Exactly how do you pin down my design style? What if my style is constantly changing? When do I make a purchase and when do I wait? Will I ever have the courage to make a bold design move?
You love design and you care how your surroundings look and feel. With these motivations, you are willing to try changing things up. Most likely you began (or are beginning) with a small budget, or you are hesitant to make large purchases, or drastic changes until you’re more sure about your style. Are these musings familiar? Let’s talk about the natural process of interior design style development.
Natural Design Style Development:
Interior design is a learned skill. No one is born with a distinct or refined design style. In the beginning, your budget may have limitations. It may simply be a small budget, but it could also be that you hesitate to make purchases until you are more certain of your personal design style. This is a great time to embrace the “placeholder”. A placeholder is just that, it stands in for a similar item in function/size/shape. The value in this is you can get the feel of the piece you’d rather have without the initial investment. You can see how that piece works with your other pieces and if it works with the way you and your family live.
There are a couple of beneficial tools that help you move along in exploring your design style. The first great tool is your camera. The camera captures your work, giving you clear feedback, and a record of your progress. Let me share two examples from my journey…
Compare these two mantels decorated for autumn and observe what the camera says. Whenever, or however your design style began your first attempts may have looked awkward. This is normal! Years ago I remember getting a gift card to Michael’s and being so excited to get some new fall decor. I chose carefully to stretch my budget as far as possible and came home with faux pumpkins, a wooden bucket, and a spray of cotton bolls. This was my first time styling a mantel and I was so proud. Matt was supportive and encouraging. It wasn’t until years later he told me he’d thought at the time that it looked like a bunch of random items plopped together ~ and he was right! Not only is this part of the journey, it’s OK. It is a part of the process you can’t bypass. You can’t know what works together, or what works in your home unless you experiment. Happily for us home decorators since we’re not famous, we can make our design messes in relative obscurity!
This mantel arrangement a few years later is much better. You can tell I was playing around with layering, movement, mixing heights, and textures, and keeping a tighter color scheme. We learn by doing and by studying. As you work through the initial stages of design development study your work through the lens of the camera, it’s great fun and encouraging to see your progress!
The second tool is to study the images that inspire you. Your Pinterest boards don’t lie. You will have collected many very similar pins, noting this repetition is important! The patterns you see in the images you collect are true reflections of what pleases your eye. There will be style elements that you will repeat in various ways as you practice decorating. The important takeaway is that these style elements are the core of your design style. They create the design style foundation for confidently building your home. It’s that easy! Both the input from your camera and from your inspirational images are imperative. Using these two tools will lead you to a knowledge of what is timeless for you.
The camera tells you what to correct, the images tell you what to aim for.
Here is another case in point. This is where I started with our kitchen when we first bought the house. Can you see the missing knob, and pencil marks on the raw sheetrock on the right above the stove? Anyway, the spice rack was probably thrifted for $3 – $5. This is very basic, but what stands out to me is there is already a blue & white transferware presence…
Turns out that blue & white is a core element of my design style. This next iteration over the stove included a freshly painted wall and a $10 upgrade to a mirrored shelf from the antique store.
Staying true to the core elements of my design style gave our kitchen a strong sense of intention and continuity.
Knowing the core elements of my design style also gave me the confidence to buy a lot of the decor for our kitchen in a relatively short amount of time. In the photo above you can see strong continuity in the color palette and style of decor. Most of these items were bought over six months. I would never have had the confidence to spend hundreds on decor had I not been certain these pieces were timeless investments for our home.
Our English country kitchen today. This is a real-life example of moving through the natural stages of developing a personal interior design style. Lengthy, detailed planning went into the color and design choices for the kitchen. This planning gave me a fairly good idea of how the kitchen would turn out, but as these projects can go there were some unexpected twists along the way.
Once you’ve gained confidence in the core elements of your design style, you may find yourself selling, giving away, or re-donating decor pieces (or placeholders) that aren’t quite “you.” And that’s exciting!
This will likely be the largest wave of “sorting” your style. Most important at this stage is to answer the “why” question. Why didn’t it work? Why didn’t you like it? This takes extra thought and deliberate effort, but skipping this step means you’ll likely make the same ill-informed buying decisions down the road…
At this point in your design journey confidently tackle bigger projects and make bolder, “riskier” choices such as going with wallpaper in your dining room, and it doesn’t feel so scary!
The “practicing” you did at the start of your design journey has revealed your core design elements.
A Distinct Refined Design Style:
In this phase, it is beneficial to narrow your inspirational study to specific interior designers whose work you admire and to be aware of what classic, timeless, quality items are sold in high-end shops. Studying the work of a professional designer will train your eye to what is balanced, practical, and well-proportioned. And “window shopping” the more elite stores will help you understand what inspires those designers. Plus, you don’t have to buy there to get that look!
- Your budget may, or may not have grown but you can recognize pieces worth investing in. You can identify quality furniture and handmade pieces (rugs, mirrors, lamps, etc). You don’t mind spending more on fewer pieces knowing that they are an investment in creating a home for your family. These are wise purchases!
- You don’t mind waiting for the perfect piece without having a placeholder. By this time you’ve adopted the “abundance” mindset and realize you don’t have to get the almost-perfect antique because there will never be another such chance. You understand having many “almost-the-right-thing” pieces in your home and you don’t want that regret or your budget tied up. There certainly will be more lovely pieces available!
- You buy well, buy slowly. Now that you have a clear direction for what your home needs you are willing to wait months for the right piece to come along ~ and believe me, it will! I hunted and waited fourteen months for an English rolled-arm sofa and only paid $85! The time it took didn’t seem long and the result is so satisfying!
- Your taste is recognizable by others. You may hear others say: “That’s so you”! Or they send you listings from Marketplace.
Here is one last photo to encourage you to whip out your camera and document the changes you make in your home. When you start to feel stuck, just look at how far you’ve come!
Friend, I hope this post has helped you sort out where you are in your interior design journey and has encouraged you to keep moving forward. Until next time,
Buy well, buy slowly!
Rachel