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Tell Asda about accessorising and personalising the rooms in your home - £200 Asda Direct voucher up for grabs! NOW CLOSED

176 replies

MichelleMumsnet · 07/10/2013 11:01

The folks at Asda would like to know how you accessorise and personalise the different rooms in your home.

Here's what Asda have to say, "We've recently launched our Autumn / Winter Home catalogue in store and online at Asda Direct, full of inspiration for your home at affordable prices. With more than 1000 stylish solutions for your home, we're interested to find out how you accessorise and personalise your home"

So how do you refresh the rooms in your home? Do you add cushions and candles or replace furniture and repaint? Does each room have a particular colour scheme or do you prefer the white, minimalist look? Do you re-arrange or re-accessorise the rooms in your home often, or have they looked the same for the past few years? Is there a particular room youre especially proud of?

Please also take a look at Asda's Autumn / Winter Home Collection and let us know if theres anything that inspires you to get creative in your home

Whatever you do to personalise and accessorise your rooms, we'd love to hear about it.

Everyone who adds their thoughts and ideas will be added into a prize draw to win a £200 Asda Direct voucher.

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

OP posts:
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dahville · 07/10/2013 11:39

As we have young children anything waist height or lower isn't really decorated because it will end up with sticky fingerprints or mess on it!

We tend to personalise by putting up artwork that we've bought from places we've travelled and prefer to get custom pieces rather than mass produced items.

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SmokedMackerel · 07/10/2013 11:44

We have white walls and wooden floors.

We haven't got much money so furniture is a bit cheap and cheerful. I try to tie things together with cushions, have dyed the covers on the sofa as well.

I regularly move furniture round for a bit of a change.

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Ikeameatballs · 07/10/2013 21:46

I am busy planning some redecoration. For ds's room I will completely redecorate, he is getting new curtains, new wallpaper on one wall and the other walls changed from baby blu to white. He is 4 and it s time to make it look boyish rather than babyish.

After that I am hoping to redecorate the living room. I want to get away from cream walls and a feature wall of paper and move mor to white walls with a block of plain colour and artwork wit pattern throws/cushions. Ex-p wouldn't have liked it!

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LoganMummy · 07/10/2013 21:50

With two young children our current look is wipe-able and lots of storage!

I love using our three year old's artwork to decorate our kitchen - paintings, drawings, pasta pictures etc.

Living room is personalised with lovely photo frames.

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WonderWomanInAOnesie · 07/10/2013 22:16

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BlackeyedSusan · 07/10/2013 22:56

i took the children to buy me some lovely cushions for my birthday... from asda. they are cheap (as in less expensive than other non washable same quality cushions that can be bought elsewhere) and maachine washable.

we do not have fragile stuff around. ds has asd and is prone to meltdowns so the house is still child proofed. cushions are my one indulgence.

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BlackeyedSusan · 07/10/2013 22:59

I do love the storage boxes I got from asda, wooden lattice, good value, well used and sat on/in by small bodies. shame they are spoilt a bit by the toys overflowing from the top! Blush

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CMOTDibbler · 08/10/2013 09:45

I hate knickknacks, vases etc, but we do use wall art a lot. I refresh the sitting room with new cushions every so often (mostly when the dirt no longer washes out)

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Tyranasaurus · 08/10/2013 13:30

I live in houses that are constantly in the process of being done up, so don't tend to redecotate rooms that are already OK.

I'm not really one for decorative knick knacks and would probably paint/buy new curtains to 'refresh' a room. I have to say I'm more of a few quality items that last a long time rather than frequently buying lots of cheap stuff

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QueFonda · 08/10/2013 13:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AndHarry · 08/10/2013 14:41

We've been slowly redecorating our house since we bought it 4 years ago. The only room that hasn't been touched now is the sitting room but that's going to have to wait while DS's room is updated from a nursery into a little boy's room. The walls will probably stay the same but we'll change the curtains and add different wall-hangings and other accessories. I like the look of the Candyfloss storage in the Asda Direct range; we'll have to have a closer look!

We're also going to move baby DD into her own room next month. It's a neutral colour with natural wood and bright primary-colour accessories, which I'm putting up and adding to now. It's probably my favourite room.

Our house doesn't have one particular colour-scheme but I suppose it loosely follows the same theme as DD's room: neutral walls with matching or contrasting wood and bright features. It's light, bright and airy and I love it.

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derektheladyhamster · 08/10/2013 14:46

Cushions get changed probably yearly, bedding is another way to change a room. But we don't have a huge amount of spare money so everything is looking a bit old!

