How do you learn to decorate your home?

[margaritasbythesea]

We've recently bought our first house that we can really decorate. Our last house was so tiny, there wasn't much we could do.

I realise now I don't really have an aptitude for it, and neither do I take an active interest. I get very put off by the amount of money that goes into magazine shoots. I just don't have the resources to buy a new sofa etc. I need design something that fits in around what we have. They all seem to be already set in beautiful houses and my house is a really ordinary 60s semi.

Neither do I seem to be very good at visualising what things would look like.

Honestly, I have never understood why people hire interior decorators before but now I do, not that I can afford them.

I've tried a couple of apps but found them hopeless. They're not any more realistic than the dress up dolly ones DD uses on her tablet for fashion design. I found the Dulux visualiser app completely useless. It insisted my sage green wall was dark get, for example.

I watched a TV programme where people compete to have the best designed normal house but I thought most of it looked horrible.

I bought a book I hoped would be inspirational but it was all based on rustic farmhouses, Swedish architecture in the woods or swanky city appartments (lockdown purchase over Amazon so couldn't look at it first). It just put me off as none of it seemed to translate to a British suburban semi on a budget.

I would like it to look nice, though. All the posts on here seem so knowledgeable. Can somebody help me out? What on earth can I try to get my head around it? Are there some basic steps to take for choosing colours etc?

Sorry OP, I’m not coming with answers but I feel similarly. I know when something looks right - there is a kind of ‘ah! That’s it!’ feeling but no idea how to get there.

I use pinterest and home magazines like Your Home etc then I copy the styles I like with things from the car boot or charity shops ( when they open!).

OP this is what I would do with a 60s house with little money.

• choose a limited colour palette. I would go for natural colours ie green, blue, grey, brown, white, black. Stick to those colours throughout.

• Declutter. Get rid off clutter and junk and go for a minimalist design. Minimalist is little clutter, few pieces of furniture, few pictures. The place does not look crowded with stuff.

• Decorate with the whole house as one space. Choose colours that blend, choose accessories that blend. Eg black fittings throughout or brass lamps, brass, picture frames throughout. If you go to most colour charts, they will show you blending colours.

• Don't buy everything at once and invest in good pieces that will last for a long time. For the time being, freecycle, gumtree and ebay are your friends. Save up and buy the sofa you want, or the bed but in the meantime, make do. As you go on, you'll understand your taste better and what works in the house, rather than making a lot of costly mistakes.

• Buy at Ikea and look up Ikea Hacks to make the stuff you buy individual. If you're going for minimalism, storage that hides things out of sight, is what you're looking for.

• Where possible, use natural furnishings and materials eg linen, cotton, rattan, sea grass, wool, wood.

• Organise in clusters so things don't look cluttered. Eg put your miniature train collection together in a display cabinet, rather than scattered all over the house. Put all your books together along one wall. Remember that less is more. Try to get rid off as much stuff as you can.

That will do for now. Go to Pin interest, tap in a few ideas and read the articles. There's also an app called Houzz where you can look up and save ideas. Go with your instinct when you see designs. Things that make you go 'Ah!' in a good way, is what you're looking for. Start to collate ideas in a 'mood board'. Decide your colour palette and take it from there.

Go forth and decorate.

Have a look on Pinterest or Instagram hastags.

So Pinterest try searching ‘semi detached living room’ or something.

Instagram wise try something like #semidetachedhouse or #livingroomdecor or #sixtiesrenovation. This will bring up loads of house accounts from real people and you can have a nosy.

Then if you see something you like, for example a paint colour, you can search for that. The farrow and ball colours always have lots of posts in their colours e.g. #hagueblue which can use for ideas.

Following a few house accounts with houses similar to yours will help. Eg I live in a Victorian terrace so follow lots of those.

Finally follow / take a look at furniture companies for inspiration. For example dunelm, neptune, cox and cox, sofa.com. Some of these will be expensive but good for ideas.

Hello. Glad you have something you can attack! I often dither about what bits I really like so have taken to making a "possibles" board. Rather like a Mood Board but use it to collect things I like the look of and see what melds. Freecycle/Freegle are going strong here and I have had some super things. When I have used them or changed my mind, they go on to someone else. Smashing sites. Not quite on the subject but I was given a GHD hairdryer this week and am so pleased. Keep searching and good luck.

