Ways Soft Furnishings Bring Life to a Home

Have you ever thought about the role that soft furnishings play in a room?

Soft furnishings – items like throws, curtains, rugs, and pillows – are actually responsible for giving spaces the visual feel that we often associate with comfort and home.

To add to that, they can also be responsible for pulling together many other furnishings, giving your decor a truly finished look.

If you’re not sure how to achieve that, read on – we’ll share about the ways you can use home soft furnishings to bring life to spaces!

Adding Texture

One of the best ways soft furnishings can improve the look of a space is by adding other textures.

Consider a room dominated by highly polished and smooth surfaces, for instance. Smooth stone walls, smooth floors, minimalist furniture, and so on. This can look too overbearing or may even strike a visual monotone that not many would enjoy.

Adding a new texture here would drastically improve the situation, providing a nice contrast that can enhance the space’s look while also providing relief from the unrelenting uniformity of the smooth surfaces.

TA custom made carpet with a fairly deep pile would do a lot to improve the overall texture of the room, for instance. Or a woven or shag rug could do the same! Even the simple, curved lines of the right window treatments and curtains can do this.

Remember to think about longevity too. In that sense, a heavily textured item is probably best off when paired with a soft, neutral, or earthy palette and simple pattern.

This is because the texture itself will provide the interest without the need for further embellishment. Keeping the palette and pattern relatively neutral will allow you to ride out just about every trend with the same decorations!

Over time, you won’t have to constantly replace items to keep your home looking current. You can keep your textured pieces while adapting and blending seamlessly into changes and new trends.

Supplying Accents

Soft furnishings can also accent other furnishings, whether by offering a contrast or a complement. For instance, a room with mostly monochromatic furnishings can benefit from an accent like colourful throws and curtains.

Simply decorated rooms can look amazing with a bold custom carpet design. Such accents breathe life into the room by infusing them with fresh energy that feeds into the room’s style, bringing out the best in it.

For instance, many of our clients who want us to create custom rugs request designs and colours that accent what they already have. These rugs can repeat patterns in their room, for instance, but with different colours or with slight modifications to the shapes.

Or they get rugs in colours complementing their current furnishings but with new patterns. As we’ve explained in our guide to designing custom pieces, rugs can be tailored to suit individual styles.

This is a great way to add luxury soft furnishings that are aesthetically pleasing in a personal way. Good bespoke rug designs can even be works of art in themselves.

Plus, they’re also functional! You can get a bespoke rug that also provides just the right amount of comfort, warmth, and sound insulation for your needs.

Offering Easy Changes

Soft furnishings can also make changing or updating your home’s looks very easy, since they’re generally easier to move or remove than their hard counterparts.

Consider throw pillows, for instance. They’re among the best living room soft furnishings because you can have sets of them in different patterns or colours that you can simply rotate in usage.

This can breathe new life into your decor by affording you easy updates. You could change those pillows and matching rugs out by season, giving your decor great versatility.

Similarly, rotating rugs in use or even changing out curtains can help you avoid boredom with your home’s look and keep it perpetually fresh and alive to your eyes.

A pro-tip for storage

We know a lot of people struggle with how to store their soft furnishings, so we’re adding a few tips here just for that! It’s easier than you might think to do this for easy seasonal rotation.

Find a cool, dry place without direct sunlight. This is the best way to preserve them. Direct sunlight can fade fabric colours. Meanwhile, heat and moisture can encourage bacterial or fungal growth.

Use breathable fabric storage bags or similar bags. For example, there are storage bags made specifically for rugs. These storage options are designed to protect soft furnishings from dust and dirt while allowing airflow, helping to prevent moisture buildup, mould, and mildew.
Don’t use plastic bags! These trap moisture, and that’s a no-no if you want to keep your soft furnishings free of mould and mildew.
Always clean and dry items before storage. This is to discourage bacterial growth or musty smells. If necessary, get professional cleaning for the furnishings first.
Fold curtains, linen, and throws. This keeps them neat and tidy for when you need them again.
Roll rugs to prevent creases. Rolling a rug also prevents fabric damage. Rugs made of finer materials like wool or silk can develop creases otherwise.
Store rugs upright like scrolls. This prevents pressure from developing on the fibres.
Store cushions in chests, boxes, or drawers. This prevents them from being crushed or having the stuffing deformed.
Check furnishings every few months. It helps you ensure they’re still in good condition.
Use natural pest repellents. This can help you minimise the odds of a pest infestation attacking your stored items.

Provide Cohesion

Soft furnishings can also help you tie disparate visual notes together at times. It may take a custom made carpet to bind together a look that seems haphazard, or the right curtains to make some windows and walls feel less plain.

You can see this in the way it takes the right rug to make a living room set look “finished”. Or even in high traffic areas that you wouldn’t linger in otherwise, like corridors that look oddly bare until you add the right runner.

Soft furnishings can help fill space and bridge visual gaps without suffocating a room. That can do a lot to make rooms feel less empty or hollow.

Here’s an added tip to help you take this to the next level: Try layering textures for balance when doing this.

You can balance out the visual weight of different pieces of furniture through textures. Or you can soften a hard surface like metal or wood with something that adds depth, like a hand tufted rug.

This is a good way to create a cohesive, well-rounded space. It also allows you to create focal points that tie the room together.

For example, put a custom rug in the centre of the room to serve as a visual anchor. It can guide the eye, reinforce the space’s mood, and underline patterns or themes in the decor.

You can easily organise your home’s aesthetics while infusing them with your personal style if you approach decoration this way.

Need Custom Soft Furnishings to Breathe Life into Your Home?

Now that you have an idea of what soft furnishings can do for your decor, you might want to get your hands on some. If so, we can help you there too!

Reach out to us and we can help you come up with bespoke rug or carpet designs for your home. These soft furnishings can provide the added touch of comfort and luxury your interiors need.

Our skilled artisans can provide you with a design consultation to cover all of your preferences. Whether you want something environmentally friendly or a complicated rug design, we can handle it.