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PurplePidjin · 08/10/2013 14:54

I've always been on a budget so have plain magnolia walls then liven things up with knick knacks, cushions, rugs etc. Plain dyed king sized flat sheets make excellent cheap sofa throws, and a single duvet cover to go over the bottom set of cushions :)

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BadlyWrittenPoem · 08/10/2013 15:22

Currently we're working through the house gradually redecorating each room as the decor wasn't in a good state when we bought it. The children's room deliberately has the bigger/more long term things reasonably neutral and then is accessorised with things like pictures, lampshade etc so that it can be changed as they get older. I tend to go for white furniture so don't go for white or very pale-neutral walls as it would be a bit too bland and do have some kind of colour scheme for each room although it varies how narrow that colour scheme is from room to room.

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lews · 09/10/2013 10:06

Lots of family photos, so always on the look out for lovely frames. Would love to have more cushions etc. but that would just add to the mess!

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SpecialJK · 09/10/2013 16:03

We've recently moved, and for the first time I'm living in a more modern house, having previously lived in victorian houses for pretty much the last 15 years. I'm pretty excited about creating a modern theme in our new house, and I think we will extend that to pretty much every room apart from DS's. For kiddies room I like white minimalistic furniture that we can change often and isn't too expensive. I'm expecting a few knocks over the years! I like bright colours for curtains and soft furnishings in his room too, but would like to be able to change the wall colours as he gets older easily.

For our main kitchen/diner room I'm excited to be planning a bright modern minimalistic theme, too many bits and pieces only end up on the floor when DS is around.

We are decorating an adult tv room which I'd like to have a homely feel, with sumptuous fabrics to feel cosy in the evening.

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Bloodsocks · 10/10/2013 09:44

With a 6 month old my living room has been personalised with toys! We use photos and the odd bit of quirky decoration. A few choice items we have collected on our holidays and we use cushions and a rug to add colour.

Same in our kitchen, we have decorated it and have a wall sticker and some retro signs to make it ours. I can't wait to put my DD's pictures up on the wall!

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RueDeWakening · 10/10/2013 09:46

We've been in this house for 4 years now and we're sloooowly doing it up room by room. The downstairs and the attic rooms are now completely done, but nothing on the 1st floor except DD's bedroom has been touched. Nothing will get refreshed while there's still major decorating/building work going on!

Next project is decorating what's currently the spare room, for DS1&2 to share. It has floorboards, white walls and a strange burgundy tiled fireplace at the moment. The floor & fireplace will have to stay, but we'll add some rugs (maybe ones with roads or something on, for them to drive cars around on) and paint/wallpaper the walls. I'll make the curtains myself (blackout ones) and I've got my eye on some transport-themed wall stickers and pictures, as well as some machine embroidery stuff that I might turn into a quilt or wall hanging for them. They will have a chalkboard on the back of the (panelled) door, like DD has, and a big car storage thing (like a peg bag only with small pockets to put toy cars in) that I'll make too. The furniture will be white, as then it will go with however we redecorate in the future, assuming they've not broken it before then!

After that, we have a loo/bathroom to knock together and refit - but will get the professionals in for that one. Then it's turning the current nursery into the spare room, and decorating the master bedroom, plus hall stairs and landing.

I'm tired just thinking about it tbh... :o

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Pascha · 10/10/2013 09:53

I like to think of our look as eclectic. We acquire the stuff we like and it all goes together somehow, because its stuff we like, I think Confused. Not much of it matches, lots of it is second hand and its currently accessorised with too many toys and baby bits.

I'm rather hoping as the boys grow up and we lose the enormo-car/garage/fort/lego things the house might start resembling a place the grown-ups live in. Currently the only room that has that feel is the living room which is a nice teal walled, inglenook fireplaced, oatmeal carpetted oasis of calm once children are in bed for the day. This is the room where all the nice pictures from local artists seem to end up, we don't do frippery in here so no photos, no candles, no stuff. That's what the rest of the house is for.

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Spirael · 10/10/2013 09:54

It varies room to room in my house. The lounge is designed to be flexible, with dimmable lighting and furniture/decor that can be easily moved to facilitate opening up a large floor space for building huge traintracks or similar. Then in the evening, enough storage to throw all the toys in so that once we've put the soft furnishing back and dimmed the lights it becomes a cosy adult space.

