A room is like a blank canvas. How you fill this blank canvas can have a great deal of influence over your day-to-day life in small yet extremely important ways. A well set up room can make you happy every time you walk in.

For me there is one key ingredient that helps make a room truly happy and livable. Color. If a room has a certain color it can make me a little happier, a different color can be calming, and yet another color can be warm and inviting. There are many different ways you can control color in a room. Some of the best ways can involve a nice wood grain bookshelf, repainting the walls, a picture or painting, or even a rug. Paint is a wonderful general solution that is able to encompass the whole room. A bookshelf or a piece of furniture is an excellent localized addition and paintings or pictures can be an amazing vehicle for expression while adding color to a room at the same time.

I deal most with rugs. I feel they have the artistic and expressive advantages of a painting yet can warm a wider area. A rug also has the advantage of being a wonderfully tactile artistic medium. You can walk on a rug and rub up against it. Whether the rug is a smooth thin pile rug or a thick wool rug can have a great deal of effect on the feel of a room (to learn more check out www.hazaad.com). Rugs also have the advantage of being able to insulate a room from both sound and cold. The sound dampening abilities of a rug come in hand in situations where the neighbor has left out his hearing aid and cranks up the TV to compensate or a dorm room with a party below. Nice pile rugs can also be extremely comforting when it is cold outside and you are inside walking barefoot on the rug.

However, in the end the most important thing when looking to change the feel of a room is personal taste. Salesmen often try hard to convince you that their product is perfect for you. They don