Tips to Add Design Appeal to Your Home

(StatePoint) Want to set your home apart? You can add character and beauty to your home by learning more about your houses architectural style and adding design elements to complement the look.

With the right knowledge, its easy to transform any room of your home as well as the exterior, says Niki Decker, senior product and marketing manager with Fypon, which creates synthetic millwork products.

The experts at Fypon are offering some tips and guidelines to achieve an authentic, coordinated look throughout your home -- inside and out.

Proportions matter. If youre going to be adding shutters to your exterior, do a bit of math. The width of shutters used in pairs on a window should be half the width of the window, and should be the same height as the window.

The higher the ceiling, the taller the baseboard should be. Additionally, the height of your baseboard moulding should always be larger than the casing, which is the frame around a door or window.

Make a room feel taller by placing a chair rail -- the moulding used to prevent the backs of chairs from rubbing against the wall -- one-third of the way up from the floor. Chair rails should be 1/2 or one inch narrower than casings.

If you have a classic Georgian style home, characterized by strict symmetry and a centered and paneled front door, cap the front door panel with an elaborate crown supported by decorative pillars.

Enhance your Victorian style home with ornamental spindlework on the porches and patterned shingles on the roof. Offset the complexity with simple surrounds for windows.

For country style cottages, consider clapboard shingles for siding, or wood shake for siding and roofing, and wide white trim or shutters around windows.

Complete the look and feel of your Mediterranean-style home, rich with such decorative accents as round columns, tile and stone, by planting lush gardens and installing an ornate fountain.

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Tips to Add Design Appeal to Your Home