Here are four ways you can design a home you love!
1. Define your design standards.
Rather than feeling the pressure of unrealistic standards, perfectionism or comparison, or feeling like you can’t do the things you want to do, set your own design standards! You can determine what actually matters to you. Give yourself a reasonable and personal design standard to live up to! Make a list of what matters to you in how you decorate. Hang it on your wall and when you start to feel like you aren’t measuring up to your own expectations, or if you aren’t keeping up with someone else’s standard, refresh your memory about what YOUR design standards are.
2. Set seasonal priorities.
Rather than just scrolling or shopping aimlessly, or feeling overwhelmed by options, home projects or design decisions, I start each season with a plan. I find helps so much to set some priorities that keep me grounded and focused on what is important to me.
It’s really a wonderful practice to set up a seasonal rhythm that helps you prioritize. You can also use this practice to make room for more joy and “balance” in each season. I share how I set my 5 seasonal priorities in a foundational course called Welcoming a New Season to Your Home in HomeBody Gathering Place. You can use this simple rhythm as a planning tool or inspiration to think through your own plans and home priorities. Use it at the start of the season before you dive into home improvement projects. It’s important to consider what is ahead for your family, what’s happening in your home or personal life, and find more clarity on where you want to invest time or money at home so you can make the most of what you have.
3. Name your authentic style.
Your style should be unique to you. It doesn’t have to have a name anyone else would recognize! Instead of basing decorating decisions or how you feel about your home on whether or not it reflects a well-known or current design style, make up your own! How could you describe or define your style? Don’t let arbitrary magazine headlines, or the latest trends, or another designer’s personal opinion cause you to be frustrated or unhappy with your home.
Make up your own style definition!
Our style is found in the personal little details of what makes us who we are, it isn’t necessarily going to be found in the quiz that we take online or defined by the rooms we love the most on Instagram.
I offer a style course and a Room Recipe decorating course along with weekly teaching to help walk members of HomeBody Gathering Place through this personal process. You’ll learn to define and embrace your unique style as well as ways to express it creatively and personally in your home.
4. Tell a personal and meaningful story at home.
Creating a home you love is about learning to tell a meaningful story with your home. I like to make it fun — decorating doesn’t have to be so serious or mysterious! While you can certainly google a list of decorating rules, find lots of recommendations of things to buy, or learn principles to design a cookie cutter home, I love to help people design a home in a more personal and meaningful way.
To create a home we love, we have to learn how to make the process meaningful and personal, too. A home takes time. If we don’t enjoy the experience, or we don’t know how to make decisions that will make our home a reflection of our family, we’re writing the wrong story into the walls of our home.
When we invest ourselves and weave our personal stories into the experience of home-creating, we build connections to our home that will make us love it an our lives more. I love to teach people how to tell a meaningful story in their home!
Would you like to learn more about embracing your style, decorating and creating a home you love?
I’d love to help you! I offer a decorating course called Room Recipe in my community HomeBody Gathering Place. You’ll learn the four ingredients I use to design any room, whether it’s simply rearranging what I have or redesigning an entire room!
Whether you’re new to decorating or have enjoyed it for a long time, Room Recipe will inspire you to look at your rooms and the things you decorate with in a new way.
We use our four simple ingredients as a fun framework to be able to teach specific principles and share decorating how to’s such as what to do with things you have, how to style accessories, and ways we can evolve our home and decorating style over time.
Each week in the HGP I will show you ways these ingredients help us create a home we truly love (and even how I applied them to my own spaces) Within the course we also offer Decorating Cheat Sheets so you can easily find our helpful design principles, and you can also can ask questions or get help in the community.
