Furniture and decor have often been lauded as a way to spice up or add chic to the interior of your home. A few extra pieces and a little rearranging can make an old space feel new. However, if you have the resources and the vision, architectural interior design can provide you with a bold new way of reinventing your living space. Perhaps it is not enough to change the contents of that old room. Perhaps now is the time to change the room itself.
There are a couple of ways to use architectural interior design to your advantage. One of the more dramatic steps to take would be to alter the ceiling of your room. This can be done in one of a few different approaches. First, you can take the simple route and put in skylights. The addition to your will increase natural light, and give the room an airy feel. Another option might be to bump the ceiling up. This can be done in a variety of fashions. One option would be take out ceiling panels. These usually drop the ceiling down nearly a foot, and can make a room seem much smaller. If you remove the paneling, and instead, put real or fake beams up to disguise some of the wiring and pipes, you'll add inches to the room and texture and character to the ceiling. Another choice would be actually building on top of the room. This, especially when combined with some form of vaulting, is a form of architectural interior design that gives a dramatic, spacious affect to a room.
However, architectural interior design is not limited to the size and scope of a ceiling. There are other small matters of architecture that can be added to accentuate your living space. An example of this might be moulding. If you surround your doors with a decorative moulding, it gives the room a more regal sensibility. If you add crown moulding to the top of a very basic, simple room, you can make it seem a little smaller and more cozy. If you add baseboards to the bottom edge of a room especially with lighting built in, you can give the room an ambiance it was previously missing.
Another component of architectural interior design might be the type of lighting you choose. Instead of your basic ceiling fan, consider a chandelier. It does not have to be something that you might see in a palace at Versailles. Chandeliers come in all shapes and sizes these day. Some are the traditional crystal designs, but others are much more modern. You might see some with box shaped covers of different shapes and sizes, and others that hold small simple bulbs at different lengths in a random fashion. Regardless, you should be able to find something that suits your needs. The overhead lights are not the only way to go, either. Consider putting in crown moulding lights, which will give a warm glow to a room without the harsh affect of a bright lamp or overhead lighting fixture.