How to Find Your Decorating Style

Have you ever gone out and bought some decor for your house, like artwork or throw pillows or a lamp only to bring them home and find that they really don’t work in your space?

Do you have a hard time even describing what you want your home to look like and feel like?

Are you unsure of where to start decorating your home?

The reason you are unsure and are having trouble with these things is because when you are decorating your home you need to start by finding your unique decorating style. 

And in the post, I’m going to show you exactly how to do that!

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Finding Your Decorating Style is the First Step in Decorating

Defining your decorating style is the FIRST STEP in creating a beautiful home you love because every decorating choice you make is based on the decorating style that you choose:

• Paint colors
• Throw Pillows
• Furniture
• Rugs
• Curtains
• Art
• Lighting

All of those are determined by the style you want to use in your home.

And when you take the time to really get to know your decorating style, these choices become MUCH easier to make, and decorating your home becomes very simple.

I Really Struggled to Find My Style

When I was just starting to play around with decorating our home many years ago, it took a lot of trial and error and time and money to get it to a place that I loved and would call beautiful because I didn’t know my style or that that’s where I should even start.

Back then, no blogs or online courses taught decorating. There was no Instagram, there was no Pinterest. The best we had were magazines filled with perfectly styled, professionally designed homes.

No one told me where to begin or how to find my unique style, so I fumbled for a long time trying to figure it out for myself.

Eventually, after several years of practice and much time and money, I finally got the hang of it.

And I figured out it doesn’t matter how big or small your house is, where you live, how many homes you’ve lived in, or how many times you’ve tried to decorate before. Where you start is always the same: You always have to find your decorating style FIRST. And that style can be completely unique to you. I like to call it Your Unique Style DNA, and figuring it out is kind of like solving a puzzle.

It helps your design choices become clear and confident, turning all those scattered ideas and things that you see here, there, and everywhere on Instagram and Pinterest, and maybe magazines into a complete and cohesive style that’s uniquely you.

So, how do you do that?

How to Find Your Unique Decorating Style

You may think that your style is one of the standard decorating styles like farmhouse, glam, or country. But more likely than not, it is a combination of decorating styles that are uniquely you.

You can unearth your unique style in three steps.

1. Ask yourself how you want your home to feel

The first step is to ask yourself how you want your home to feel.

Do you want it to feel whimsical or sophisticated, relaxed or elegant? Eclectic or minimalistic? Fun or buttoned-up?

Brainstorm all the feelings you’d like to feel when you enter your home. Now list out the things you’d like others to feel when they enter your home.

Now, go back through that list and refine it down to your top three. Hold onto these three feelings because you’ll need them in a minute…

2. PURPOSEFULLY gather inspiration

The next step is to gather inspiration. But with purpose.

Purposefully gathering inspiration leads to clarity and confidence in your design choices.

You can use magazines or books like I did way back when. But I recommend using Pinterest now. Here’s how to gather inspiration with purpose for finding your design style:

• Create a whole board that is for your house inspiration. Give it a name, like “House Inspiration” or “My Style Inspiration.”
• Pin all the rooms, spaces, and home things that you like, all those inspirational pictures that you’ve sort of scrolled through and seen before.
• Then deliberately search for home things that you know you like and pin those things. Use specific search terms like “tufted ottoman” or “harvest table.”

You can create separate board sections for each room in your home, but I would say for now to just stick with one board and pin everything to that so you can see it all at one, scrolling glance.

3. Analyze your inspiration

The third step is to analyze all those inspiration pins.

Look at the pins that you’ve collected and see if they have anything in common. Which of the following are similar or repeated in the photos you’ve pinned?

• patterns
• shapes
• textures
• colors
• materials

Write down your top three of each of those things. Pattern, color, texture, shape, material, and even the style if you know it.

Now, compare all those things that you just wrote down to the three feelings that you wrote down already. Do those things align? Do all of those things go with the feelings you want in your home?

For example, if you choose and pin a whole bunch of chrome and metal and sleek things, but you want your home to be warm and cozy, those things don’t go together.

If your inspiration photos and feelings don’t align, go back to Pinterest and re-pin more pictures that suit the feelings, those top three feelings you wrote down. Then look for the commonalities.

Then create a cheat sheet for yourself with the things you love (like one of my students did as seen below). Take this with you when you go shopping. Give the style it represents a name if you wish. This is the cheat sheet for your unique decorating style!

Take My Style Quiz

I highly recommend the three steps above, but you can also take a quiz to help you find your decorating style.

I have a What’s Your Decorating Style? quiz below that you can take in just a few minutes. It may help you define your decorating style a little bit more.

Summary

Again, defining your decorating style is the first step in decorating your home because every single decorating choice you make after that is based on the decorating style that you love.

You can find your style by:

• identifying how you want your home to feel
• purposefully gathering inspiration, and then
• analyzing that inspiration for similar colors, shapes, textures, patterns, and materials

Remember that purposefully gathering inspiration leads to clarity and confidence in your design choices.

So purposefully go and gather that inspiration and figure out what your unique decorating style is. Then come back here and share it in the comments!