| Deer Skye Quilt and Home Design

When you want to get serious about decorating your home whether one room or the whole house, it helps to know what you like and what you don’t like. Follow these 11 steps to discover your home design style.

Start by analyzing what types of style you are drawn to.
Create a scrapbook just for home design pictures you love that you gather from magazines and online sources.
Personalize your style to fit your needs and functionality.
Don’t force yourself into one style because most likely you fit into more than one style.
Identify and define what accessories and furnishings inspire you.
What elements of home design like lighting, color, space, line, texture, etc…bring you satisfaction and make you feel happy?
Take a close look at color and identify what colors you really like?
Think about functionality in your daily lifestyle.
Look back in your history and see if your style today is the same or if it has changed.
Once you establish what you love, you can start building your space around it.
Follow through with a doable plan and then stick to it as you shop for your home.

The way you style your home, the accessories and furnishings you put in your home matter. It matters because it effects you and your family day in and day out. Your home can be a place of serenity. Your safe and happy place. A place you enjoy being. These 11 steps are designed to help you identify what style or styles you like so that you can create a comfortable space for you and your family to live in. Take each step, think it through, try it out, experiment, discover the style in you so you can make a beautiful, functional home. A wonderful refuge for you and your family that you love no matter what budget you have to work with. Ready? My goal: to help you take on this fun adventure! Next stop…Step 1 Let’s go!

1. What Are You Drawn To?

When you look through magazines or scroll through Pinterest have you stopped to notice what you are drawn to? You know when those pictures just jump out at you or grab your attention. That’s what I am talking about! What entices you to stop and look if you are walking through a furniture store or when looking through a favorite home design magazine? Here is your first assignment. We are starting square one here because you want to figure out what your style is. Be aware of the way rooms are decorated and what makes you comfortable about the style in those rooms you like. Try this out. Find a picture of a room in a magazine that you really like. Or print a picture of a room from Pinterest. Take some time and study your picture. Grab a piece of card stock paper and something to write with. (You want a good piece of paper because you will put this in a scrapbook in one of your steps coming up.) Stick glue the picture to the scrapbook paper. Take a marker or pen and draw arrows to the different things you like about the room. Label those things that you love most about the room.

2. Scrapbook Pictures of Styles That You Like

I love the word gather. It gives a sense of being a part of something. A sense of belonging. Like gather family, gather friends, gather together for a party. This step has to do with gathering home design pictures that inspire you. Pictures can come from magazines from online sources that show styles that you love. Take a picture and scrapbook it, label it as mentioned in your first step and then put it in a scrapbook. Your scrapbook can be an inexpensive notebook or a really nice photo album. I have collected quite a large assortment of pictures of various home design styles that I love. By putting your pictures in a book of some type, you stay organized and keep it handy where you can refer to it easily. Pick a variety of rooms and accessories to put in your scrapbook. Organize your pictures by room.

3. Personalize Your Style To Fit Your Needs and Functionality

We all would like to have our home look just a magazine layout but your home can be both beautiful and functional whether or not it looks like you hired a designer and spent a lot of money to make it look amazing. As you figure out what style or styles you like, you can design your space to be just what you hope for. Look at these pictures how would you change the room. Would you lay out the room a different way? What accessories in this room would you use and why? How would you make the room more functional for you or if you have a family for your family? Find ways to tailor the pictures you have gathered to fit your own style and design. How would you make your room look similar to this picture but make it work for you? Take a sticky note and put down your thoughts. Attach these stickies so they won’t come off easily to your picture. Or you can make notes on the back of your scrapbook paper you put the picture on.

4. One Size Does Not Fit All

You don’t have to identify with just one style. The good news is that most likely you fit comfortably into more than one style. Isn’t that great? Maybe you really love you some farmhouse but you also also like some aspects of modern. You can take the styles you like and use them in the same room by tastefully putting them together through choice of color, accessories, and furnishings that you choose. Now that will be fun! Maybe a little challenging but nonetheless fun. Start with one design style and add a few things that are from another style. You can do this by trial and error and a little at a time. Don’t shy away from making a room comfortable and decorated the way you think it should be. Let’s take on the next step! If you aren’t quite ready, that’s totally OK. Take your time. You want the rooms that you are about to design to be done the way you will be happy with. It is important to identify your sense of style or styles for that reason!

