Tips On How To Create A Home Interior Design You Love
When creating your home design, are you focusing on how everything looks? Or are you more interested in the feeling your decor creates?
Feeling disconnected from your home’s design often leads to mindless, frantic shopping to try to fix the problem. But purchasing without a plan rarely works, and results in a cluttered and disjointed interior.
Do you feel like your home is picture-perfect, but bland and uninviting?
If so, you’re in the right place.
In this article, we provide actionable tips for curating design inspiration, shopping with intention, and decorating in a way that highlights your personal design style. By changing the way you approach home interior design, you’ll be able to create interiors that showcase your personality and make you feel at home.
Identify What’s Lacking From Your Existing Design
Before you start buying furniture and arranging decorative items on your display shelf, take a step back and examine the existing spaces in your home. What aspect of each space frustrates you or leaves you dissatisfied?
When you have a better idea of why you don’t love your home’s design, you have a clear goal to aim for. This sense of direction makes it easy to shop and design with purpose – and create a space you truly love.
In most cases, you’ll find that your space lacks one of the following characteristics:
1. Personality
A lack of personality in interior design often results in picture-perfect scenes that you don’t feel personally connected to.
Your design probably lacks personality if you:
- Are bored with your decor
- Feel like you can’t fully relax in the space that surrounds you.
- Find your home to be unwelcoming and cold
2. Functionality
A lack of functionality in interior design results in spaces that don’t suit your lifestyle and make it hard for you to enjoy your home.
Your design probably lacks functionality if you:
- Feel frustrated with each room’s layout
- Frequently find your home unorganized and cluttered
- Constantly bump into your furniture
3. Cohesion
A lack of cohesion in interior design results in a home that feels disjointed and chaotic.
Your design probably lacks cohesion if you:
- Can’t see how each room’s design relates to the others
- Frequently purchase decor items that don’t match anything you already own
- Find yourself wondering why you chose that piece of furniture
Curate Inspiration To Add Personality To Your Designs
Now that you know what’s missing from your existing design, you can begin collecting ideas for the best way to fill that gap. But since design inspiration can come from anywhere, many homeowners don’t know where to start.
The best way to nail down your personal style is to create a moodboard and fill it with images that catch your eye or inspire you. The most common places to find decor images are on Pinterest and Instagram, but you could also find inspiration in magazines, movies, or even a friend’s home.
Use your mood board to help you plan your home interior design by isolating color palettes that appeal to you, furniture styles you’re drawn to, and patterns you can’t stay away from. Best rule of thumb or the “Rule of three” as often called to successfully work towards a conclusion, is to limit you selection of every item, to three.
For example, is there a movie with decor that appeals to you? Anything that looks like it’d fit into the movie’s aesthetic is likely to fill you with joy for years to come. You can design using the movie’s color palette as a source of inspiration. Look for curtains that would fit into that movie set. Use wallpaper or rugs that remind you of your favorite scene.
Why You Shouldn’t Always Follow Interior Design Trends
Following the latest interior design trends may guarantee your home is stylish – but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll love the spaces you create. Trends fade in and out of style so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with them. And if you only like a feature because it’s trending, you’ll probably need to replace it soon.
When a design trend catches your eye, use it as a jumping-off point for your design. Figure out what characteristic of the trend appeals to you. Does it look organized and peaceful? Does it create a feeling of luxurious interior design? Does it add a fun pop of color?
Take the aspect that appeals to you and incorporate it into your design using timeless pieces, or something easy to switch out in a few month’s time. For example, if a hand-painted, brightly colored, checker-patterned wall catches your eye – add that pattern and color through checker-patterned throw pillows or a rug.
Keep Functionality And Lifestyle In Mind
The quickest way to resent a space is to feel frustrated with it time and time again.
Your furnishing and decor need to enhance your lifestyle, not inhibit it. If you have limited space in your living room, extra-depth sofas will overwhelm the space and make it difficult to move around the room. If you have animals, children, or grandchildren running around your home, any delicate and fragile decor will become a source of tension and worry.
When choosing furniture pieces and decor styles for your home, don’t forget the function the room fulfills. You want each room to facilitate that function first and look good second.
Here are our top tips for designing a functional space:
- Choose furniture pieces that match the size of the room
- Limit the amount of decor you use in high-use or high-traffic areas, like your kitchen counters or entryway
- Use furniture with hidden storage to limit visual clutter and maximize utility
- Make use of wall space to hang art and decor rather than filling up all your surfaces
- Use cabinets with glass inserts to display fragile items out of harm’s way
Coordinate Different Design Styles For Design Cohesion
It’s incredibly rare for every member of a household to have the same design style and set of interests. When designing your home’s interior, keep in mind how the rest of your household uses each space and how they’ll feel once you’re finished decorating.
Don’t be afraid to ask your family members or roommates for their opinions on furniture, wallpaper samples, or decor pieces. Disagreements give you a chance to flex your creative muscles and come up with something unique as a compromise!
To coordinate different design styles, look for any similarities between the two styles and use those features as the base of your design. This method honors both styles without letting one dominate the final design.
For example, modern interiors have little to no intricate details, they make use of a limited color palette, and they prioritize maintaining open spaces. Gothic interiors are ornate, grand, and filled with moody colors and rich textures. To create a space that balances these two polar opposite styles, you could do the following:
- Use a limited but dark and moody color palette
- Create subtle grandiosity by hanging curtains near the ceiling
- Use a large mirror to fill up the wall without adding too much extra detail
- Use thick, luxurious, and unpatterned fabrics for sofas and throw pillows
- Opt for simple chandelier light fixtures to balance simplicity with intricacy
Create A Home Interior Design You Love With Designer’s Mark
Every homeowner deserves to love the way their home looks and feels. Whether your current design lacks personality, functionality, or cohesion, it won’t take long for you to find the inspiration and direction you need. Especially when you have Designer’s Mark on your side…
At Designer’s Mark, we pride ourselves on curating pieces of the highest quality in timeless styles and versatile designs. Whether you’re looking for furniture, decor pieces, wall coverings, lighting, or fabrics, we have what you need to create a home interior design you love.
Looking for more inspiration? Visit our Interior Design Blog for design tips, styling guides, and more.