In 30 years of decorating 15 different styles of homes, I’ve learned a lot by doing things wrong. The bright side – I have to share what I’ve learned so you can avoid making the same mistakes.
1. Paint your walls with the latest trendy colors
Painting your walls the latest color without a plan is the problem, not the trendy color itself.
I believe any color can be timeless when done right. But trying to update a tired room with just paint won’t give you the results you want. Although paint has a huge impact on the mood of a room, it has little impact on how we experience the room, how comfortable it is and how it functions.
I painted our cozy little room somewhat green but had a complete plan and direction for everything going on in the room.
Unfortunately, I didn’t follow my own advice even though I knew better, and asked the painters to use leftover dark green paint to paint a small hallway, because I was tired and didn’t want to make another decision and of course, I ended up hating it.
2. Buy a sofa that is not timeless
Listen, we all have sofas we don’t like and have to deal with for a while.
And before you attack me, the goal is for you to love and use your sofa. If you did, you did it right. This is not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about saving for a sofa, wanting to upgrade to something nice and comfortable and not understanding how to decide which sofa you won’t hate next week, or next year.
I learned this by purchasing my first sofa and vowed to never pay for a sofa that I wouldn’t love the look of for years and years and years.
The trick to finding a timeless sofa is to get a sofa with a style that has history. If you look at old decorating magazines from the 2000s, 80s, or almost any modern time period, you’ll see a lot of sofa silhouettes or shapes that we use today. These sofa styles have been around for a long time and keep coming back because they are timeless. There are much more out there than the six styles I’ve shared above, but if your sofa doesn’t have some roots in a particular style, it’s likely because it’s a trend.
It’s not about spending a lot of money, it’s about knowing what you’re looking for. Which brings me to my final point…
3. Wasting money by “saving money”
Photo from Zillow of an upscale home – Disclaimer, sometimes they outfit a home with smaller rugs to “show off” the flooring, but I promise you this room resonates.
Sometimes our biggest decorating mistakes are small.
As in a very small size.
We all want to be responsible with our budget and not spend more than required, so we choose smaller things at a lower cost. For example, a rug.
Ideally, your family room carpet should at least be firmly attached to the front feet of the seats. For large rooms like this, it’s not uncommon for even the back feet of furniture to be on the rug.
The right sized rug makes a room feel larger, makes the room more comfortable (echoes of farewell) and ultimately saves us money because it will visually fill the room. Now this room seemed strangely empty. The right size rug will make it feel full, and make us feel like we don’t need to buy more things to fill the room.
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This is exactly the kind of thing I teach every week in the Cozy Minimalist community, and I’d love to have you.
