With few exceptions, there is one place where you have control over the way your environment looks, feels, sounds, and smells: your own home! No matter what the outside world throws at you, your home is where you can relax or recharge in the environment that suits you best. When considering how to decorate your home, therefore, put effort into creating a space that makes you happy.
Our Surrounding Environment Affects Us
If you frequently drive on high-traffic multi-lane roads in the exurbs with billboards, large lit-up signs and chain establishments lining the roadside with nothing green in sight, you probably appreciate being somewhere slower-paced (or pedestrian-paced, for that matter) with pleasant sounds and sights. If you often shop in big box stores under large and bright fluorescent lights with varying background noise levels, surrounded by other stressed out (and sometimes inconsiderate) shoppers, then you probably really appreciate being someplace where you feel more relaxed. My mood and energy levels noticeably drop after being in those environments, so I prefer to walk in lively pedestrian-friendly areas and to shop in fun consignment shops and pretty boutiques. There is a reason for that. But sometimes we don’t live or work somewhere that mimics what we desire in an environment.
We cannot entirely control the larger external space around us. We, as individual residents of any given area, don’t control the roadway and sidewalk design, the utilities development, or the architecture of the structures around us. Sometimes, based on all sorts of varying circumstances, we have to live in a neighbourhood, city, or country where we don’t like the way things around us look, feel or sound. We have to commute to jobs where the environment is drab and the drive is dismal. That is just a part of life until we find a way to change our circumstances, and hopefully the people we are around and the way we spend our time are positive enough forces that we don’t let the less-than-ideal environments get to us.
The One Environment Over Which We Have Some Control
What we can control (at least to some extent), however, is our home. The level of control you have here may vary depending on whether you rent or own, and whether you live in a house, a flat, or a communal space, but you can at least have some say in how it is arranged – even if your impact is mostly limited to your personal bedroom or sleeping space. When choosing how to make your home look and feel, the possibilities are reigned in only by these players:
- Yourself
- Any other family member or housemate with whom you share your space
You don’t have to answer to your government when it comes to designing your home. Nor do you have to answer to your employer/school. You don’t have to answer to your parents or in-laws. You don’t have to answer to your friends. And you don’t have to answer to your boyfriend/girlfriend, assuming they don’t live there and pay their share of rent. Here is the one sphere in which only the above-bulleted residents’ design decisions matter.
Naturally, a home’s decor should primarily reflect the interests of the head(s) of the household in a family home or of any rent-paying resident in a non-family home (including able-bodied adults who, alternatively, pay their part via chores). Still, it is only polite and civil to not decorate in a quirky or garish way that would repulse any other residents, regardless of their standing (if you like to decorate with clowns but they terrify your children, obviously don’t do that). Otherwise, so long as nobody is considerably unhappy with your choices, your home is your playground!
Indulge Your Own Preferences When You Design Your Space
This is where you live. This is your space. If you plan to stay in a house for any substantial amount of time (and this does not necessarily mean forever), then make your home the way you want it – not the way you or your contractor or realtor or anyone else thinks a potential buyer would someday want it. Who’s to say that a future potential buyer wouldn’t already want what you want as well? And who’s to say tastes and trends won’t eventually change in your direction? Your space should reflect you. Collector and curator Ariene Bethea, owner of vintage boutique Dress My Room, explains:
Your home should reflect your culture. It shouldn’t look like a staged home…Items should be personal to you, your family, your travels – all the things that make up your family.
Ariene Bethea
If you aren’t decided on how to decorate your home, consider what colours, shapes, and textures truly make you happy. With a limited budget you will only have so much control over your selection of furniture items and house fixtures (unless you have already set aside a serious remodeling budget), but you can always dress up rooms with wall hangings, lamps, curtains, tapestries, blankets, pillows, rugs, house plants, or none of the above – depending on your design palate and what suits you!
A Little Planning Can Serve You Well Years Later
Planning is important. If a baby is among you or anywhere in the potential future, you should plan your house accordingly. Have plenty of high surfaces on which to place valuables, electronics, or plants. Don’t only use low end tables that are cheap and convenient but become fair game to little hands once those little legs learn how to stand and walk. High shelves, whether built into the wall or a standing piece of furniture which can be securely bolted to the wall, are good options. Do you dislike carpet stains and/or spot treating the carpet? Consider the type of flooring at your dining area. Hard flooring is much more forgiving of mealtime messes. Everywhere else, carpet is much more forgiving of crawling, walking, and falling.
Focus Decorative Efforts on Places Where You’ll Relax
It is not necessary to decorate functional spaces such as kitchens, laundry rooms, bathrooms and entryways beyond the bare essentials (unless you really want to). A nice paint colour and/or some wall art are sufficient. These are not spaces where anyone will spend time sitting around and basking in their surroundings (unless your guests tend to cluster around you to chat while you are finishing up food prep in the kitchen since you are never ready on time and then you find yourselves stuck there, guests standing around with drinks in hands, in your way, and not securely seated anywhere comfortable). Here, one will typically be busy doing something, focused on the task at hand. Hanging out or entertaining will occur in other rooms such as the living room, dining area and bedrooms. These are where to concentrate design efforts.
Lean Toward Life-Long Tastes Instead of Recent Interests
A last gem of advice: many of us change our tastes over time. During our ages and stages, our musical taste, fashion taste, friend taste, and reading taste may evolve. This is completely normal and healthy. Therefore, while your home is indeed your playground for the making, take caution with your choices: do not make any drastic stylistic decisions that you may outgrow in a matter of years unless you have no financial qualms about a home makeover that soon.
A good way to test the longevity of a something’s appeal is to pay attention to your tastes over your lifetime. Is there any recurring theme, any consistent look or style to which you adhere? Any colors, patterns, or themes that you have enjoyed at multiple stages in your life and have never quite gotten sick of? Use that as your measure when you consider how to decorate your home. Everything else, anything changing, proceed with caution. Even if something begins to eventually bore you, as long as you can live with it, you will at the very least survive, and at the most you can probably modify it with some inventive design ideas.
Cheers, and happy decorating!