I bet you want your home to look like your home, to look stylish, cohesive, and cohesive, just like your favorite homes on HGTV, Pinterest, or Instagram.
But you don’t know where to start. Or maybe you’ve tried and feel like you’ve wasted a lot of time and money. Maybe you’ve googled everything and instead of helping you, it’s left you feeling even more confused.
If this is you, I want to help.
Here’s how to decorate your home in 5 simple steps!
Prefer to watch?
Want to listen on the go?
How most people decorate
Most people try to decorate this way….
They see a room they like on Pinterest and think that’s what they want their space to look like. They pin the image and keep scrolling. Then they see another room they like. And another, and another. The problem is, each space has different colors and styles. Now they’re confused.
So, they spend time on Google, searching for “how to decorate a home” articles. Because you might find the answers in those articles. But the 195 million results are posts like “11 Home Decorating Tips That Can’t Be Wrong,” or “52 Home Decorating Secrets,” which are full of great ideas for different parts of home decorating, but none of them say where to start or share the next steps. That just means more frustration and confusion.
Then they try to make their homes look like the homes of the Instagrammers they love. They go out and buy paint, a new rug, some pillows. Maybe a new lamp or two. But when they get home, it doesn’t look right.
Maybe they go out to shop for items and are so overwhelmed by the choices they have that they can’t pick anything. So they come home with nothing. They’re back to square one.
Or they want to use what they already have, but they just can’t seem to fit everything together. No matter how they rearrange the furniture and accessories, the room still looks unnatural.
They have now wasted a lot of time and money, and have made no progress.
They leave their heads scratching their heads, wondering, “Why can’t I just figure out this decor thing?”
Does this sound familiar?
I wasn’t always good at decorating either.
I wasn’t always good at decorating, and I didn’t know how to decorate our house at all.
Sure, I could recognize a beautiful space when I saw it, but I certainly couldn’t create one.
Want to know why?
Because I was decorating haphazardly, trying to follow all the tips and tricks in no particular order. Just like the non-virtual person in the story above!
Don’t believe me? Look at this picture of our first house:
There is no balance – nothing on the left to visually balance the cabinet on the right. There is no texture – except for the wall-to-wall rug. The colors are mismatched – warm wood and wood but cool rug. And what is that “wreath” above the picture frames?!
(You can see more of my previous decor in this post if you’re curious.)
The problem was that I would read random articles and buy this from here, pick up that from there, and try this paint color on this wall.
But there was no order, no organization, no step-by-step “do this first, then that.”
So, I did my best and learned everything I could.
I studied photos of homes I loved to find every beautiful detail. I visited model homes. I browsed design magazines and perused high-end catalogs. I even completed an in-depth interior design program at a renowned New York design school to fill in any gaps I might have missed on my own. (Which, to be honest, was kind of boring.)
All this took me years.
But with all that practice and learning, I finally – finally – figured out how to put everything together to make our entire home comfortable and beautiful.
Here’s an illustration of how we decorated our first home, versus how we decorated our third home:
And our current home:
Does any of this sound familiar? Are you struggling with spaces in your home that you don’t like? Wondering how to do this decorating thing?
Well, here’s how to decorate your home in five simple steps.
How to Decorate Your Home in 5 Simple Steps
Step 1: Find your unique style DNA
Finding the DNA of your unique style helps you make your design choices clear and reliable, turning scattered ideas into your unique, integrated, and cohesive style.
You can do this by intentionally gathering inspiration and looking for similarities in style, color, pattern, shape, texture, and materials.
Step 2: Plan your space
Form follows function, which is just a fancy way of saying that things should fit and serve their purpose, and then they can look beautiful.
Create your floor plan and arrange furniture based on the room’s uses, the people using the space, and the focal point of the room.
Then use any existing furniture or new pieces to fit your unique style and budget.
Step 3: Add curtains, rugs, and lighting.
We underestimate the design power of the right rug, well-hung curtains, and some good lighting in a room while overestimating the power of all those pretty little things we want to bring home from Target, Home Goods, Home Sense, or wherever.
After you have arranged the floor plan, next comes the curtains, rugs and lighting.
Step 4: Decorate the walls.
This means paint, art, feature or focal walls, decorative wall treatments—anything like that.
Just as a builder waits patiently for the foundation to be laid, decorating your walls only after the essential elements—area furniture, rugs, curtains, and lighting—are in place ensures that you get the right decor without wasting any more time or money.
Although painting after the furniture is installed may seem pointless, you can only choose good paint colors after completing the previous steps. Similarly, you can only choose the size of the artwork you need after installing the curtains and other such things.
Step 5: Add accessories
Accessories are the finishing touches in a room, the final step, the little details – not the starting point or the main thing.
Buying small gifts, candles, figurines or other decorations can satisfy your need to shop, but if the rest of your space isn’t finished, those decor pieces and accessories will only cause stress and clutter.
Wait until you’ve finished the rest of the steps to choose accessories, and then don’t overdo it.
Unless your room is really large, you only need:
A few pillows and 1-3 miniatures or groups and a centerpiece on a coffee table, dining table or dresser.
You want a room that is finished, but not overdone or cluttered.
Accessories are the finishing touches to a room. The last step, the little details – not the main starting point or the main thing.
summary
Decorating your home can be really fun if you do it in the right order:
Find your unique style DNA Plan your space Add curtains, rugs, lighting Decorate the walls, that’s paint and art Add some accessories.
That’s it. This is how you can decorate your home in five simple steps.
Leave a comment: Where are you stuck in your decorating?
