The Decorator’s Handbook
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
Introduction:
If you are already buying, decorating and enjoying personal estates on Home, you may not feel the need for a decorating handbook. However, even though everyone has their own preferences, you may find some ideas that you’ll like in these suggestions. I know that I’ve received many styling ideas from decorating discussions with friends, as well as tours of personal estates that people have generously shared with me. These people had their own great ideas, but they obtained some ideas from other people too. Decorating on Home can be a circle of shared ideas and friendships.
Section 1: Why decorate?
First, it’s just fun in itself. To conceive of an idea and then view it as you put it together until it’s a finished design can be incredibly enjoyable. When you’re done with your decorating you’ll usually find enjoyment being in the space you styled. You’ll also be proud to invite friends there, and you’ll have a great place to go when you need to avoid trolls.
There’s always a “show off factor” when some space you decorated turns out especially well. There are several decorating clubs on Home, and joining one will give you the chance to make new friends with a common interest and share ideas with them as you tour each others estates.
Section 2: Style
First you will need a concept. Ask yourself what you enjoy most, and you can probably go from there. Are you into the mysterious? Is it sports? The Old West? Star Wars? You name it, and it can be styled on Home. You may have seen something you admired at a friend’s personal space and you would like to try out something similar. Or maybe an estate or furniture pack has inspired you. Home has an estate that is or can made to resemble almost any style you desire. The only limit to decorating is your imagination.
Section 3: Shopping
You may be wondering which to buy first: the estate or the furniture? Before you buy either, you might want to “try out” decorating at your free Harbour Studio space. Setting up an estate and arranging furniture items and ornaments in it should give you some idea if you want to continue with this activity. You may even find a wallpaper there that matches your theme.
There are other free personal estates on Home. Two of them are the Casino Complimentary Hotel Room from Digital Leisure and the Champions Apartment, which you can win at Aurora from nDreams, if you have enough determination.
There is also free furniture to be found, such as the TV, couch, table and chairs that you can win at Assassin Creed’s Abstergo Labs. There are many furniture items to be won at the three Midways, if you don’t mind spending a little money there. You’ll probably enjoy the games while winning some furniture items.
Unless money is no object to you, you’ll want to compare prices. Home furniture can be purchased through the Sony store as well as in Home itself. Changes in prices and bundles can happen at any time, so be sure to check and double check for current bargains. However, bundles don’t allow you to pick and choose individual pieces. And, especially with smaller bundles, if they don’t have most of the items that you want or all the items that you like, they aren’t really a bargain at all.
In addition to the bundles offered in the Sony store, you will find various bundles offered in Home itself. If you’re just starting out, I don’t see how you can do better than picking up one or more of the three 100 Items Bundles offered for $4.99 each, if these items suit your taste. A lot of different decorating strategies can be explored with nearly a hundred items.
The first bundle, called the “100 Items Super Bundle” offers many of the Waterfall Terrace, Luxury Racing Box and Ancient Greek items, and includes a few clothing items. The second bundle is named the “100 Furniture Items Super Bundle”, and has a value of over $85.00. It includes the second set of Waterfall Terrace furniture and some of the Log Cabin items. It also includes the Naugahyde furniture set, the Translucent furniture set, the Crystal furniture set, the dragon statues and the astrological statue collection. The third set, which is the “100 Vacation-Themed Items Super Bundle” is valued at over $30.00. This bundles includes sets and individual items from from the Santorini, Greece (the apartment and the yacht) and Tropical Escape estates. These estates have great furniture items, including two of the most beautiful (though not active) beds available on Home. Clothing items are also included in this bundle.
Most of the new estates and many of the older estates are offering matching furniture bundles for sale, but be sure to check the furniture store for all the bundles and items offered. Beware of the very few instances where bundles can look like bargains, but are not. One example is the two art vases (one black and one white) from the Luxury Weekend House, which are $1.49 as a set, but $.49 each when individually purchased.
Section 4: Wall items
Frames with your own pictures added, as well as the other wall items available in Home, can really set a mood and add a lot of your own personality to an estate. Three of the biggest frames currently offered are the Harbour Studio frame, the Cutteridge square frame, and the Amaterasu frame. The first frame is silver in a very slim, unadorned style; the second is carved gold; and the third is a nearly-translucent sea blue. These large frames are priced at $.99, $.49 and $.99, respectively.
Some of the fun wall items for sale are shelves of several types, paintings, posters and items such as spiderwebs, stars or hearts or roses. Some of these units are active. You can find wall items at Loot, mydeco, VEEMEE, Home Originals and other stores.
