Adding Moorish Features When Redecorating Your Home

When redecorating your home, you may come up with lots of design themes, from English country to Moorish Moroccan. If the latter idea piques your interest, this guide on how to add Arabic-style influences to your home will certainly help.

A new lick of paint

The best way to add a Middle Eastern look to your home is to give your rooms a new lick of paint. There are lots of colours you can choose from, with warm, rich tones being particularly popular with this theme. Think reds, oranges and peach shades, which you can contrast together to add a bit more texture to your room.

Blues are also a popular shade if you want to make your house look like an apartment in Dubai or Morocco. Go for a rich blue, which you can make a feature wall out of or choose a blue wallpaper that has Arab-style stencilling in a gold colour. Any regal shade, such as violet or emerald will also look effective in your house.

Alternatively, if you prefer neutral shades or are fearful bold colours will make your rooms appear smaller, you can opt for a clean, crisp white. A good way to add a bit of colour if you do this is by opting for statement curtains such as gold or cobalt blues ones.

Archways

You might have the opportunity to really exercise your DIY skills in your house, in which case you may wish to add an archway in one or two of your rooms. Archways are particularly characteristic of Moroccan properties, so this will really help add a Middle Eastern look to your home.

A great way to add an archway is in an open plan area, such as a combined living and dining room or a kitchen-cum-diner. An archway between the two spaces will help divide the two distinct areas, while also creating a Moorish appearance.

Tiles and mosaics

If you fancy yourself a dabhand at tiling, you can have a go at putting lots of intricate Moroccan-style tiles down. The Arabic look is all about mosaics, so you have a free reign with where you want to place your tiles. For instance, they will look fabulous surrounding a fireplace, as a splashback in your kitchen or as part of your bed surround in your bedroom.

One way to add mosaic patterns to your home without having to do any detailed tiling yourself is to buy mirrors surrounded in a beautiful mosaic frame. Round mirrors are particularly typical of Middle Eastern properties, although you can also find rectangle and square ones if you prefer.

Invest in traditional furniture

As well as making big changes to your rooms, such as painting and tiling, you can also completely revamp your property simply by investing in new furniture. A large sofa with plenty of colourful cushions will look particularly effective, while dark wooden furniture, coffee tables with metallic trays and leather poufs also help to create the look.

You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money on furniture, as lots of small items can help create the look.

Fill rooms with knick knacks

Among the knick knacks you can get to really show off a Middle Eastern appearance in your house are lots of candles and intricately designed tapestries. You can add a thick rug to the floor, which will help bring the whole look together, particularly if you choose one in complimentary colours to your walls. Not only will these definitely help bring the whole theme together, but they will keep warmth in the room, which means you can spend less on your heating bills!

When most people think of Moorish-style rooms, images of wall-hung fabrics, plush cushions and lanterns upon lanterns spring to mind. Indeed, lanterns definitely lend a Moroccan character to a property, so it is worthwhile buying several of these. You can find candlelit lanterns that you can scatter around rooms, for example, in fireplaces or on a set of nested tables. Alternatively, you can find larger electric lamps with the same stained glass that also encapsulate the look and can be left on for longer periods of time.

These are just a few ideas on how to create a Middle Eastern look in your home, but if you need some more inspiration, it is worth visiting somewhere like Morocco, Egypt, Turkey or Dubai in order to see how this type of interior design is really done!

Natasha Al-Atassi is a travel enthusiast and property blogger, she spends smost of her time traveling and blogging for various publications including Vita Investment.