Decorating With Handmade Furniture

Whether selecting a complete set of handmade furniture for a new home, or updating existing decor with a new addition, today the Internet offers an increasingly broad selection of styles, options, and prices to fit just about every budget.

Practicality, comfort, and esthetics should play equal roles in your decision making process. When working on a limited budget, first outline the most essential furniture elements to your particular lifestyle -- and how many you will need of each -- remembering to include beds, night stands, dressers, couches, tables, storage trunks, and chairs.

Next, consider your stylistic preferences. Have you already completed an interior design plan for your home? Are you adding to existing themes and furniture designs, in which case new additions must harmonize with older choices?

If starting from scratch, think about what one style or several complementary styles resonate most with you. If you do not yet have a clear preference in mind, the decor sections of your local library or bookstore offer a plethora of concepts and styles to consider.

Browse through enough well-photographed books to determine what styles most attract your visual interest, and then consider whether or not your needs will also be met in terms of comfort and practicality.

Once you have determined a favorite stylistic direction, you can then begin to select appropriate decor within those guidelines, including furniture.

Some designers place their stylistic emphasis on the furnishings, rather than the furniture, allowing window treatments, area rugs, table runners, and general decor items to set the style tone, while granting furniture elements a background role, to harmonize, warm, and soften, rather than stand out.

Other interior designer experts create decor themes based on the furniture itself, which then is often strongly stylistic, ornate, or colorful in nature.

Within the World Style realm, simple, rustic, hand-carved woods and even wrought iron can help gently enhance dramatic style elements, really helping bring a room together.

After selecting your essential elements and themes, the next step is to begin comparison shopping -- a fast, easy, and efficient process today, online. Most major brands, as well as mom-and-pop retailers, now boast a presence on the web, saving customers considerable time and expense, and providing virtually unlimited options.

Novica's online furniture gallery is a great place to gather an overview of World Style themes, featuring an extensive selection of handmade furniture -- with considerable cultural information included -- from such nations as Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Thailand, Bali, Java, India, and Ghana, West Africa.

Many other great purveyors are likewise available online today. Be sure to select from reputable retailers, but do keep an open mind. Above all, select furniture that most appeals to your sense of esthetics, comfort, and function, and you will surely be pleased with the results!

Catherine Gallegos serves as editor-in-chief of Novica.com (part of the National Geographic family), a retail site featuring the handmade creations of artisans worldwide, including handmade furniture.