The Wide Appeal of Equestrian Home Decor

Equestrian home decor gives horse lovers a chance to show their love and appreciation for their four-legged friends. There are all kinds of home furnishings, accessories, and accents that feature a horse of some sort. It might be a table lamp with a horse sculpture on the base, a comforter that depicts horses running across a meadow, or a piece of wall art with a horse theme.

There are many reasons for the wide appeal of equestrian home decor. First, many people simply admire the form and beauty of the animal. Also, a horse might be reminiscent of time spent on a grandparent's farm or a summer camp where you learned to ride.

Large Floor Lamps

You might have seen examples of equestrian home decor in all sorts of homes, but the horse-themed decor that we're most fond of is found in homes with one of the casual styles of home decorating, such as western, rustic, southwestern, or country. Some people might be surprised to know that an increasingly large percentage of horse-themed decor is in homes of people that do not own horses.

Take a moment to think about your favorite horses from books, movies, or television. A few that come to mind for us are Trigger (the horse of Roy Rogers), Silver and Scout (the horses of the Lone Ranger and his sidekick Tonto), Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka, and the mischievous Mr. Ed. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, many children in grade school had a lunch box that featured one of these horses.

Okay, let's take a little trip down memory lane. How many of us had a rocking horse when we were kids? How about a blanket with cowboys and/or cowgirls and horses? Anything else with a horse on it? Yes, there's a chance that you had some sort of equestrian home decor back then and did not even realize it.

There are horse-themed figurines, statuettes, and pottery dating back centuries from different cultures that created the pieces to honor the horse. The pieces that still exist are often a real treasure for a collector.

Whether you want to decorate an entire room with equestrian home decor or just add a few pieces here and there, you can find a wide variety of items to accent your home, such as a horse-themed fireplace screen, wall art, bedding, rugs, throw pillows, and so much more.

Adding equestrian home decor in your bedroom can be accomplished with a few simple horse-themed items such as a well-placed picture or two, a comfy floor rug, and a lamp and/or lampshade. Let's not forget the bedding and comforter. With their large surface area, they can show one or more horses in a pastoral setting or running free across a hillside.

Equestrian home decor is great for kids' rooms as well. Here, you can brighten a child's room with images of colts and fillies playing in a field. The kids will love a wooden rocking horse. Children's bedding has many designs with horses to choose from. You can also take the room decor one step further with an age-appropriate lamp that has horses depicted on the base or the shade. The finishing touch would be a decorative, yet playful horse design on a wall border.

Whatever your reason for being attracted to equestrian home decor, you can be assured that you will have plenty of decorative items to choose from.

The Wide Appeal of Equestrian Home Decor

Decorating an Open Plan Living Space

When it comes to decorating your house, you may sometimes find yourself looking around the room and wishing it was bigger. It would have more light, you could do more with it, fit more things in it - there are any number of reasons why people go for open plan living. In the end, it is entirely up to you, but the fact is that when it comes to decorating, you can't beat an open plan arrangement for letting the maximum amount of light into every corner of your home.

An open plan arrangement is ideal for making your home as light as possible, so if you like light, go open plan and remember to decorate with maximum light in mind. This means choosing light colors. Make the walls, floor and ceiling as pale as possible, as well your main pieces of furniture. Without large amounts of dark color the area will look more open and more continuous. White and cream are excellent base colors, as you can then use any color as an accent.

Large Floor Lamps

Accents are important when you have a large, open space, particularly when it comes to breaking it up into distinct areas. The fact is that you will be doing different things in different parts of your open plan living area, so it is important to break it up where necessary and you can achieve this with careful use of accents and decorative objects.

For example, on a long continuous wall, place a series of framed photos or pictures in a group where you wish to create a boundary of sorts between two areas. The pictures will break up the wall into two parts, helping to create the impression of two separate areas, even though in reality there will be no boundary between the two.

Area rugs are also excellent ways of separating different parts of a space. A large rug can be placed in an area, in front of the seating in the living area, for instance - the seating can even be placed on top of it if the rug is large enough. This will lead the eye to believe that the seating area ends where the rug does, making it a self-contained area even without the existence of walls. Alternatively, you can put down a group of rugs to achieve the same effect. For instance, a group of four rugs evenly spaced with small gaps in between will give the overall impression of one large rug for the same effect.

What you do with your living space is entirely up to you, but some spaces simply lend themselves to open plan living while others do not. It is of course your decision whether you decide to go open plan or not. The results can be extremely impressive but the emphasis should always be on light and ease of movement, otherwise you will end up with a very cluttered space which doesn't look open plan, even if there are no separating walls at all. The idea is to have only minimal separation of the different areas, a mental division of living from eating from cooking, rather than actual physical barriers.

Decorating an Open Plan Living Space