If you are looking for ways to establish a breezy beachy look for your home, shutters are a perfect solution!

We talked about shutter ideas recently in this shutter post, but I wanted to share two more more with you today. You can see both of the following ideas in the inspiration photo from Coastal Living!

1. If you have any tiny or boring windows that could use a little something to bulk them up, you can put shutters around the window (or even cover the entire wall) to give the illusion of a much bigger window! No need to cover the window and lose the light, just cover part or all of the surrounding wall. No one has to know you have a boring shrimpy window.

2. Add shutters to a plain island to give them a little more architectural interest! If you are handy, you could even put them on tracks or hinges so they could open. Or if you don’t need them to open, just use them as architectural detail.

Custom shutters can be expensive, but keep your eyes open for affordable louvered doors and shutters at home improvement stores, thrift stores and garage sales. The beachy, coastal cottage look is very forgiving of imperfection, so it is a great style for DIY’ers and budget minded decorators. Shutters are a great way to add coastal detail!

coastal living

So you have a small home? No problem!

Give your place some small space style with my 10 simple tricks! Head on over to Blissfully Domestic for inspiration to make the most of your space! Click here! Hope to see you there!

I know, I know, I got you all into Fall and now you are here asking yourself, “Self, what in the world is she doing? Why is she back to talking about “Seaside Style” now that she made me drag all those plastic pumpkins down from the attic? Where are the white pumpkin topiaries? Where are the gourds? I thought this was THE INSPIRED ROOM!”

I hear you. But we have to pace ourselves. We are giving Fall a fair chance against winter, but we don’t want to go CRAZY or anything and start hating pumpkins before Halloween. Besides, we’ve got something important to talk about here today. And it really does relate to Fall. Pinkie swear.

Now, give me a moment here. I know THAT pool and those lounge chairs aren’t very Fall-ish. Nice, though, eh? Almost makes you want to go back to summer!

This is a pretty fancy place, for a beach house. So what can we take away from this to apply to even a more modest house? I’ll tell ya.

This is clearly a lovely home. Yet I would bet that it was staged for the photos — and staging is not really practical for everyday living. The principle we can take away from these rooms is, while this house is beautiful and spacious, the furniture is all so far away from the other furniture it would be difficult to have a conversation!

So, not pointing blame at the designer of this beautiful home, but just for our purposes in the real, un-staged world , the goal of establishing a conversation area is be close enough so you don’t have to shout at the top of your lungs!

And if you have big rooms, you still need to follow that rule. You just need more groupings if it feels sparse.

TIP:
IF YOU HAVE TO SHOUT to carry on a conversation,
your furniture is TOO FAR APART!

As we are heading into Fall, we want to be able to settle in with our friends and family to have some nice conversations, without straining our ears. Big or small room, this is an important tip. No shouting aloud.

Photos: Architectural Digest