Frozen with indecision

[FrozenMamma38384]

We recently bought our first house, a newish build - mostly a clean slate. A lot needs freshening up and other bits are not to our taste (monochrome aesthetic) but I can live with it for now.

I’m completely frozen with indecision on what to do. We have no particular taste. It’s easy to dismiss what we don’t like but very hard to discern what furnishings and decor we might want to live with. We’ve lived in rented and cheaply using supermarkets, IKEA and Argos until now. It would be nice to spend a little more now on quality and things that last now that we have our own home and we have some savings. But having spent so much on the house/moving/essentials it would also be nice not to spend for a bit.

There’s so much that needs doing. For example we need/want curtains (have temporary blinds for now) and we don’t know how to choose because of the expense and not wanting to get it wrong. DH had a peek in Dunelm and he was put off by the cheap curtains which he said were awful but he was also uncomfortable about the cost of the nicer ones. I don’t know if we were need to decide on a colour for each room first or stick to white for now. On top of that we also need permanent blinds for privacy and convenience and we can’t decide on that either.

I want a warmer country house type feeling but not too many florals and not blocks of colour. Maybe using more textures than prints but I think that would be expensive. It will also look jarring with the modern monochrome bits of the house that are still left that can’t be changed out very quickly.

I would love some colourful paintings, abstracts or landscapes, but I don’t know where to get started. I’m just focused on buying functional stuff from B&Q and Dunelm and also needing childproofing (do we need radiator covers?). So the house is filling up with a lot of bland stuff and it feels a bit of a shame.

Same with the garden, large, square blank slate, grass getting overgrown. I have no experience with gardening. We need to start planting but don’t know where to start. I know I definitely want some trees for shade (cherry blossoms and fruit trees) but I don’t know where to put them as they’ll obviously be permanent features. I love the idea of a meadow but I was advised before on MN we weren’t suited to it. We don’t have lots of money to get someone to design it for us either. Have kids with additional needs too so need to consider where their play things will be.

I know AI is a tool we could use but I’ve gone out of my way to avoid it - I really hate the idea as does DH.

What should we make the priority? How do we start? What is the middle ground between cheap furniture from China and expensive stuff? Or should we just continue to take our time? We’ve lived in cheap IKEA because of SEN kids who were/still could be messy and destructive. It’s a relief not buying somewhere pristine actually as we can spill and break stuff and it doesn’t matter. It’s not a forever home either, it’s likely a 5-10y house. We’ve moved here because of work and don’t love the town but the specific location is nice and the layout of the house is great for us.

I’m thinking now we could just buy some large and not too expensive prints in nice frames to hang up that we can change out without any fuss, and also plants. And then we can get curtains we like without thinking about painting and redecorating too much? (DH likes the idea of painting the walls in colours but isn’t committed to any colours.)

We’re desperate for guidance. Please help! Sorry for the length. Having SEN kids is overwhelming too and we just don’t have the mental capacity to think deeply or at length about decorating, or have conversations about it that last for more than 10 minutes. I keep doing short deep dives into an area and then end up putting off making decisions. But we want so much to make it a nice home for us all and one that isn’t just about the kids.

Just to add we get a lot of stuff for free and from charity shops too but the end result over many years is a somewhat mis-matched look to go with the cheaper stuff.

Put a photo of the room into ChatGPT and they will come up with room design images.
Buy some home magazines for inspiration. Mooch around some interior furnishing shops. Visit kitchen/ bathroom showrooms. Take your time and you will soon get ideas

I think for the garden you need to post on the gardening board. You'll get lots of specific advice there, especially if you post a diagram of the garden and some info on soil type, direction of sun, etc.
Just wanted to say yes to wanting trees for shade, but it will be a few years before they provide any significant shade. Decorating is a relatively static fix, but gardening is a long game. Also unless your garden is big (unlikely with a new build) you have to choose trees very carefully with understanding of the ultimate size they might reach, and you're not going to want more than say, three small trees in a smaller garden. Shrubs are going to be much more of a feature and create much of the structure of your garden, and many shrubs will get big enough to provide shade too.
But it's exciting! Once you get a bit into it and gain confidence you'll start to enjoy it more. I'll post the link for the gardening board in a minute, and I suggest you go and read some of the longer ongoing threads on there, lots of gardening issues and design choices discussed.🌳🌿🌻

Here ya go. ☺️
www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening

If you’re on Instagram find some accounts of people who have houses similar in taste to you. I find that useful for inspiration.

why don’t you just paint everything neutral, get some simple blinds and just live in the house for a bit? I think you just need to do things gradually. Get a garden tidy up and then think about changing it later. You don’t have to do everything at once.

Go on Instagram and follow house/interior people whose style you like. Try to figure out what you like from there.

