Autumn Home Decor: 9 Ideas for a Warmer Home

What makes a home feel warm in autumn is not a big renovation. Warm colours, thick textures and slightly yellow light do most of the work. The best results come from combining one or two pieces that stay all year (a rug, a wall hanging or a painting) with small seasonal changes that are easy to undo.

Most of the nine ideas below can be done in a weekend. Some cost nothing at all and only ask you to rearrange what you already have.

Autumn colours: which shades, and how much?#

1. Spread warm shades across surfaces, not walls

The autumn palette is familiar: mustard, terracotta, rust, olive, deep burgundy, chestnut. Putting them on the walls is a permanent decision that can feel heavy by March. The right place for seasonal colour is on surfaces: cushions, throws, a rug, a vase, the art on the wall.

To get the proportion right, the 60-30-10 guideline common in interior design helps. Sixty percent of the room is the main neutral (walls, large furniture), thirty percent a secondary colour (curtains, rug, sofa cover), ten percent accent. Put the autumn shades into the secondary and accent layers and the room changes without a paintbrush.

I covered what to look for when matching a work to the colours you already have in choosing art by colour palette.

2. Keep one cool shade

A room that is warm from end to end gets heavy after a while. A petrol blue, a deep green or a grey blue gives the eye somewhere to rest among the warm tones. It can be as small as a single cushion; its job is balance.

Texture: rugs, wall hangings and soft surfaces#

Half of the feeling of warmth comes from texture rather than colour. The same brown looks cold on a flat laminate floor and warm in a deep pile rug.

3. A thick rug on the floor

On tiled or laminate floors, the chill you feel stepping down on an October evening colours your impression of the whole room. A thick pile rug changes that both underfoot and to the eye. Size, pile and how much traffic the room gets all matter; I gathered the details in what to check when buying a rug.

A short note: in tufting, cut pile gives a softer, velvety surface and loop pile a more hard-wearing one. For a rug underfoot in a seating area, a mix of the two is a common choice.

4. Give one wall to textile

A wall hanging really does change a room, and autumn is when you notice it most. A hard painted wall reflects sound; a soft textile surface reduces the echo. In sparsely furnished living rooms with high ceilings you can hear the difference.

Let me be clear about one thing: a wall hanging does not heat the wall. It does not insulate and it will not change your heating bill. What it changes is how the room looks and sounds, and that is where the feeling of warmth comes from.

The tufted wall hangings in the gallery are made with acrylic yarn, measure between 60x90 cm and 95x110 cm, and were priced between 6,000 and 12,500 TL when this article was published. You can see them all on the tufting page. Examples of how a hanging sits on different walls are in decorating with wall hangings.

Walls: art that suits an autumn palette#

5. Move what you have before buying something new

If you already own a piece or two, the cheapest change at the turn of the season is to move them. A painting that spent the summer in the bedroom looks new once it moves to the living room. Bringing the warmer piece into the seating area and the lighter, cooler one into the bedroom is a good start for autumn.

If you are thinking of something new, you can tie the subject to the season too. A few examples from the gallery:

• Arta Kalan (What Remains): a painting about the scene left behind at the end of a crowded meal or a meal eaten alone. It speaks naturally to the months when dinners get longer and evenings move indoors.
• Tını: a quiet homage to Anatolia's musical tradition that needs no words.
• Salt Galata: an architectural painting of columns, balustrades and arches, the warmth of pink and the coolness of turquoise on the same surface. A good example of the warm and cool balance from idea 2.

The acrylic canvases in the gallery range from 60x70 cm to 100x80 cm and were priced between 7,000 and 15,000 TL at the time of publication. Keep in mind that a screen can shift colours; if you are unsure about a shade, just ask. Everything is in the gallery.

Light: warm, yellow-toned lighting#

As the days shorten, more of the evening is spent under artificial light, and the colour of that light sets the mood of a room more than any paint colour.

6. Switch to 2700 K bulbs

Bulb packaging gives the colour of the light in Kelvin (K). 4000 K and above is white, office light; 2700 to 3000 K leans yellow and warm. Moving to 2700 K in the living room and bedroom may be the cheapest and most effective change on this list.

7. Bring the light down

A single fitting in the middle of the ceiling lights a room flatly, without shadow. In the evening, several sources below eye level (a table lamp, a floor lamp, a small lamp on a shelf) create soft shadows in the corners. Warm rooms are usually lit like that: low and scattered.

If you want to light the painting on the wall as well, the angle and colour of the light matter. The wrong spotlight changes the colour of the paint, the wrong angle causes glare. I went into this in lighting artwork.

Small changes you can undo#

8. Swap the textiles

• Replace linen and cotton cushion covers with velvet, wool or heavy woven ones. The covers, not the cushions.
• Leave a chunky knit throw over the arm of the sofa. Even folded, it adds texture.
• Add a heavy curtain in front of the sheer, drawn in the evening.
• Use a heavier bedspread.

All of it goes into a cupboard in April and the house returns to summer.

9. One seasonal corner

Dry branches, a few decorative gourds, pine cones, pomegranates. Rather than putting one on every shelf, gather them in one place, on a tray or a console. Seasonal objects scattered around look cluttered; grouped together they make a corner.

Moving into winter: what stays and what goes?#

The good thing about an autumn setup is that most of it carries into winter.

What stays: the thick rug, the wall hanging, the 2700 K bulbs, the evening curtains, the velvet covers. They do their job until the end of March.

What goes: the gourds and dry leaves make way for other things in early December. Mustard and terracotta accents can hand over to deep green and burgundy for winter; changing the cushion covers once more is enough.

For art the rule is simple. If you moved a piece for the season, it can go back to its old place in spring. But if a work looks right in its room every season, leave it where it is.

If you are looking for a piece that stays all year, see the tufted wall hangings and the works in the gallery. If you have a particular wall and colour in mind, the custom order page shows a price range once you choose size and technique.