What makes a house look and feel homey and cozy?

[lepnee]

We are due to move into our new home soon and I'm starting to look at furniture and decor items I can purchase. I really want our home (and every bit of it) to look super homey, warm and cozy so I thought I would ask some of you on here for your personal recommendations on what I can do/buy

group pictures together rather than having 1 on each wall have 5 or 7 grouped on one wall

There is a colour rule ratio for rooms. colour 1 60% colour 2 30% and colour 3 and 4 pops at 10 or 20%

I can’t stand books cluttering the place or throws/ plants / trinkets etc.

It’s all about the lighting. Several lamps, different nights.

Make sure the space is physically warm. Clutter free, so the air is fresh and can circulate.

A real fire. Nothing like it... Otherwise, candles and side lights rather than overheads, lots of cushions and snuggly blankets, the smell of baking and the promise of a cuppa. And a cat. That helps a lot 🐱

@ThunderSkies
I can’t stand books cluttering the place

[quote SurreyHillsGirl]@ThunderSkies
I can’t stand books cluttering the place

[/quote]
I really can’t. They gather dust, get a smell and are just so busy on the eye.

I love reading, but have no desire for book clutter. It’s like having a work computer in the bedroom, you may have no choice in the matter, but it’s not ideal. I’d rather keep them out of the living room/ bedroom. An I like book cases to be neat.

I really, really can’t stand piles of books everywhere!

I think if you have a lot of books the rest of your decoration needs to be fairly minimal because they dress a room so much. There's the world of difference between a wall of bookshelves in an otherwise simple white box and a room with a hodge podge of non-matching smaller bookcases. We've got both in the house at the moment (one sitting room decorated with storage designed for our needs so got the wall of bookshelves, the other desperately in need of built in bookshelves so currently 4 different sized freestanding bookshelves around the room that the previous owners have decorated with 4 different shades of yellow) and one room is much calmer than the other.

Doors and rooms, not an open plan warehouse with a kitchen island and bifolds.