How to Find Your Decorating Style
Finding your decorating style can feel overwhelming and hard to pinpoint. But with these 6 easy steps, you’ll be decorating with confidence in no time!
Does the search for defining your decorating style seem to leave you with more questions than answers?
Do you find yourself surrounded by stuff you once loved and don’t anymore? Or maybe it all feels mis-matched and pieced together. Maybe you can’t put your finger on it, but nothing goes together. It’s a common feeling. But I’m here to help you find your decorating style so that you feel confident choosing decor for your home going forward.
This elusive hunt for my “official decorating style” has plagued me for more years than I’d care to admit. My style has changed and morphed over the years and at times I’ve been supremely frustrated by decorating.
Figuring out what I LOVE in decorating has been a journey, but my hope is that some of the things I’ve learned about knowing my style and decorating with confidence with help YOU in your journey too.
Let’s jump in, shall we?
How to Find Your Decorating Style
1. Find Your Dream Inspiration & what is all has in common!
Whether you keep your dream inspiration in a binder of magazine cutouts or on Pinterest boards, take a look and see what all you have in common. Ask yourself about repeating themes each of these areas:
- Colors
- Metal finishes
- Fabrics
- Patterns
- Open and airy vs. dark and moody
- Architecture
- ornate vs. clean lines
- formal vs. relaxed
- quirky vs. historical
- neutral color scheme vs. neutral with pops of colors
- color on the walls vs. bright and bold colors everywhere
Even if you learn what the design styles are, they aren’t all a one-size-fits-all. Truthfully, I don’t care whether I have a label for my style or not. I just want to know what I like and how to find it!
I have multiple Pinterest boards that hold inspiration for different rooms of the home. So, I can quickly go into one of those and start to see what I love.
I’ve found I’m most drawn to:
- Architectural details with wood trim and moldings
- Neutral furniture
- Medium wood tones
- Blue, green, gray and pink accents
- Pops of colors in decor accents and pillows
- Light colors on the walls, or dark colors when it’s contrasted with lots of white trim
- Brass or oil rubbed bronze metals
- Curtains in solid colors or minimally patterned
- Lots of greenery
- White kitchens with pops of color and wood tones
So, make your list of loves and you’ll be well on your way to know your style!
2. Discover your Color Palette
I find that figuring out your style is easier to do when you figure out the colors you love. Take the colors you saw the most of in Step 1 and use them to begin your Home Color Palette.
I wrote a post all about discovering and defining your Whole Home Color Palette. {Click Here} I would encourage you to take a step over there and figure that out as your next step.
Follow that up with defining your favorite textures and patterns (if any) and you’ll be steps ahead of everyone else!
Tip: If you’re still struggling with a color palette, check out your clothes closet. What colors are you drawn to in fashion? This will usually give you a good place to start! It’s no surprise that I love navy, medium blues and pink!
3. Take Direction from Your Home’s Style
Is your home a blank slate with no personality or does it have history or lend itself to one style or another.
My current home could be called a “Cape Cod” style home, which lends itself to a more traditional style. Maybe your home is a modern home or farmhouse.
In my previous home, it was pretty much a blank slate with not much style leaning one way or another. It was a big blank builder-beige box.
So, I leaned a little more farmhouse in that home with a lot of rustic decor.
But my current home is a bit more fancy with hefty crown molding throughout, a butler’s pantry, glass-front cabinets in the kitchen and built-in bookshelves. It doesn’t feel like farmhouse style fits here at all!
So, I’m slowly going a different direction. It’s still me, but it’s more transitional with more brass and more upscale decor with a little hint of the farmhouse style I loved in my old house.
That brings my to a point. It’s OK to change and evolve your style over time. Heck, at one point I decorated with the color red like there was no tomorrow. Now, I never decorate with red. I slowly weeded it out of my decor and replaced it with pops of pink. 💗
In summary: take notes on your home and let it play into your style!
4. Take Inventory of Your Current Decor & Eliminate What You Don’t Love
Do you still love your current decor? Are their pieces you would never part with and other things you just bought to fill a space?
