is sure to encourage regular visits. You might consider built-in bunkbeds to maximize the space in their room. Theme your adult children’s rooms similarly – maybe a slight suggestion of their room growing up or an homage to a favorite shared pastime like camping or visits to the beach. The same holds true for life-long friends when they come to call for an overnight stay. The point is to create a space that FEELS like it’s all their own – a place they look forward to visiting time and again.

Empty nesters, you aren’t merely limited to our active adult communities for your next home. Many of our communities throughout Metro Atlanta prove an excellent fit for families at every stage of life. To view a list of Paran Homes communities in Atlanta, peruse our floorplans to find the right one for you and check out our inventory of move in-ready homes, be sure to visit www.paranhomes.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/family-grandfathers-grandparents-4222890/

The arrival of Autumn means different things to different people. It may mean the welcome return of Friday Night Lights to local high school football fields. It could mean the reappearance of long missed “pumpkin-spiced” items to restaurant menus. It might also mark the exchange of flip flops and tank tops for boots and sweaters, as well as the return of fall festivals, corn mazes, haunted houses, hayrides and the prospect for loads of fall fun. Whatever it means to you, it’s likely a season wrapped in warm memories of childhood that you can’t wait to recreate with the ones you love. With a season as well-loved as Autumn, it’s not unusual for people to literally want to surround themselves with the look, smell and feeling of the season. Paran Homes is happy to offer up a list of five tasteful ways you could bring a touch of fall indoors at your own home.

Autumnal Aromas

One of the easiest and most effective ways to set the scene in your home for fall is through seasonal scents. By filling your living spaces with aromas typically associated with the season, you’ll be setting a mood for every guest who walks through your door. From apple cinnamon and pumpkin spice to pecan pie and spiced cider, you can recreate these scents through a series of well-placed candles or diffusers.

Picture This

A very simple way to make the switch from one season to the next is by switching out your wall art and cherished family photos. Your wall art for Autumn could merely reflect colors associated with fall – like the vibrant oranges, reds and yellows – or may portray a fall scene like trees with changing leaves. You could also place a series of images in your favorite frames that show your family during different seasons – like your family at the beach in summer or your kids jumping into a pile of leaves in Fall or the whole family making snow angels on last year’s ski trip. By keeping them all inside the same frame, you could switch them out with every season AND use the frame as a storage space for photos from other seasons until winter, spring and summer roll back around.

Fall Fluff

Much like switching out your photos and artwork to reflect the corresponding season, the same holds true for your throw pillows, rugs and blankets. If you have a neutral backdrop with regard to your walls and furnishings, this should be fairly simple to do. In addition to colors that are commonly associated with fall, there are also prints that often coincide with the season like big bold buffalo check pillows or plaids. Toss a throw blanket here and there to send the message “cozy up and stay awhile.” Tie your rugs in to the season, as well – a great place to add a touch of color like a warm pumpkin geometric area rug or a multi-color stripe that combines rich shades of denim, hunter, crimson and more OR an in your face fall-themed rug that showcases fall leaves. Just make sure all of these elements play well together with one another, your furniture and your artwork.

Seasonal Place Settings

Set your table to reflect the season, as well. From placemats and napkins to napkin rings and plates, find a color story and pattern that gels with your other décor while letting your guests know they’re in for a real seasonal treat. Don’t forget your centerpiece! This is a wonderful place to set the scene for an epic autumnal meal.

“Nature” Up Your Nest

Probably the BEST way to bring a touch of fall indoors is to ACTUALLY bring a touch of fall indoors. Get creative with different sized pumpkins, gourds, acorns, pinecones, dried berries, leaves, dried wheat, twigs, dried corn stalks and more for wreaths, entry hall décor, centerpieces and mantle displays. Don’t be afraid to leave surprising seasonal touches in the powder room and guest rooms so that feeling your trying to create flows throughout the whole home.

If you’re in the market for a new home and hope to move in time to greet trick-or-treaters at your front door, be sure to visit our page of Move In Ready Homes. If you’re hoping to find the ideal community, homesite and floor plan where you and your family can welcome the change of seasons for years to come, visit us at www.paranhomes.com.

Some of us are naturally drawn to the Great Outdoors, while others prefer to enjoy its beauty from the climate-controlled comfort of our homes. Either way, there is a growing trend in interior (and, arguably, exterior) design that calls for a unification of indoor and outdoor living spaces. At Paran Homes, we often design our homes with this in mind – adding lots of windows to let in natural light and provide scenic views, creating outdoor living spaces that serve as great entertainment zones, and providing model homes that embrace this design trend and offer inspiration to our guests. We’ve compiled a list of four tips that you can try in your own home (or future home) to connect your indoor and outdoor living spaces.

1. Mirror Your Interior Design Theme Outdoors: If you have a color story and design theme throughout the interior of your home – say a nautical theme paired with a navy and white color story that boasts pops of bright orange – you’ll want to carry those same colors and theme outdoors to create a seamless flow between spaces. On one hand, it will make your outdoor living space feel connected to the indoors, and on the other, it won’t clash from a color or design perspective when you look out the window at your outdoor living space.
2. Use Window Treatments to “Frame” Your Backdrop: Framing your windows with long curtains hung slightly above the trim and extending all the way to the floor not only softens the room and adds an air of romanticism, but also draws the eye to the window and, more importantly, the scenery beyond the window. This virtually makes your backyard a “work of art” that you, your family, and your guests can enjoy year-round. Other possibilities include plantation shutters with large louvers to let in more light and optimize the view, in addition to shades that can be drawn open on particularly beautiful days.
3. Bring Elements of the Outdoors Inside: A great way to connect outdoor and indoor living spaces is by bringing elements of the world outside your window inside. This can include live plants, hardwood floors and rustic wood walls/beams/furniture, stone fireplace surrounds, nature-inspired artwork and décor, and more.
4. Create an Outdoor “Room”: By extending your ceiling from the indoors to the outdoors, you automatically create the perception that those spaces are connected. A covered porch extends your enjoyment during inclement weather and a screened-in porch could extend it even further. Covered porches also expand your design and usage options so much more so than an open patio. The cover a ceiling provides allows for things like cozy overstuffed conversation seating and wiring for an outdoor flat-screen TV, both of which provide more of a sense of its own space.

If you’d rather start fresh instead of trying to convert your current home to an indoor-outdoor oasis, Paran Homes welcomes the chance to build your next home – complete with a focus on outdoor living spaces. Many of our homes come with options to extend, cover, and screen in the patio. One of our most popular options is our Game Day Patio, featuring a covered outdoor living space complete with a hearth and pre-wiring for a TV. It’s the ideal spot for watching your favorite sports, like college football or major league baseball, while enjoying some fresh air with friends and family members. To learn more about Paran Homes, including our communities throughout the Southeast and our floor plans that offer the Game Day Patio option, please visit us online at www.paranhomes.com. For future tips, news about up-and-coming communities, and more, be sure to bookmark our blog!