Spruce up your room without hiring an interior decorator. Suman Chhabria-Addepalli suggests you touch up your breathing space with ‘your’ preferences.

Hey! You don’t have to do things that would result in your elders plotting to throw you out! But do seek bright colours and hide those grandma cupboards. The trick is to have fun... create cool solutions to make your room something like you! For God’s sake... you have the latter half of your life to be uncool!

Think Different
No. Don’t browse through home decor stores or art galleries to figure what turns you on (or off), that may just kill your creativity. Also, make sure you don’t decide which colour you’ll paint your room after a fight with your boyfriend. A bad mood sometimes results in your choosing colours that make you feel grouchy, even if you are feeling better.

‘Merawala’ Cream
Okay, you aren’t able to independently decide on a single colour you like. Just look at a favourite rug or painting. Alternatively, you could try and figure out which colour you always tend to buy every time you go shopping for clothes, shoes, accessories, or even... lingerie! Before long, you will have a fair idea of how you would want your walls and furniture to look. Break all the rules and consult your gut feel.

Get Dramatic
Try a minimalist trick: Paint just one wall of your room in a bright colour. If you like drama, alter the colour of the wall just opposite the entrance of your room. Another idea — just repaint and bring alive the ceiling. That way, only you get to see the changes made. If you’re a particularly dreamy type, create a cool effect on your ceiling with pearly blue paint and stick glow-in-the-dark moon and stars (easily available at most decor shops) on it.

Create a Memory Wall
Add life and emotion to a bland surface.Take photos of all your favourite people (your grandparents, friends, pets) and cover half of a wall with them — a la ‘Chandni’. If you’re smug enough, you could even use blow-ups of your most flattering photographs! It’s really easy with blue tack, which is easily-removable glue.

Your Graffiti Board
You love the idea of having announcement boards. Okay, so green felt paper is boring. Pick up that old denim skirt (which doesn’t fit you now, anyways), neatly cut a swatch outta it, and nail it on an old square wooden board to hang on the wall. Don’t rip the pocket off; it can serve to store your envelopes. Pin your old greeting cards, favourite poems, or display all the earrings, which have lost their partners. This is your graffiti board... let your imagination run wild!

Display your Cartoon Loyalty
Paint or cut the picture of your favourite cartoon — Winnie the Pooh, Fido Dido, any thing that reflects your atti-dude — from old magazines and give it some body by pasting it on thermocol. Now, cut the thermocol into shape with a hot knife. Stick it on your wardrobe door or above your bed! Your brightly coloured toon will brighten your spirits way more than that non-committal Shah Rukh Khan portrait you’ve gaped at all of last year!

Flower Power
Create a fun flower theme if you like. Paint one wall a light green and paint a huge leafy sunflower in the middle of it. You could take help from a children’s drawing-made-easy book to trace a larger-than-life size sunflower on the wall, using a pencil. Once the outline looks good, go over it with a thin brush. Then, cover the other walls with many little randomly sketched flowers using a flower stencil.

Pull Your Curtain
You will need: A plain old white sheet, a spray can and your favourite colour. Paint any funky, interesting patterns that reflect your attitude. Fold the top edge of the sheet about two inches and hem it, so it can pass through your curtain rod. Voila! You have instant art that you can keep upgrading with fresh graffiti. If you have more than one sheet, use mirrored bangles to divide the two on the curtain rod. Use a shimmering banana clip to pinch the curtain at the waist, whenever you need to hide the graffiti from the eyes of an intruder.

Trespasser Chimes
If you fiercely guard your privacy, place a pretty wind chime just at the doorway to announce the entry of anyone planning to invade your room.

Worthy Junk
Grab that tiny old bucket, cover it with bright velvet paper (to get rid of its plastic look), tie pretty jute ropes in the holes where the handles first existed and hang it from the ceiling. This new basket swing is now home to those cuddly soft toys that you rather not let go of, gifted by ex-boyfriends that you did let go of.