Ask A St. Louis Expert: Shopping For Home Decor On A Budget

The Daily Meal Staff|July 22, 2014 6:00 am EST

Your home may be your castle, but it is also the place where to go to escape the stresses of the workday, the place where you raise your children and the place where lasting memories are made. So it should be warm, inviting, comfortable and functional. High-end designers, with high-end budgets, accomplish this with ease, but where do those go who have more modest funds? Perhaps a few tips from a St. Louis designer can help you stretch your design and remodel dollars to give your home that high-end look.

Sara Turner Luigs
Cure Design Group
188 Roxbury Drive
O'Fallon, MO 63366
(636) 294-2343
www.curedesigngroup.com

Sara Turner Luigs, Owner/Design Director of the Cure Design Group, has spent more than 10 years designing some of the most upscale, interior spaces for homes in the St. Louis area. Her ability to connect her own design vision with a client's taste and lifestyle makes her firm one of the most sought-after talents in the region. Cure also prides itself on the multitude of specific services it can offer its clientele, which makes it a valued firm to those who want a comprehensive design overhaul or just need to update or refresh a room with things like window treatments, area rugs or lighting.

As the current trends point to more and more folks with modest budgets choosing to remain in their current residence, rather than upgrade to larger homes in different neighborhoods, remodeling is a more popular choice. Sara has some sage advice for anyone, with any budget, to breathe freshness into any living space.

Stay Neutral

Choose your paint color last and cover or buy larger furniture pieces in a neutral color. Why? The tip to making your design dollars stretch, and still maintaining flexibility with your room designs, is to choose two or three colors in your color palette and use them for accent pieces and window treatments. Then choose a wall color to complement those accent pieces. The benefit of this approach is the opportunity to freshen or update a room décor more often by changing out pillows and accent pieces without breaking the bank by needing to replace larger, more expensive items every several years as trends change. And a fresh coat of paint, and a rearrange of the furniture, gives a fresh look to a room without busting the budget.

Remodels

If you have a larger project in mind, like knocking through a wall to expand a living space, Sara recommends caution when considering sacrificing bedrooms. If resale is ever a consideration, then bedrooms might not be the space to eliminate. However, it's really about family functionality, and those decisions should take priority. Perhaps the formal living room just isn't useful to a family that cherishes big family meals around the dining table or board game night in the family room. Then by all means, use that space to its best advantage. She also encourages consulting a professional who can supply an engineering report that identifies load-bearing walls before breaking out the sledge hammers. Above all, she stresses that when considering design changes, think about how your family wants to live and function in the home. Comfort and convenience are just as important as color and design. And a great design plan marries it all together.

There is no reason any room design or remodel can't look like a million bucks with some inspiration and a few great tips from Cure Design Group. While Sara and her staff have been setting trends that inspire sophistication and charm for some of St. Louis' most prestigious clients, with these simple tips, you too can create the same results for a fraction of the cost.

Lisa Payne-Naeger, a native of the St. Louis area, is a freelance writer, blogger, political activist and a homeschooling mother of two children. Her work can be found at Examiner.com.