Summer is a great time to redecorate your home. There are many important changes you can make to your home to make it better for the summer. Here are 5 impactful ways to give your home a positive seasonal makeover.

1. Rearrange your furniture to create a more open floor plan: The kids might be home on summer vacation and running around more. Or perhaps you'll be having more people over for backyard barbecues and you need the indoor setup to accomodate a flow of guests coming in and out. Whereas in the fall and winter your arrangement should be centralized and facilitate people gathering around a central area, in the summer you want more areas of open space. Also it is great if most seats available have a view of the outside. There are pros and cons of an open floor plan, for sure, but in the summer the good definitely outweighs the bad.

2. Bring the outdoors in: Keep vases full of fresh cut flowers from your yard all throughout the house. Also put decorative bowls full of fresh fruit out on display. If the temperature is going to prevent keeping your shades pulled open then perhaps planting some trees to provide shade might be a good alternative. Click here for information on some fast growing shade trees. It's even a good time to replace those fall and winter scented candles, if you have any, with summer scents like basil and lavender.

3. Keep it light and airy: It's time to switch out the heavy blankets for some light weight and light colored duvets. The more white fabrics you can introduce into the home the better. You can get cheap vases and pots from thrift stores and paint them white too. Done correctly, this might even be a good time to bring out white couch covers and chair covers. A great point from Rachel Ashwell, one of the primary designers behind the shabby chic movement, is that white is never boring. Beige can be boring but white is very stark and impactful.

4. Roll up the rug: Think of a cozy fall room with a fire going and you'll likely also imagine a rug on the floor. Rugs add warmth and are a great winter home item but they might need to go on summer vacation. Packing the rugs away in the warm weather can really open up a room and create a cooler space as well. Also, since you'll likely have the doors open more, it makes it easier to sweep up a rugless floor and there won't be as much dirt tracked in on the rug either.

5. Setup your outside to be more like the inside: Do you sometimes wish you could add a few hundred square feet of space to your home? Well, in the summer you can often easily do that! You could go to the extreme and set up a canopy or tent in the backyard to be your new dining room for the summer. Or you can section off parts of your backyard, patio, or balcony to have different purposes. You could set up a section that has shade and power outlets to be your little work section. Basically the idea is to have an area for you to do all that you normally do inside but outside instead.