Easy & Affordable Ways to Add More Visual Joy to Your Home

How much joy does your home bring you? Do you have a lot of design moments that make you smile? Do the rooms in your home showcase things that make you happy? Filling your home with visual joy doesn’t need to be a complicated task; we spotted seven easy (and affordable) ways to celebrate happiness using your home in one of our recent tours.

(Pictured above) Pick a corner, any corner! Can be a guest room that you don’t go into every day. Can be a cramped bathroom. The laundry room. A corner your living or dining room. Even if the rest of your home features muted colors that fits your style, there’s no denying that color can have a huge effect on your mood. So choose a color (or many colors!) that represent a mood-altering happiness to you and add them to a corner or small spot in your home. This can be a place you retreat to when you feel like you need a pick-me-up.

Again, even if your personal style isn’t bold walls full of pattern, you can still include smile-inducing pattern in your every day life. The kitchen above features a few small swatches of the favorite wallpaper see in the guest room above. Put in a small spot, it doesn’t detract from the rest of the room’s design but can bring a bit of joy while you’re doing the dishes.

Whether you’re living in your home town or across the ocean, there’s probably some land, country or people you feel a connection to. By celebrating with colors or design elements that remind you of where you grew up (doesn’t have to be a flag or something similar, consider landscape photography and nature paintings if you feel a stronger connection with a natural setting more than a city or state), you’re infusing your home with pride of place and weaving in memory makers in your decor.

Something that really struck me in Shauna & John’s Post Punk Eclectic English Home and Artist’s Studio is the fact that Shauna uses a collection of Cornish blue pottery — as art supply holders! Not up in a cabinet waiting to be used on a special occasion, or even just on a kitchen shelf for occasional use. I love that idea. It’s pretty joyful to use stuff (even “special” stuff!) for elevating every day tasks.

Many of us found joy a lot easier to get in touch when we were younger — an entertaining cartoon, favorite toy or funny comic book issue could also spark joy in us as kids. Why not incorporate some of your favorite things as a kid into your home decor now? Whether actual elements from your childhood or new purchases that remind you of your childhood joy.

I’m not sure why this little hanging lady in the bathroom — at an odd hanging location — makes me laugh so much, but it does. Whatever makes you laugh —big or small, corny or naughty — find little spots to display. It’ll bring unexpected laughs and joy in your home!

“50 reasons to be cheerful” is a series of paintings that Shauna created during her 50th year and then made a collage of the images as a visual reminder of all that she has to be grateful for. What could be more joyful than that?