Section 5: Active items
As these items take up more than one furniture slot, they will cut into your 100-items limit. Most of the older items of this type take up 22 slots, so you need to take that into consideration when decorating. Newer active items (and some older items that have been re-engineered) will take up considerably less.
Personally, I feel that every personal estate needs music and I like to coordinate the music with the theme when I can. However, when LOOT offers portable RadioIO later this year, we may have all we need musically for any estate, in one package.
Many people like to have games at their spaces for their own enjoyment and entertaining their friends. Some spaces have built in games, but there are others you can buy or earn as rewards to add to your space.
There are now active beds in Home in several styles. Lockwood recently re-released their four colorful Cucumber beds as active items that allow people to lay down on them in somewhat natural positions. This is a huge step up from the previous active beds, which only allowed board-stiff positions. If you purchased one or more of these Cucumber beds previously, the upgrade to an active item is only $.49 each.
Section 6: A final thought
Like any activity on Home, decorating is there for your enjoyment. If you don’t enjoy it, simply don’t do it. There’s so much else that Home has to offer, such as hundreds of games, making friends with common interests, reward hunting, and dressing up your avi, that you’re sure to find hours of enjoyment.
Try out decorating though if you haven’t, and you may surprise yourself. In the end, if you had fun, if you like what you styled in your space and you believe you did a good job decorating, that’s what counts.
July 15th, 2012 by Kassadee Marie | 9 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
Good write Kass. I love decorating. I do it all the time and there is no end in site for me as I own many estates. I love to have people come over just to see the places I take pride in. Those being Final Fantasy Primarch’s Vigilarium and The Nebula Air Ship. I was paid a high compliment the other day when I was compared to being better than a renown decorator oh Home so I guess I am on a good track. It is a passion. There are alot of things to do on Home, I agree, but the construct of Home made a solitary task of simply decorating actually fun and an art. To those who do, continue, those those that dont or havent, I think they should definately give it a try.
I’m one of those weird men that like interior decorating, I’m not a believer in feng shui or whatever it’s called, and I tend not to flounce about in flowery cuffed shirts like Lawrence Lo Ellen Bowen either but, I will argue why a 1920’s style couch shouldn’t be in a room of stuff thatched from sea-grass. I do like seeing what people come up with in their own places, even though I might not say anything, I’m still checkin’ you out!
Most of the time people will comment on my interiors when they first start coming to my personal spaces, but as they become friends and see more, they just get used to my places having a pretty nice layout lol.
The biggest compliment to me so far though, is when I’ve visited a friend in their space and found they’ve used a similar layout or style to one of mine. A recreation from inspiration is about the biggest compliment you can get.
I love to decorate, for me it is a lot of the fun I derive in Home as is the dressing of my avatar. When new things I like come out and I buy them I will do it thinking about where they would look the best then I go there and tweak the current layout with them.
This is a great little guide for those who aren’t quite sure what to do with their spaces and to give them a heads up on the freebies out there as well. Good job Kass.
My first two comments were from guys -- awesome! I’d love to see your places, Strom and Krazy. I’d be happy to show you some of my efforts, too… if you wanted.
Thanks, Burbie. I often write for the newcomers, but I’m not sure they even know about our magazine. We need t-shirts! We could be walking avi ads.
I would like to repeat a suggestion made last May in an article by FEMAELSTROM:
http://www.hsmagazine.net/2012/05/so-many-homes/
We need to be able to save multiple versions of the same apartment.
I love some of my decorating achievements so much I keep them around forever. But doing that pretty much prevents me from redecorating the same space in a different style. Yes, I could save the apartment on a USB drive and reload it when I want to admire it. But I would rather have them on the Navigator — a potential submenu for each personal space, listing all the versions I have saved.
This would be total win for the Home decorator, and I’m sure most of us would be willing to pay a modest amount for the privilege.
We can save different versions of an apartment(s).
Save using different flash drives.
Great read!
Now now, you ladies aren’t the only ones who take great joy in deco. Plenty guys have the same passion or more, and are very secure and proud to say.. I love to deco!
It’s an awesome habit, and always a great way to release stresses.
i like doing the -i’ll show you mine if you show me yours- tour with friends.not only do i get to see their tastes and get ideas,we become a bit closer friends thru the process. just dont show any girls that heart bed reward unless your ready to play roulette with them afterwards for an hr….
LOL Sparks.