Also, try to buy some vintage stuff from antiques fairs/ facebook marketplace so that it doesn't all look too sterile (unless that's your taste)

I would love some colourful paintings, abstracts or landscapes
That's your start point. Get something really nice, something that you can live with for the next 5-10 years.
Then look really carefully at the artwork: it will have - readymade for you - the colours to use in your decoration. Pick one colour and decorate 60% of the room in that. Another colour will be 30% and the last (the infamous 'pop of colour') will be the final 10%.
Now you have a plan, you can start to slowly accumulate. It's amazing how things jump out at you once you know what you are looking for! Don't rush it. Maybe get one room 'nice' and let the others evolve.

PS I'm not sure that 'abstracts' go with your 'warmer, country house' vibe. Stick to figurative, not abstract, art.

you’ll get better quality buying older furniture secondhand, vintage, antique, etc.

if you want that updated country house feel, paint some of the old furniture off-white

don’t rush into curtains; choose them last

I love my little mismatched and quirky home. I have a few of my grandparents things, mirror, rug, chandalier (not grand but very pretty), I have a few pieces of art that I just love. It weirdly all seems to go together as everything I buy, I absolutely love. Even when I was younger I would have sat in a beanbag for years waiting for the right sofa.

plants, plants, plants. Bloody love them. Trailing ones, ones in the corner if a room, herbs on windowsill… pick a colour you love and get a few cushions, go slow and don’t go overboard.

even though I have things, they are all beautiful, unique and they’re shown off as my house is clutter free

Oh and some cool lamps

Thank you for the tips! I think using artwork as a starting point is a good idea. We don’t need to buy any furniture thankfully. I agree I don’t want to get anything that’s too matchy and I love beautiful unique things. But I also want to be more minimalist for sake of keeping things less cluttered and accumulating less dust so I’m trying to have less decorative stuff out. I do want lots of plants at home though.

We do have a nice large garden for a new build! Because it is such a large open space I think I like the idea of being able to create nooks and crannies in it that are shaded by trees for the kids to enjoy and explore. I will ask on the gardening board thank you!

Fruit trees are often quite small as they can be grown on dwarf stock, now it the time of year to plant them, but I agree with pp, just take your time. I got out the art stuff and just messed around with layouts for my last blank slate garden. Think about what you need in it and which areas get the sun or are shady. Think about privacy screening if needed. Then research the right size trees. Trees will need pruning to keep them in good health, a garden does require time and effort, so if you think that'll be a challenge then you probably need to focus on plant choices that are low maintenance and hardy.
I'll echo a pp re the house, use a warm neutral on all the walls, find some prints that you love and use colours from that. There's nothing wrong with IKEA furniture. Painting miss matched things the same colour will make things feel more cohesive and you can easily make IKEA basics look more expensive with paint, handles and trim. plants will always make a house feel more homely. You can get food quality 2nd hand curtains on eBay, and the John Lewis Christmas sale is usually brilliant for discounted curtains too.

It takes ages - years - to make a house have a cohesive look.
I would honestly just get the whole house decorated (or do it yourselves) in a neutral shade like Egyptian Cotton by Dulux. Then take your time adding colour to the walls as your style evolves. I did this with our upstairs (which is now decorated in terracotta, dark smoky green, and dark blue).
I think buying expensive curtains is worth it. We have one particular pair from John Lewis, in a mineral shade that works with everything, and mum has now hemmed them 3 times, as we've moved with the same curtains 3 times! And always buy curtains that skim the floor - they look so much more luxurious than ones that sit at windowsill length.
My advice, and what I do, is buy one item that you adore (curtains, or a rug, or a piece of art) and then use that as your inspiration for the entire rest of the room - picking out a shade for the walls that will complement that particular piece, and then choosing furniture that works with it too.
I don't think you can go wrong with solid wooden furniture, and would buy it second hand if that's what your budget allows. We've got several vintage pieces and they add a lot of character to our otherwise characterless 80s house.

I look for ideas on Pinterest of what looks nice or what might go in a room. I create boards for different rooms. For example in my new house we have a 1 year old dark blue sofa that we want to keep so I've searched rooms with blue sofas and I think a sage green would go with it, so then I search for sage green rooms and look for ideas for coffee tabbles, curtains, blindes etc. Our house is modern not period so that rules out lots of the styles I like.

In mynlast house my bedroom was decorated to look like a hotel room I'd stayed in.

Magazines can be good for ideas too.

Check out second hand/charity shop curtains if cost is an issue

I agree about Pinterest for getting ideas about the sort of look you want. There are also some useful YouTube people talking about design and decor ideas or about thrifting and crafting.
Even though most of my house is done, I can't resist looking!

A PP suggested buying interior design magazines, but you can get a lot of inspiration from their related websites. I really like https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/ (I don't work for them).

Nice range of different style interiors, gardening ideas too and, FWIW, great recipes. I'll be cooking one today.

Plus I've bought a LOT of these magazines over the years, and at some stage you'll have to declutter them. Don't be me. Good luck!