Round up all of your decor. As you pick up each piece, ask yourself these questions:
- BEST: If you have more than one of something, is it the best one? Keep only the best!
- FAVORITE: Is it your favorite? Would you buy it again if you saw it in the store?
- NECESSARY: Is it necessary? Even if it’s not your favorite or the best, do you need a mirror in the powder room until you can replace it? Then keep it for now.
Regardless of your style, if your home is only filled with what you love, it’s the best, your favorite – you will love coming home to it. And you can build your style on the foundation of your current beloved decor!
5. Consider Your Lifestyle
How you live in your home should play a huge role in how to style your home.
Do you have small kids and need to have furniture that is kid-friendly: like slipcovered or leather furniture (easy to wash) and rugs with a busy pattern (easily hides stains)? Do your lamps need to be wooden so that if they fall off the table, they won’t break?
Are you and your spouse the only two people in the home? Maybe you can display your antique collection in a glass coffee table. And those beautiful ceramic lamps in your living room won’t get knocked over. 😊
Select furniture and styles that will add to the livability of your home. What is a home if you can’t enjoy it?
Note: as a mom of young kids. You can totally have a beautiful, stylish space with little kids. Get creative with toy storage (think baskets with lids) and consider what is kid-friendly when you purchase items. There’s also something to be said about teaching kids to treat things with care and leaving some of Mommy’s things alone. It’s all a balance, but it can be done!
6. Take an Online Style Quiz
Who doesn’t love a quiz? And even better if it’ll help you define your style, right? If you take a couple of online decorating quizzes and come up with the same or similar answers, then I’d say you’re on the right track! I really liked these two: HGTV Quiz & The Decorist. But you can also google “decorating style quiz” and you’ll see a ton!
I’ve oftentimes thought my style was transitional style, which just means it’s a combination of traditional and contemporary with a little extra lean on the traditional side. And that’s mostly what the quizzes tell me, too!
Finally, Layer in What You Love
At the end of the day, after you’ve found the commonalities in your inspiration, you’ve chosen your color palette and you’re considered the style of your home, you’ve got to do what you love!
The most beautiful homes aren’t decorated by someone who is worried about whether something they love is modern or boho or farmhouse. Instead they use what they love. They layer it in over other things they love. And in the end you’ve created a beautiful home that you want to come home to.
I have loved decoratIng for years, and you are so right about personal style evolving! Sometimes when I think back on colors I used to decorate with a lot, or trendy projects I tried (looking at you, sponge painted walls), I cringe, but then we need to remind ourselves that it’s what we liked at the time (kind of like fashion). It would be boring to never change things, but also it’s okay to stick with what you truly love them. We just moved into our first new custom modified Craftsman style home (after living in a manufactured home for twenty years, which is extreme basic builder grade), and after 27 years of marriage and now in our fourth house, it’s been interesting to see what pieces have stood the test of time and that I still love. I still have a pair of lace cafe curtains I bought early marriage to use on a door with a glass window. In my last house they were in the master bedroom, and now they fit perfectly used individually in our two bathroom windows for privacy. I took the quizzes and got traditional and cottage, which I think is spot on for me! In our last house I went crazy with color on the walls, but in this house I’m keeping the backgrounds more neutral and using color more as accents. My long time favorite colors are greens, blues and reds with warm neutrals and metals and medium to dark brown stained woods and I love vintage/antique pieces. Love your blog and look forward to seeing more of your new home transformations!
I love your style. We are similar in our deco taste. I have found that experimenting is the only way to truly know what you love. I love neutral wall color and lots of accent colors with some metals mixed in. Thanks for Sharing.
I am in love. Wow! helpful tips, and ideas. love your home colors. I have a lot to start doing after viewing this outstanding post.
Thanks!
Stay safe and healthy
Wow! Take out the color pink in your list of loves in step one, and it could be my list! Thanks for this help…will be studying further and exploring your Pinterest boards for more inspiration.