It's difficult because with the magazine/website photos, all you get to see is the finished, professionally designed, done and photographed room, so you have no feeling for the process.

Looking at pictures will give you an idea of what kinds of style and colour appeal to you though. For example I love fairly neutral, minimalist-ish Scandi style. So I have pure brilliant white or pale grey walls in almost all my rooms. Going with pale neutrals also means you can kind of change the colour scheme of your room in when you get a bit bored with it, just by changing a few soft furnishings etc.

Another vote for Pinterest. Just take an hour and scroll through pictures and pin the ones that you vaguely like without overthinking it - just anything that appeals and you’ll eventually get a sense of the styles that appeal to you.

It’s much, much harder to decorate around the furniture that you have, than starting with a clean slate.

A very simple way to pull a room together is to choose either a patterned cushion or a painting that goes well with the expensive things in the room that you can’t change. Then bring some of the colours into the room as accessories - vases, candles, flowers, throws, rugs, other cushions. Choose paint last as it’s the easiest thing to coordinate (and often the easiest to change). You can get paint mixed to a specific shade.

I think you need to be comfortable making mistakes which isn’t easy when you’re budget is limited.

Have a look at similar style houses on Rightmove and see how others have decorated. You might see some rooms you like and get some ideas.

I relate to this. A beautiful home is important to me but doesn’t come naturally. Some things which helped me:

• Pinterest/ home decor magazines
• rule of 3: things look better in groups of 3 eg 3 candles/ ornaments. Also if you are going to have an accent colour in a room have 3 items in that colour. Too many can look like you’ve just gone out and bought everything you saw in that colour, but 3 items is enough to make it look like a deliberate design choice
• minimalist by nature. I like clear surfaces, lots of space and muted colours. This also makes it easier to get a look ‘right’ IMO. The eclectic look/ colour clashing etc I think takes more skill to get right and without that it can sometimes end up looking cluttered/ messy
• cohesive colour scheme throughout the whole house. May be a bit boring to some but I always get lots of compliments on our home: it looks neat, welcoming and homely. I stick to neutrals throughout and have dark red, and the odd pink item as accent colours. Our home is cottages and we have one type of wood throughout for all our furniture. This means we can (and do) easily swap things like side tables, wardrobes, cupboards etc from one room to another and they work wherever we put them. Again more of a traditional, than trendy look, but it works for us and never looks wrong, though I appreciate some people may find it a bit boring
• I love patterns but find them hard to put together sometimes so tend to stick to maybe one big patterned piece per room eg curtains, duvet cover, bedspread, cushions. Again our cohesive colour scheme means that these can be swapped from room to room very easily.

Oh and I read somewhere that every room should have a little black in it as it helps colour/ neutrals ‘pop’. Not as scary as it sounds - no black walls or anything, just something small eg a black photo frame, candlestick or mantel clock. I wasn’t convinced but gave it a try and it does seem to work in the rooms I’ve done this in.

Essex Lioness: Thank you for that tip. I have not heard that before but shall definitely try it!

if you can afford to, it is also possible to take a weekend course in Interior Design that would give you confidence + ideas. If that is the kind of thing you enjoy.

@percheron67, neither had I but it really does seem to pull everything together somehow

Gosh! Thank you all very much for taking so much time to give me ideas. I really appreciate it.

We have just moved house and redecorated, refurbished and refurbished most of it.

It’s all different to what we had before (which was cheapest IKEA stuff and block colours!)

So what I did was

Look online for inspiration - Pinterest etc so I could find a look and colour palette that I liked and could use as inspirations
Alternatively if you already have something you love - piece of furniture or art etc then you can use that to match things too.

Then top tips are:

Don’t have everything exactly matching - that’s quite 90s now to have a full matching set of furniture!
I was going to order 6 emerald green dining chairs but after watching a property programme where they had mixed colour chairs I went for 2 green, 2 beige and 2 brown.
Chooses a few colours (we went for emerald green, a beige, and out so far is a cream colour and then beige painted or dark wood furniture. I’ve also added a couple of accents of gold eg photo frame, tray on coffee table etc plus ordered some printed that have green, beige and goldin them.

