Pinterest is now the authoritative centerpiece for all things crafty, thrifty and DIY from all over the web. While the site has become big enough to branch into just about all areas of interest, its main focus and attraction is delivering a wealth of ideas for in-home craftiness and improvement.
If you don’t have a Pinterest account, it just takes a couple minutes to sign up
Maybe you’ve been using Pinterest for a while but haven’t thought of it as a tool for home improvement. If you’re targeting the right kind of project, Pinterest can definitely be a tremendous help, because of it’s ability to deliver inspiration and ideas.
With a quick search, you’ll have a thorough collection of templates and ideas that you can draw on to improve your own living situation and decor.
Let’s look at a few areas where Pinterest excels.
1. Shelving — If you go to Pinterest and search “shelving” you’ll get back an incredibly complete and comprehensive collection of ideas, most of which you never would have thought of on your own. The nice thing about Pinterest is that everything has a photo, and that’s the first thing you see.
With shelving, you’ll find just about every kind of idea and creative approach that’s out. If you’re getting ready to put up shelves or just looking for ideas, this will probably be more than you can even keep up with.
You’ll get all manner of traditional, modern and artsy arrangements and designs. Most of what you see is also going to be a finished product, so you’ll really be able to get a feel and an idea for what you want to do.
Repin a few that you like and use them as templates for your own project.
2. Redesigning Your Kitchen — There’s a lot of detailed groundwork that goes into redesigning a kitchen, but Pinterest can give you some good starting points, by showing you what the finish line looks like.
If you’re the type of person that has a hard time visualizing a room as a finished product, find something you like and use it to guide the rest of the redesign process.
Pinterest is largely about style, and with a kitchen, choosing styles and getting everything to fit can often be the most difficult part.
3. Curtains — Searching for “curtains” might be a bit overwhelming, but you can even search for something like “curtains and hardwood floors”, which will still turn out a lot of material but in a more targeted context. If you’re looking for ideas for a particular room, this will give you plenty to work with.
4. Paint Colors and Lighting — Predicting how lighting, paint and molding are all going to look together in any room can be tricky, but odds are that you can find something you like on Pinterest and follow that example. There are tons of hits for every room in the house, so browse through and find some that you like to work off of.
Even beyond just searching for a room, you can search for just about any color room that you want and expect to get plenty of great ideas. This might be handy for those of you who have already decided on a color, but aren’t sure what shade, or how to make it work with the overall feel and style of the room.
5. Craft Room — The greatest strength of Pinterest is its focus on craftiness, thus there is no better place to generate ideas for your craft room. Even if you’ve already set one up, chances are Pinterest can make it better by simply delivering ideas that you wouldn’t have thought about on your own.
Since a craft room usually more of a decor issue than a construction issue, all you really need to make something happen is an idea. Pinterest can help you out with that all day long, even though it probably won’t take much longer than 30 seconds for you to find something you like.
If you’re not leveraging Pinterest for your home improvement ideas, you’re missing out on a lot of great inspiration.
Next time you’ve got one of these home improvement projects to work on, check with Pinterest first.
Ethan Price is a professional blogger that provides information and reviews for home theater design in Memphis. He writes for Phoenix Unequaled Home Entertainment, a leading company for home theater installation in Memphis.
