Cosy up for winter

It’s time to get the flannel sheets out of storage and freshen them up ready for the cooler months to come. That’s your bed sorted, but what about the rest of the home? Newer homes don’t usually have the fireplaces of old so it’s not as easy to light up the fire for that instant ‘warming’ of the home these days. Below are some helpful tips that you can use to cosy up for the winter months.

Due to the reduced sunlight over the winter months, your home can start to feel a little dull earlier in the day now. Think about moving your floor lamps around to different corners in the room that might be a little darker to add some extra light in the room. You can even add some little side table lamps around the place to open areas up. The globes you use in the lamps make a huge difference too. While bright white lights are great for sunnier months, using warmer white globes in lamps will help defuse the light throughout the room.  

As I said at the start of this blog, flannel sheets are the way to go in winter. The ideal sleeping temperature is 18.3 Celsius and because our body temperature drops when we sleep, added with the overall drop in ambient temperatures, having flannel sheets on the bed can help trap the warmth in while still allowing your skin to breathe. Using flannel sheets will keep you warm but they won’t make you hot or sweaty, which can make you toss and turn all night. Another thing you can add to your bed for winter is a warmer underlay or mattress topper. Depending on where you live and how cold the nights get you might also want to think about adding a down feather quilt to take the warmth of the bed up a notch.

It’s not really cost effective to re-paint your walls or redecorate every room in you house each season, so here are some practical small changes you can make to help cosy up rooms for winter. Something as simple as changing the covers on your throw cushions to a fabric that is a little softer or fluffier for winter. Even using pops of natural or earth tones can warm up a room. For example, throw blankets on the couches or tea towels in the kitchen.

When it’s cold and rainy outside you might find yourself spending most of winter on the couch with a good book or binging the latest release on Netflix. Simple ways to cosy up your couch are to add throws and cushions. These items can be relatively inexpensive and mixing in different materials and textures will help create a space that you feel you can snuggle into and relax.

If you’re like me and have very cold flooring or minimal underlay on your floors you might find your feet getting cold walking around the house even though your heater is on. Tiles and vinyl flooring is great in summer as it keeps the house cool, but in winter the cold travels up through the slab and straight to your feet. A small hall runner or rug can stop the cold floors becoming an issue and although they might be expensive depending on your taste, they are a great investment to make and can be easily rolled up and stored away over the warmer months when they aren’t needed.

Big windows are great at sucking the warmth out of any room. So look at ways to insulate them. Blinds will come standard with most new homes and while they will help keep the cold out you could try adding thicker curtains that can be drawn across to help block out the cold. Swapping them out for shear curtains in summer is a way to reuse the curtain tracks and not have to keep up heavy warm curtains all year round.

The last tip to cosy up your home this winter is to add some hints of green. By green, I mean plants. I’m a huge fan of indoor plants. I feel like they help make air cleaner inside the home and add a natural warmth to any room they are in. There are heaps of easy to maintain indoor plants available and hey, if you can’t get out to see nature because it’s wet and rainy, why not have a little nature inside.