Six Ways to Make Your Home Decor Better Reflect Your Personality
Americans spend nearly $28 billion on interior decoration every year, and for good reason. Our homes are incredibly private spaces: where we walk around in our underwear, where we talk to ourselves, where we spend intimate moments with our families. This is why decorating our homes is not something to be taken lightly: it is important that the space we live in is comfortable, comfortable and, perhaps most importantly, personal .
However, making your home beautiful while reflecting your personality can seem like a daunting task. TV design shows hold up impossible standards of supposed taste, and it’s easy to believe that you need a professional interior designer or your home will look tacky or cheap . It really isn’t that hard to fill your home with your own personality. The main thing is to remember that you live there, and not interior designers around the world. Here are six practical approaches to making your home decor reflect your personality.
Place for your things
The first step to making your home a welcoming space that reflects your personality is to make room for the things you love. If you collect something, think about ways to display that collection either in a specific area of the house or spread it out throughout the space. For example, if you’re an avid reader, instead of concentrating your books in a specific room, consider having books integrated throughout the space. If you collect art, hang it all over your walls without worrying about whether you have an “eye” for it or whether it’s expensive—show off those colorful garage sale or flea market paintings that bring you joy.
The key is to make what you like visible and part of the space. Not only does it literally bring visual aspects of your personality into every room, but it will make you happy every time you see it.
Be practical
One easy way to give your home an overall look is to treat each room as a neutral space from the start. Spaces in your home may have specific uses and applications. Some of them are obvious: kitchens are kitchens, bathrooms are bathrooms, but other rooms can be used as you see fit. Bedrooms can be offices, libraries , workshops, recording studios, or anything else. The landings, hallways and restrooms can also be used in different ways. When designing the look of these spaces, start with how you will use the room, not how the real estate agent described it or how the previous owners used it. Forget about trends and decorate the space according to the function you will use it for. This will make it easier to use the space the way you want and it will feel more personal.
Embrace the chaos
Many people experience a form of “decision paralysis” when decorating their home because they worry about getting it right or that people will think they have bad taste. This often leads to very neutral design decisions – after all, people might get bored with a neutral, safe aesthetic, but they won’t make fun of you for it.
However, the result is a home that will never feel like you—if you want your space to reflect your personality, you need to embrace chaos and stop worrying about perfection. This means choosing furniture, colors and accents that you like, regardless of whether they “work” in the traditional sense. The key here is to use ” slow decorating ” – focusing on decor that will last and be functional rather than instant gratification – and take your time. Your space will come together as you edit and refine your choices, and in the meantime, the things that give you energy will be displayed and used, personalizing your home.
Go small
Infusing your personality into your home’s decor doesn’t have to cause you to have a panic attack. If you’re not comfortable painting your walls your favorite colors or relying on your decidedly weird taste in vintage furniture, opt for more neutral pieces with big pieces and use accents and details to personalize them. This could be an accent wall in a favorite color, a wall with art or other objects that bring you joy, or simply thoughtful placement of small items that reflect your taste and add just a hint of your style. You can also continue to increase the level of unique parts over time, moving at your own pace.
Use your story
We are all the sum of our experiences. Every trip, every relationship, every job and adventure shapes us into who we are. Consider this when designing the exterior of your home. Souvenirs and keepsakes, photos of your friends and shared memories, and other pieces of your past can be inserted into the overall design of your home to give each room a personal touch.
One simple trick is to take something you like from your previous home. It could be anything – a doorknob or drawer handle that you like, a lamp or a piece of furniture that has been with you for many years. An example from my life is a cereal bowl from my childhood with a cartoon character on it: when I moved into my first apartment, I used it as a bowl for keys and change and took it with me to each subsequent house. I don’t need it anymore, but just having it in the room makes me feel at home. Things like this will bring a sense of history and continuity to a design that is about you and your journey, even if it doesn’t quite make sense in the design.
Subtly, not literally
It’s natural to look to established design themes and traditions as a starting point when designing your home. Perhaps you like a “sea” theme or are a lover of cottagecore . But if you take these sorts of topics too literally, you won’t really make the place reflect your personality – unless your whole personality is essentially nautical in nature.
Instead of decorating your space with literal visuals—ship’s wheels! wallpaper with a sailboat! shells are everywhere! – make it thinner. If you like a nautical theme, use a color palette inspired by this approach and use as many literal touches as you like. By keeping the color subtle, you can calibrate the theme to your liking, rather than drowning your personality in an off-the-shelf style.
And don’t be afraid to deviate. Just because you’ve found a color palette for your rustic dream doesn’t mean you can’t deviate from it or change its features. Choosing a color that makes you happy, even if it’s not officially considered appropriate for the theme you’re working on, is key to making it all feel like yours.