The Secret to Finding Your Style and Feeling More at Home Where You Live
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What’s your decorating style? Do you feel at home where you live? 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: finding your style takes patience and experimentation. 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 remodeling 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 a those indecisive seasons, but it’s a wonderful feeling when you are finally able to settle into your own style with confidence.
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.
When I’m struggling with my own style, it can be helpful to collect inspiration photos of rooms or features that I really love, such as the images I share in my posts (these photos in my post today are from one of my favorite shops for furnishings and style inspiration for my home, Serena & Lily. I’ve written about it before in this post).
But I don’t want to rush permanent or expensive decisions or make a lot of changes based on an inspiration photo until I’m certain that look or item will feel right in my own home. I like to take a bit of inspiration from dozens of rooms and ideas I’ve collected over time so my 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 me to be as authentic and comfortable in my home as possible.
Sometimes to move forward you just need to make ONE design decision you know you feel good about. That decision will lead to the next. We remodeled our kitchen four years ago and the decisions we made during that project continue to inspire me to make our little house all she can be 🙂 I’ve often said the old house I live in was ready for a new spring in her step. She may have been born in the 1950s but she doesn’t have to stay there.
You don’t have to stay stuck with what you have! I’m so glad I didn’t let myself be discouraged or swayed early on by voices that told me this house had to stay in a certain era or style. I didn’t want to feel limited in what I could or could not do to make it my own. 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!
Lastly, 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.
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.
Speaking of Serena & Lily, they have an amazing sale on right now, but it ends today!
Scroll down for inspiration, sources and ideas for this fresh breezy look!
20% off EVERYTHING with code! Click HERE to shop!
How cute is this bench! You can customize the fabric–there are so many cute options! I love this toile.
Nautical Round Rope Mirror Source // Toile Wallpaper
Everything at Serena & Lily is 20% off! Click HERE to shop the entire sale with discount code!
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