Are you all set to launch your home remod­el­ing project? Here are 10 inte­rior design ideas to expand your hori­zons and help you on your quest.

Color Me Beautiful

Break out of the white, off-white, and beige, and let some color in your life (and on your walls)! Hit Designer Dave Brom­stad, win­ner of HGTV Design Star and host of HGTV’s new show, Color Splash, is big on color. “I think brown is a great color because it looks great in a lot of com­bi­na­tions: brown and yel­low, brown and blue, brown and orange. It’s been hot for the last five years and will con­tinue to be hot. Whites and blues are also big, and you can make a big impact with reds and oranges,” says the ris­ing star. But he also cau­tions to not be too matchy-matchy. If you decide to go for red walls, there is no need for a red com­forter on your bed!

Rock the Casbah

Moroc­can design is wel­com­ing, warm, inex­pen­sive and rel­a­tively easy to pull together, all won­der­ful traits for those inter­ested in Moroccan-style home dec­o­rat­ing. “Moroc­can styles are time­less,” says inte­rior designer Vanessa De Var­gas. Morocco is known for its hand­made works like carved doors and columns, hand-woven car­pets, intri­cately painted tiles, lanterns, leather goods and sil­ver tea sets. The color palette is warm yet cool. Earth tones com­bined with var­i­ous shades of blue and pink are com­mon, as are tex­ture and pattern.

A mod­ern­ized ver­sion of Moroc­can style is pop­u­lar in the U.S. because it suc­cess­fully takes clas­sic Moroccan-design motifs, mate­ri­als and styles and gives them a fresh spin. Tra­di­tional Moroc­can design is heav­ier and more ornate.

Back to Nature

Use Indoor plants to bring nature into your home!

Dur­ing the 1970s, there was a new appre­ci­a­tion for the great out­doors. Con­se­quently inte­rior dec­o­rat­ing incor­po­rated macram?redwood and any­thing in shades of oat­meal, green or brown. In keep­ing with the back-to-nature move­ment, home­own­ers did what they could to bring the out­doors in. Although the days of green and brown printed wall­pa­per are long gone (or so we hope), plants and flow­er­ing plants are still the rage in inte­rior design.

Wall­pa­per is Back!

Wall­pa­per has been get­ting some really bad press in the past few years, while solid col­ors and wall pat­terns were hip and in. It seems like wall­pa­per is com­ing back, big­ger and bet­ter than ever! Tra­di­tional block printed ‘paper’ wall­pa­per isn’t the only option. Fab­ric wall­pa­per is also avail­able and will add a lux­u­ri­ous touch to any room. Other mate­ri­als include those with a metal­lic lus­ter and paper that gives the appear­ance of silk.

Accord­ing to Karen Beauchamp from Cole & Son, we are explor­ing new ways to use wall­pa­per. The fol­low­ing guide­lines rec­om­mend how to lever­age more pat­terns in your sur­round­ing environment:

* Cover only one wall (its trendy, and you can be more adventurous).

* Add some color to doors and cup­boards by putting wall­pa­per on pan­els. Choose the scale of the pat­tern care­fully though: if the space is too small and the scale too large, the pat­tern will get lost.

* For the really adven­tur­ous, add a twist on tra­di­tion by wall­pa­per­ing a ceil­ing. This works par­tic­u­larly well with high ceil­ings, such as those in period properties.

Every­one Feng Shui!

Take the mys­ti­cal out of Feng Shui design and learn its prac­ti­cal uses. Dec­o­rat­ing using these prin­ci­ples will help you cre­ate a sim­ple, bal­anced liv­ing envi­ron­ment. Real Feng Shui is extra­or­di­nar­ily spe­cific, and com­plex. The only way to do real Feng Shui is either to become a stu­dent of this art, and painstak­ingly learn the many prin­ci­pals and sub­tleties it requires, or to hire a pro­fes­sional to do an analy­sis and work over of your home. How­ever, Feng Shui does teach us some­thing that is very use­ful when dec­o­rat­ing your home.

* Color: Pay atten­tion to how col­ors make you feel. Color has a huge effect on our mood and energy, but is also very indi­vid­ual. You may be the type of per­son who is com­fort­able in dark col­ors, while other peo­ple may find it depress­ing. Col­ors also affect the nature of inter­ac­tions, and when you enter a new space you should always pay atten­tion to the way peo­ple behave to one another. If there is a room in your home where peo­ple tend to get into argu­ments, reassess the col­ors in that room. Bright or extreme col­ors can irri­tate people’s eyes and increase their metab­o­lism, mak­ing them more likely to fight. Paint­ing a room in dark col­ors is know to cre­ate a lethar­gic atmos­phere and encour­age bad moods in people.

* Flow: In tra­di­tional Feng Shui, the goal is to max­i­mize the flow of pos­i­tive chi in an area. Think of the room as a 3 dimen­sional space and try to pic­ture how peo­ple will be mov­ing by and where objects will be placed. If you feel there is a good flow — you got pos­i­tive energy right there. The flow you want to achieve is in the essence of the room. You want there to be easy access for peo­ple mov­ing through the room, as well as in and out of it. You want objects to be able to move from their stor­age, into use, and back with­out adding to clut­ter. This kind of flow is a mix­ture of orga­ni­za­tion and design that focuses on remov­ing block­ages and allow­ing easy move­ment through every area.

Island Fan­tasies

Whether you make yearly pil­grim­ages to the white-sand beaches of the trop­ics or merely travel via day­dreams, inte­ri­ors inspired by the ocean, sand, and gen­tle sea breezes bring the feel­ing home. Sim­ply designed rooms, filled with light and fresh air, enchant the senses and have the abil­ity to trans­port you to another head­space. Think of it as an exotic take on spring cleaning.

Impe­r­ial Beds

The Four-Poster bed is a time­less piece in any bed­room design. To avoid being heavy, new four-poster beds have thin posts, and are airy enough to be con­sid­ered mod­ern. Since four-poster beds are the most roman­tic of beds, a roman­tic design, soft, com­fort­able, and invit­ing, is highly rec­om­mended to accom­pany this fan­tas­tic tra­di­tional bed.

Clas­sic White

The pur­pose of cre­at­ing a white mono­chrome ele­gant space is to feel peace­ful, serene and sophis­ti­cated. In a white on white room, you have more free­dom to do things dif­fer­ently. “Clut­ter is kept away, every­thing should be hid­den,” says Ammie Kim, a Bev­erly Hills designer. All unnec­es­sary items or things with col­ors should be moved. It is a highly sophis­ti­cated yet min­i­mal look.

Kitchen Freestyle

Because we’re spend­ing more and more time in our kitchens and baths, there is a move away from the all-or-nothing “fit­ted” look of con­tin­u­ous coun­ters. Look for more free­stand­ing pieces of fur­ni­ture or fea­tures with furniture-like qual­i­ties. These details won’t be fussy but will fur­ther the notion that the kitchen is a room to be lived in.

Coun­try Liv­ing in the City

Do you miss the open spaces, the coun­try roads, and the peace and quiet that comes from being away from New York for more than a week? Why not trans­form your city apart­ment and go coun­try? Com­bine the best of city sophis­ti­ca­tion and coun­try rus­tic, and see how much nicer it feels to eat in that din­ing room you never use!