5 Spring Decorating Ideas For Your Living Space

Bouquet of rose flowers near window with curtain – Adding a few flowers can brighten up any room!

When spring rolls in, it’s time to lighten and brighten your home decor. Hopefully, you’ve had time to do some deep spring cleaning and now have all the possibilities spread out before you.

Can you imagine your home as a canvas? You are the artist that makes your space the cozy charmer it is and can be.

And now, as the earth renews itself, there is something in the riot of flowers and greenery that makes us want to put our living space through its own renewal, too.

Let’s look at a few ideas of what can be done to freshen up and beautify your home.

Artwork

Take a look at your walls. If they’re leaning towards darker, deeper colors you might consider rotating some of your artwork with the season. 

To draw from the powerful rejuvenation of spring and to be “so much sunshine to the square inch,” to quote Walt Whitman, bring Nature inside and slather it on your walls. 

Look over a room you want to change. Do you want a space that sings with color? Or do you want a room that makes you feel calm and peaceful with the softness of spring pastels? Perhaps it’s a touch of coastal beauty that you long for.

Expand your horizons and check out the appeal of some abstract nature artists. They bring the outside into your home. Some do so with more of the emotion of a natural setting rather than with the rigidity of realism.

Capital Reef Abstract by Tate Fairbanks

To get an idea of abstract nature paintings, check out new artist Tate Fairbanks at the TSC Gallery or the available collections at Saatchi Art

Small Changes with Color

If you’re up to painting a room or an accent wall, yes–that will dramatically change your living space and brighten your environment. Luxe paint company Farrow & Ball have an eco-friendly product and employ consultants to help you pick the right colors for your home. At the very least, their online galleries are a great place to get some inspiration.

However, if you don’t have the time or inclination for a painting project, add pops of color with new lampshades, pillows, and maybe a cheerfully painted cabinet.

Embroidered Cockatoo Lamp Shade by Anthropologie

Blush seems to be the choice of the current season. We’re seeing a lot of layering with different shades of this soft color. Our blushy rosefinch is a perfect neutral pink to add that won’t clash with other hues, but be sure to check all of the pinks if you want to add this trend to your home.

However, just because this popular color is in vogue, doesn’t mean it’s right for you if it isn’t your style. Find some throws, table linens, and pillows in spring colors that thrill you!

Windows

Take down any heavy draperies and replace with lighter, brighter fabric. Perhaps replace with sheers, or really let the light in by letting your windows go nude in rooms where you don’t need more privacy at night. Especially if the windows or the views are particularly pretty.

Greenery

Flower cuttings are a gorgeous addition to any room. And, consider some permanent plant fixtures for your home, too. Green is the color of spring, and when it’s in our homes it tends to raise our contentment levels to blissful, new levels.

According to The Sill, “indoor plants don’t just look good – they can make us feel good, too. Studies have shown that indoor plants…

  • Boost your mood, productivity, concentration and creativity
  • Reduce your stress, fatigue, sore throats and colds
  • Help clean indoor air by absorbing toxins, increasing humidity & producing oxygen
  • Add life to a sterile space, give privacy and reduce noise levels
  • Are therapeutic to care for (it’s true when we say Plants Make People Happy)” 

Light Fixtures

Rather than lots of tiny changes, perhaps choose one big one. Update a light fixture in your home with something that’s a bit of a show off. You could look at fixtures made from a lighter material or pick pendant lights made with colored glass, like these modern Nordic fixtures from Lampswell.

We’d love to see your design choices. Send pictures of your favorite spring changes. Good luck!

Artist Spotlight: Lisa Krannichfeld

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Lisa Krannichfeld first caught my eye on instagram.  I’m not sure how I stumbled across her work but I was captivated from the moment I saw one of her paintings.  The boldness of color, the prints, patterns, and the electricity I felt coming off the subjects.  I simply fell in love with each piece.   Lisa’s recent bodies of work: Undomesticated Interiors and Girls and Guise are rebelling against the traditional portrayal of women of the 17th – 19th centuries as demure, decorative objects, belonging to their husbands or fathers and seeks to retell the female narrative.

Lisa’s website states “Girls and Guise references a play on words. In this context guise references both the facade created by men of the female gender, and the heavy emphasis of the patterned clothing in the pieces. Their clothes, or guises, are infused with feral and aggressive animals, a symbolic rebellion against the historical domesticated depiction of women.  The jarring, faceless compositions represent any and all women who desire to define their own perspective and create their own narratives. Intentional hand gestures hint at conviction.”

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I had the opportunity to ask Lisa a few questions and share her answers below.

1.  I understand you grew up in the south, in Little Rock, AK. At what age did you first discover you loved to create art and paint? 

Honestly, there never was a time that I remember where I wasn’t obsessed with art and creating. I remember in elementary school art class being the most magical, fun place (until our state cut out art classes from the curriculum, sadly). It was always a part of my life, however, I didn’t really commit to it being part of my professional life until my senior year in college.
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2.  Your current body of work is focused on women with deep meaning and purpose behind your intent, refuting historical portraiture of women.  Can you share a bit about this?  How did this body of work evolve?

The work first started with portraits of women done in a headshot style. I found painting honest facial expressions more interesting than just pretty faces, so I would paint anxious faces, angry faces, confused faces, defiant faces. This led to painting women in general in a more honest way, void of just physical beauty and sexual appeal.  I started expanding my compositions to the entire figure and the figure within interior spaces.
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3.  You describe your work as loose expressive portraiture and use lush colors with many patterns and prints in the mix.  What drew you to including prints in your paintings and is there meaning behind them?

There are a few reasons why I include prints and patterns in my work. I love how the order of the patterns and prints juxtapositions itself with the chaotic style of the painted areas. I like to think of it as a metaphor for all the states a woman can be in.  Women have to juggle so many roles and be mindful of so much at any one moment that it makes sense to compose them of so many different materials in my paintings. I also use a lot of patterns that have flora and fauna as a part of the prints so there’s a bit of hidden wildness to the overall experience of the painting which I think is also a metaphor for women.

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4.  What is something fun you can share about yourself that no one knows?

I love a good creaturey sci-fi thriller. I am obsessed with french pastries. I can’t whistle. I tie my shoes bunny-ears style, which apparently no one else does.

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Lisa’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications nationally and internationally including shows across the United States, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Most recently her work was chosen as the grand award winner in the 2018 60th Annual Delta Exhibition. In 2017 she won the grand award at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center Juried Exhibition, and Best in Show at the 2017 Magic City Art Connection Art Fair in Birmingham, AL.

She has had work featured in numerous worldwide publications, was the face of Saatchi Art’s Spring 2019 “Refuse to be the Muse” campaign, and has had work featured in Anthropologie. Her work is included in several private and corporate collections throughout her home state of Arkansas as well as in collections around the world.

She is currently represented by M2 Gallery in Little Rock, AR, Fort Works Art in Fort Worth, TX, and Saatchi Art with shipping worldwide.