I’m really please with the result - it looks like someone with better taste than me designed it!!

Thank you. I'm really very grateful for all the suggestions.

I listen to the great indoors podcast and they've always got design dilemmas and talk about colour etc. Over time this has kind of seeped into my brain!

On a practical note, if you can afford it I would hire a n interior designer, or try the free session with a John Lewis partner?

I find that you get decision fatigue and I remember crying because I couldn't pick a tap for the bathroom when we were renovating it! It seems silly now, but I was quite overwhelmed.

If you’ve stuff you don’t want to change (eg sofa, flooring, whatever ) then that does at least give you a starting point. Look for ideas based on that: google eg “kitchen with green worktops” if that’s the fixed thing you need to keep.
Remember it’s your home, so although should look nice should also work well. Storage where you need it, comfortable furniture, low maintenance (unless you’re more organised than me!), etc.

If you have favourite colours, use them. If you love luminous pink with orange polka dots but hate greens and blues, then go with that.

I try and think what I want each room to feel like: cheerful or sophisticated or naturalistic or relaxing or smart or whatever. That massively helps the “style” of furniture/accessories etc. So if you want a “opulent” feel going to look for velvet and mirror and glass, rather than jute rugs and rattan. If you get the style as well as the colours right then it’ll look fantastic.

Thanks very much.

Op I’m very similar to you!

You can get a free John Lewis personal home design consultation, which is done by video call at the moment. Definitely worth doing for inspiration - you can send them pics of what you like and of the room plus measurements and they will suggest things.

I follow lots of home accounts on Instagram and pick up inspo from there - start with Lisa Dawson and Comedowntothewoods and then look through people they follow. I don't copy other people's style as such but they will often feature a cushion, or a print or something, or a paint colour or combination or way of displaying something that i wouldn't have seen otherwise which I can then go and buy / use.

What I would say is you absolutely do not need to rush if you're planning to stay there a while, there is nothing worse than buying a 'that'll do' rug or piece of furniture then seeing a much nicer one a few weeks later.

I always get compliments on our decor but really the house is just full of things we like, which have been chosen so that they vaguely coordinate - it doesn't have to look like a magazine shoot! TK maxx is your friend, as is eBay, B&M and I rarely pay full price for anything, I wait for sales and use discount codes. Sites like West Elm and Anthropologie have really decent sales so you can often pick up stuff you wouldn't be able to afford otherwise.

All our 'big' furniture is from brands like Loaf and Swoon, but our side tables are from B&M, and our unit was second hand from a vintage shop. Amazon can be surprisingly good for things like rugs.

Really hunt around and even if you are matching stuff buy it from different sites to save money. In our bedroom the furniture is all the same range but we got the bed from Brand Alley, the chest of drawers from ebay and the bedside tables from another site and saved hundreds.

For paint colours, test, test and test. If you pick something you're not sure about you'll likely end up hating it. If you have a Johnston's paint centre near you they can replicate all the Farrow & Ball colours from the number code.

If I think of anything else I'll pop back. Try and have fun with it!

That's interesting about John Lewis Foxhasbigsocks. I live in rural Wales, so video call is much better for me in fact. It's so frustrating not being able to see things in to, though.

It's so true about the 'good enough'. You're right florapalmer

Depending on what 'look' you like, try going to some show homes.
We like a modern minimalist look. When we were planning the decor on this house we went round lots of show homes and stole and replicated or copied looks we liked.
Take photos and then search for the bits you want or yse them as inspiration and tweak them. We have the same hall lights and dining table as the show house of our house because we loved them!
Also room set ups can be useful. The Next home catalogue (again depends on the style you like) is good for ideas of how to 'stage' a room and what accessories/colours will go.

If you want something specific but can't find it consider getting it made to your spec. Costs more but worth it to get exactly what you want. We had some white gloss cupboards made for our family room to hide all the kids toys. They have soft close press open doors with no handles. Made to measure to fit the room and frame the tv, masses of storage and built to house the robot vacuum underneath! Worth every penny.

Shop around and be prepared to search and search to find the exact piece you want. Most things are out there if you have the patience to search.

This thread is really helpful.