When you buy a house, it takes a while for it to start feeling like your home. You fill it with the stuff you already had, but it needs something new to mark it out as a fresh start and so you can start stamping your personality and interests on it, like a dog marking its territory.

Some people go for artwork – abstract paintings, small sculptures, classy black-and-white photography of the New York skyline.

Some people prefer to fill their living room with a huge home cinema system, featuring surround sound speakers, a massive television and shelves bursting with DVDs and Blu-Rays. Some, though, indulge their romantic side and hang up a few decorative hearts accessories.

Heart decorations have always been popular – they’re an iconic symbol of love and passion, and many designers and creative executives (think about the iconic I Love New York ad campaign) have tapped into this perception of them to create the decorations that now adorn homes across the world.

Their simple shape means that they can be modified in almost any way – with colours, materials, sizes, logos or writing, for example – to make them stand out and provide a unique contemporary feel to any room they’re placed in.

There are a great many designers and retailers who manufacture and sell heart decorations across the UK, such as Taunton-based Hearts and Hens, which offers a huge range of highly affordable decorative heart accessories that must be close to exhausting every modification option you can think of.

Its lines are constantly changing and evolving, and there’s no guarantee that a certain design will be replaced after it sells out, so if you see something you like, grab it!

In addition, hearts are an extremely popular design for jewellery, as their symbolism makes them likely to be bought by men for their girlfriends or wives to demonstrate their love for them. They work as necklaces, earrings and even as charms to be attached to charm bracelets.

You don’t want to overdo the decoration of your house with hearts (unless you REALLY like them) but one or two well-chosen pieces dotted around in separate rooms can look very nice and complement the overall feel of the house well. With a good eye, you can invest in these decorations to truly turn your house into a home – and we all know that’s where the heart is.