5. Accessorize Your Home With What You Love

Start with a stroll through your home and notice the furniture and accessories that you already have. Especially take note of the things you love and inspire you. I’ve been very blessed in my life. My husband and I have had very few furniture pieces that we have bought because family members have given us furnishings they no longer wanted. We have made good use of those pieces. I don’t exactly love a lot of those but I have found ways to improve them and design them differently that make them more my style.

Take an inventory. What accessories you already have such as mirrors, paintings, pictures, pillows, home decor items etc… do you love?
What is it you love about them?
What are some accessories you would like to add to your home decor and design?
Notice similarities of things that you like. What home design style do they fit into?
Discover what makes sense to you in designing the room you are creating.
Make some more notes and then use these ideas when you are in the design planning stage.

What about your furnishings? Do they fit in a certain style that matches what you want to portray in the room you are putting together? If not, how would you change it? Would you just buy new furniture if so what kind would you buy?

Ah hah! There lies the rub! I am making you think through a lot! However in the end, you will be happy you made the effort to know your self better and what makes you happy in a home.

6. Positive Vibes of Home Design Elements

Have you ever noticed what home design elements make you happy? Yep I said make you happy. Lines, textures, lighting, color, space, all of these things can affect your mood. What types of elements bring you satisfaction and can make you happy. Sound like a therapy session…a therapy session in fun! Dive in and do a little soul searching here about elements of design. Again look through home design pictures and pick out the elements that you really like and those that you can do without. Notice how these design elements affect you. Once you know which elements give you positive vibes, you can incorporate them into your sense of style.

7. Color Yourself Joyful

So much can be said about color and how it influences mood, feelings, and the tone of the room. What colors do you like? Light, dark, variation of one color, whites, grays, black.whatever your colors taste can determine your style too. Choosing a paint color can be tricky but I’ve got you covered! Take a quick look here about choosing a paint color. Add paint chips to your scrapbook.( If you contact Farrow and Ball high end paint company, they have a beautiful pamphlet filled with paint chip colors you can request for free.) Gather paint chips of colors you like. Make a section for color and stick the paint chips you have gathered in your scrapbook. Explore rooms with color. Are you going to stick with colors that are typical of the home design style that you fit in? Find out typical colors that fit in that style. Notice how you feel when you are in a green room, a white room, a navy blue room, etc…whatever color you are thinking about painting a room. Your overall goal here is with the style you are creating, you want to choose a color that will make you feel comfortable and peaceful when you visit that room.

8. Functionality

As you consider what your style is, think about the aspects of its functionality. When you plan a room lay out ( you can find ideas for planning a room lay out here) does your style have storage areas, room for movement, and enough space to perform your daily actions? How comfortable is your design style. You don’t want to buy a piece of furniture based on looks right? Choose your furnishings based on comfort and function. Function should be considered first and then style. So apply this into your style discovery.

9.. Compare Your Past and Present Style

What has your style been in the past and is it the same today? How has it evolved? What has influenced your style over the years and what is influencing it now? I know. I know. So many questions but all necessary to help you find your style. However when you dig into your past to discover what influenced you and merge it with the present and what style you like now. This can help you understand why you gravitate to the style or styles you like. Then you can dive in and design the rooms of your home in the style that you love because your style will make sense to you!

10. Build Your Style Foundation

All of these steps have one major goal in mind and that is to help you find the style that you love. Then the fun begins although the whole process is fun depending on how you look at it. Hopefully you have an idea at this point of what your home design style is. Once you determine this, you can start building what you love around the space you are designing and continue to add to it from there. You establish your design foundation. You can adjust your style as you go. If you aren’t sure at this point, what your style is exactly, no worries! Experiment and keep on searching. It is a process and how fast you figure out your style is up to you.

11. Make An Actionable Plan

Once you have taken these steps, then plan out your room. If you are decorating an entire home, go through and plan each room out. Sorry if some of you are streamlined and like to use programs online to plan out your room but I like the old fashioned way of drawing my room out as I lay it out piece by piece so that it all comes together. Plan out color, take stock of what accessories or furnishings you have already and will be using, and then put them into your plan. Now what will you add to that room? Make some story boards putting paint color, pictures of a room you want to imitate in your home, fabric swatches all those things on your board. Make a specific plan for what you intend to buy and how you will design your room and stick to your plan. Make it doable so that it isn’t overwhelming or you break your budget.

What Is Your Home Design Style? 11 Easy Steps