How to Make Your Home More Inviting to Guests

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What does it take to make your home a place where people love to come and spend time? You may be having trouble getting people to accept your invitations to visit. You might be able to make some changes to your home to make it more welcoming. Here are our suggestions.

Boost the Lighting

One of the reasons that homes seem less than pleasant to be in is because of poor or dim lighting. Every time you go to a haunted house, the lighting is very dim. You don’t want your home to remind anyone of a haunted house, now do you? Try to keep each room well lit, especially the rooms that your guests would spend time in.

You can add lighting fixtures, open windows, or simply bring in a lamp to the rooms that need better lighting. The fix could be as easy as installing brighter light bulbs. Look for ways to increase the lighting to make each room as welcoming as possible. This is one area that too many people overlook when they are trying to improve how inviting their homes are.

Arrange Furniture for Conversations

The arrangement of furniture in the home has a lot to do with how comfortable people feel in your place. If the furniture is designed for television viewing or for individual lounging, it might not be conducive to conversations. People will be more likely to stay for longer if they feel comfortable carrying on a conversation.

Look at how the furniture is set up in your home and determine if you could make some changes to help promote conversations. You can arrange items so that seats are facing one another rather than facing the same direction. One thing to keep in mind is that conversations can more easily occur if people are able to look at each other. If you can make that happen in the rooms where guests will spend their time, then you may create a more welcoming space.

Reduce Clutter

If there is a lot of clutter in your home, then that can make people not feel like spending time there. Clutter creates anxiety, even if people don’t actively notice it. Your guests might feel like leaving and not know why, if there is a mess in your home. Do your best to keep everything looking neat and orderly and get rid of clutter as you are able.

You can use tailored housekeeping services for Staten Island residences to help keep things neat, especially if you are going to have guests coming over.

Before they arrive, just have the professional cleaning service tidy up for you, and you might be surprised at how much difference that makes.

Decluttering can be a chore, but it really does improve the space. If you can store everything away in those rooms that guests will spend time in, that allows for more freedom of movement. If guests do not have to move a stack of magazines to find a seat or walk around toys and clothes to get to the bathroom, then you will have a home that feels more comfortable.

Decluttering isn’t just about putting items away so that they are not blocking access to anything; it is also about removing some of those cluttering items from your home. The fewer items you have in the house, the easier it is to make things neat for guests. This gives you less cleaning to do and less organizing to worry about.

Use Soft Textures

Are the seats in your home comfortable or not? It’s not enough to have attractive-looking furniture if you want guests to spend time in your home. You also have to consider how the couches, chairs, and other seating furniture feels when people come into contact with it. Rough, coarse textures will not be very inviting, and once people try to sit in those seats, they may want to leave quickly.

The solution to rough textured furniture is to either replace it or to re-upholster it. If you like a coarse chair, then by all means keep it, but make that your chair or move it to a room where guests won’t accidentally sit in it. That will help to keep your guests comfortable while they are in your home.

Make the Sitting Rooms Appealing

There are all sorts of small changes that you can make to your home that will create a welcoming and pleasant atmosphere. Think specifically about the rooms where your guests will be sitting. You may want to add artwork to the walls or art piece through the room to create items of conversation. Make sure that the artwork you pick is not risqué, violent, or otherwise disturbing so that you don’t offend.

You also want to provide a place for guests to rest their cups and/or dishes. Are there coffee tables and other small items of furniture where guests can rest small items? These can add a lot to any sitting space.

Make sure these rooms are well ventilated as well so that they smell fresh and do not become overly hot and stuffy. They should have decent airflow through them, and you may need to open doors or windows to make that happen or set up a fan or a cooling unit. Even if the room is comfortable when you are sitting in it, that could change when you fill the space with guests. Their body heat can make the room too hot very quickly.

Closing Thoughts

You should consider the kind of get-together you want to have and if your home is appropriate for those. If you want to host board games nights, then you will need lots of space or a large table for people to gather around. If you want to host cookouts, then make sure that you have a pleasant patio or yard that is well kept.

These kinds of considerations are important if you would like to have more guests in your home. There may be a reason why people don’t choose your home for gatherings, and you can change that.