The kitchen is bright and functional, with decor including a traditional set of scales with both metric and imperial weights that DD loves to play with. Fun, decorative and educational! Wink

Meanwhile the bedrooms are more themed, though we're still in the process of working through doing them all as we only moved in last year. The master bedroom is an oriental theme with dark furniture, low bed and Japanese art.

Meanwhile the nursery is jungle themed and DD's future room, when we do it up for her at the start of next year, will probably be sky themed (it's on the third floor!) with planes, clouds, stars, hot air balloons, etc.

Looking through the Asda site, there's a nice looking oriental vase that is helping guide my thoughts towards some Ikebana in the master bedroom (which is what we're currently working on). Quite like the look of the dark wood frame mirrors too.

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DorisShuttAgainstGhosts · 10/10/2013 10:03

I prefer to have mainly neutral wall colours and then I use cushions, curtains and lights to create an atmosphere as it's cheaper to update the feel of the room - make it cosier in winter and cooler in summer. Plants and flowers also help.

However, at the moment I'm working with minimalist decoration with randomly scattered toys as accents due to an enthusiastic toddler so I think that we'll probably leave decorating (other than touching things up and replacing broken stuff) until our son is a bit older; then we can go back to rooms with a more grown-up feel.

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jojane · 10/10/2013 10:04

We have no money so everything is done as cheaply as possible. For example we took photos of kids in red tops then printed a4 size for 79p each then put into red edged frames to go in our red living room. Looks great and a fraction of the cost of having professional photos done and printed and frame which would be hundreds of pounds.
In the boys rooms I cut some vehicles out from remnants of their border and framed. Looks good and cheaper than framed prints.
We also have lots of things dotted around from our travels which stops it looking too show house (not that our house could ever be mistaken for one, too many sticky fingerprints and mess everywhere!)

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NotDead · 10/10/2013 10:16

I have a small maisonette with huge windows that feels big in summer but very small when it's dark outside.

The upstairs is very minimalist white, with the opportunity to change things like bedspreads and bedside lampshades to alter the colour feel of the room.

My downstairs is much more cosy. The small living room has a dark carpet and a dark red feature wall. This looks great under candlelight. I accessorise this room with dark objects, theatre skull s, photos, old style clocks etc. I can change the feel of this room with different sofa covers, but my favourite way of changing the feel of a room is through lighting. I have a number of different low cost lights that alter the way this room feels...a paper floor lamp, side lights and several clip on and wall lights that I can move about. I also have some clinical leds for when I want to light alcoves.

This is in a room less than 12 m sq!

What always interests me are small decorative things like nice mugs/espresso cups, low cost lights that have good design features, quirky bedspreads/throws and things that change the feel of an area easily. . eg I bought some small succulent plants in Green pot s for the bathroom and a green bathroom rug and green shower gel together to make my white bathroom feel Green. .

I have noticed that ASDA homewares doesn't have much. . if any.. lighting or very good decorative candle holders for example. At this time of year that is the sort of thing I look at as treat home purchases.

I also love the low cost plain white dinner crockery sets and as things so often get broken or chipped is nice to always be able to buy replacements that fit in!

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fuzzpig · 10/10/2013 10:27

we can't do any permanent decorating as we rent, so are limited to temporary accessories.

Wall stickers are great for children's rooms as they peel off.

My favourite things though are art prints. I have some nice ones of my favourite pieces, and am getting a couple more at Xmas (one for me, one for DD as she did an art topic last term and now loves Van Gogh). They make me happier than any amount of paint or wallpaper ever could.

I tend to use charity shops for furniture as you can often get higher quality items rather than getting something cheaper that's new but poor quality

I also prefer to gradually add things as I go. I'm becoming a little minimalist (not that you'd know it if you visited, it's very much a work in progress) in that I now only want things we LOVE coming into our home, rather than buying lots at once. Having things we adore is more important to me than a coordinating 'look' - that's not to say I don't admire beautiful catalogue rooms but it's not something I aspire to recreate.

I think what makes the most difference to a room (out of things that you can change relatively easily) are curtains and bedlinen. I do like a nice duvet cover.

Books and board games being visible makes me happy too - we have a little bookcase full of children's non fiction books in our living room which is great for browsing, and a cabinet full of board games which are a family addiction!

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redgate · 10/10/2013 10:37

I used to have everything all co-ordinated, in pretty much the same colour throughout the house, looked great and I could swap things round, putting accessories in a different room for a change is free!

But, now the house is full of kids I am starting to paint all the walls white and have random different colours/styles of stuff - as it is really easy to replace anything that gets broken and we can just get invidual items that we see cheaply, and somehow it looks just as good,

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