How to decide on the right style for your home

If you ever feel conflicted about your style or the next decisions to make in making your house your home, you’re not alone!

Maybe you’re just feeling stuck, or your current style isn’t working for you. Perhaps you’re living in a home that wasn’t custom designed for you or even close to your style to begin with.

Maybe you’re wrestling with how to update it. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the options, especially with the abundance of ideas and inspiration online!

So how can you find your style when there are so many directions you could go? What if you feel limited by the current style of your home or your budget?

Here’s the secret: It takes time

You don’t have to have a perfectly designed home to love where you live. You just have to find ways to feel more at home! I don’t think most of us can make the best decisions until we’ve had a chance to get to know the home we live in over several seasons.

You need time to learn the quirks and personality of your home so you can play up what you love about it and learn to minimize, downplay or fix what you don’t.

It takes time to gather style or redesign inspiration specifically for your home over a few seasons. Once you’ve collected ideas you can start to narrow down the options that not only consistently speak to you, but also make the most sense for your budget, lifestyle and your house.

It’s easy to lose our focus when we get swept up by a new idea, or if we are looking only at current trends or just following along with what everyone else is doing right now! Impulse decisions or following the trends might bring some immediate joy through those indecisive seasons, but it’s a wonderful feeling when you are finally able to settle into your own style with confidence.

Your style inspirations

Your style is not just the one you like the most online, but it’s what makes you feel the most at home where you actually live. That’s how you’ll know you’ve found your authentic style, it can be helpful to collect inspiration photos of rooms or features that you really love, such as social media images posted by your favourite high end furniture store.

But you don’t want to rush permanent or expensive decisions or make a lot of changes based on an inspiration photo until you’re certain that look or item will feel right in your own home. It’s a good idea to merge ideas from many interior designers so your style won’t be an exact replica of anyone else’s style.

It can be a slow process to figure it all out, but it’s worth it to be as authentic and comfortable in your home as possible.

Where to start

Sometimes to move forward you just need to make ONE design decision you know you’ll feel good about. That decision will lead to the next. You don’t have to stay stuck with what you have!

It’s certainly helpful to ask for opinions from trusted sources when you’re in doubt (or if you’re dealing with an historic home that needs to be preserved), but often creating a home you’ll truly love means you have to be brave enough to listen to your own voice so you can design a home that will feel right to you. After all, it’s your home and you’ll be the one living there!

Remember, it’s OK to make mistakes along the way. Rarely is a decorating mistake fatal! In fact, in some cases what might appear to be a “mistake” can actually give your home and style more character and personality. Other times it confirms for you what your style ISN’T. But even if it is a big mistake you need to correct, just learn from it and move on.

Lastly, you’ll never feel truly at home with your style until you get to know yourself and your home better. That process takes time, but it is all a part of the journey to making a house truly feel like home.

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This article via the Inspired Room does not constitute advice; readers should seek independent and personalised counsel from a trusted adviser that specialises in property, a tax accountant and property design specialist.