Easy Ways to Make Your Home Both Warm and Stylish

Heating your home is a necessity, but it can be difficult to create a home that's both warm and stylish. Many modern interior design trends err on the cooler side of things, often focusing on monochrome, light colors and metallics. Not only that, but heating systems themselves don't usually look very good. You can usually tuck a boiler or furnace away in a rarely used room or cupboard, but sometimes you move into a new house, and it's somewhere inconvenient. It's hard to make a room look nice when you have something like that disturbing the flow. But there are ways to make a room look warm and stylish, and you can even incorporate heating devices into your design.

Hide Boilers or Furnaces Away

If your home has nowhere for your boiler or furnace be except on show in one of your rooms, you can try to hide it away. Hanging curtains or building cupboards around boilers or other heating systems can help it seem like it's not there. You can also use tall screens or room dividers to hide it away. Be careful to leave some space around the heater. By building a cupboard or using another kind of screen, you can fit your heater into the rest of your interior design. Radiators can also be painted to match the room if they're currently white. You may also be able to move the boiler or furnace itself, especially if you're planning on replacing the system anyway. You don't need a big budget - use a furnace rental company to rent-to-buy, instead of buying outright.

Get a Heating Range or Wood Burner

If you can't stand the look of a conventional heating system, think outside the box to heat your house. You could try using a range oven, such as an AGA, which will heat your whole house throughout the day. They don't come cheap but have been known to last up to 80 years. You could also install a wood burner, open wood fire or gas fire, which look much nicer than boilers. But be careful about the cost of running them.

Use Warm Colors

The colors you use in your design can have a big effect on how warm your house feels. Even if they don't make the room physically warmer, warmer colors will convince you that the room is cozy. Browns, reds, burnt oranges and more will inject some heat into the room. Try using fall colors, and anything earthy and neutral. Deeper colors may feel warmer than lighter ones.

Dress Up with Fabrics and Soft Furnishings

Use lots of fabrics, textures and soft furnishings to layer your room. Area rugs will warm up cold wood or stone floors. Cushions, throws and curtains add a softer touch to a room to take the chill out. Use soft furnishings to create cozy corners where you can curl up by the fire (or radiator) and stay warm in the winter. A lot of the heat from a room comes from how it makes you feel, not the physical temperature.