How do you decorate if you have no sense of style?!

[OliviaFlaversham]

I honestly do not know where to start and my husband is the same. The whole house we have moved into could do with decorating as it was, in part, used as an air bnb and lots of rooms are plain white.

I have looked in magazines, online, Pinterest in shops…but because they aren’t my exact house I cannot imagine them in it! I cannot afford a designer.

Are there any apps/quizzes/ways I can use to firstly help me work out what I like, and then help me put it together in my own house?

I have the same issue and was thinking of starting my own thread about this! I find it totally overwhelming. I like so many things other people do but at a loss how to pick one style and then find items that match.

Watching!

Perhaps stop thinking about 'style' and consider what you'd be comfortable with. What are your tastes? Do you like lots of natural colours or would bold and daring suit your personalities? Start with colours in the walls or maybe just a feature wall/chimney breast of colour and then buy accessories to match that. It's your home, at the end of the day and few ever really look like they donon Pinterest!

You could try an AI room app where you take a photo of your room and then it generates the design. There are themes like modern, traditional, bohemian etc. The first few creations are usually free or there are sometimes free trials.

Choose a painting you like and then base colour scheme around it.

Buy thinks you like with the same color pallet

Buy a color wheel and they show you colors that go together and ones that are opposite.

Whites and brights or pastels?

Clean line or shabby chic?

Start with fabrics - find curtains or cushions or beddings that you like and pick up the colours from there:

Paint can match the background or pick up the hints in the fabric.

Good question! I usually go to ikea, find a show room i like and copy that exactly.

Same!!

Follow some instagram accounts for inspiration

Every room in our house has white walls. We are then free to have whatever colour curtains, sofas, chairs, bedding etc we want and can change things without having to repaint. For example one daughter chose her accent colour to be teal, so she opted for white bedding but has teal cushions, throw, curtains and rug. The other has various shades of pink from dusky to bright with some silver thrown in for goid measure- looks fabulous! Our house is modern and featureless so the white makes it feel lighter, we've tried darker colours and feature walls but the white really is best for the spaces...

Get on Pinterest, pin styles you like, make a note of the style names and search those, more similar styles will come up and just get pinning things you like. I love rich dark colours, it's something I didn't know until we purchased our first home and i started searching for ideas. The paint room apps can help get an idea if things work too. X

Get a good decorator in to put up plain wallpaper beautifully. Then choose a classic, subtle colour for the walls in a very good quality paint. It won't need doing again for 20 years and you'll get pleasure each time you really look at it. Change the look over the years with new cushions, rugs and photos. Then get on with enjoying your home and ignore the latest fads. Save yourself a fortune and stress.

My mum used to change the curtains and cushion covers and rugs with the seasons, eg red and gold in the autumn/winter and greens and blues in the spring/summer. Without thinking about it, I've found I do the same. I also swap pictures about. If you have neutral paint and flooring this works well.

We are the same. Neither of us are creative in any way (both STEM graduates) or have the slightest interest in interior decor or the first clue about style or fashion in such matters. We are not interested and we don’t care so we just don’t bother.

Our walls are neutral colours. Curtains & blinds are plain. Furniture is functional & comfortable, eg large leather sofas, rather than ‘stylish’. Crockery is Denby. We have a few paintings which represent places we have travelled to. We have a few rugs on the floor. Ornaments etc are kept to an absolute minimum, mostly a few things we found while travelling, a few trophies from DP’s hobby, and that’s about it.

I'm just the same, OP! I see things that I really like in isolation - pieces of furniture, wallpaper etc - but don't know how to put them together. There are some gorgeous examples on the 'beautiful wallpaper' thread, but I would lack the vision to make them really shine. Thank you for starting this thread - I could do with some tips too!

Very good suggestions here about Pinterest and the app to change colours in your room.

i would also suggest a mood board (scrapbook really) either physical or virtual, where you just collect pictures and bits of things that you like. That will give you ideas.

Perhaps also look online for the styles by name, to see if you love or hate them. Minimalism, Industrial, Cottage Core, Dark Academia, etc.

Get a friend who is good at it to give you some ideas.

I dislike white walls, so clinical and sterile.

I prefer warmer natural colors

I love sage green and have that colour because I like it and it just happens to be on trend at the moment.

This sounds a fab idea x

Thank you!

I’ll add, I’m not bothered by ‘style’ as such, it is more that I cannot translate what I see and like to my own house. I like lots in isolation. I like whole rooms in pictures but have a block then using this as inspiration.

A mood board could suit me … are there any where I can post to one on line? As in an actual board rather than Pinterest? I need one of those buzzfeed quizzes from years ago to tell me what my thing is.

I definitely don’t care about fads. Just want find out and explore what I really like. You know when you go to the optician and they flick between two lenses, saying, ‘this or this’. I need that but with choices 😂

I do know what I don’t want - grey. Our last two houses were shades of white/blue and grey and they never completely felt home.

This app is good 😊

Go and stand in Home Sense and look about you.

Wander around and look at all the cushions, the ornaments, the rugs, pictures and things like that. Find a couple of things you really like. Hopefully they will go together okay. Even if it is just one thing, like a large rug.

Then base your room colour scheme around those.

If you buy things you like, it will all go together because you are choosing according to your personal taste.

Most peoples houses do not look like magazines.

I always start with the master bedroom as then you have one nice room to retreat to and sleep in while the rest of the house is being done. Then the main living area that you use whether that’s a kitchen diner/family room or sitting room.

Things to consider are how often you’ll want to decorate and whether you want a neutral background and change the decor in other ways like rugs, artwork and accessories. Or if you have any particular furniture/flooring/carpets etc that you want to keep and work around.

What colours do you like?

What era house do you have, which positions do the rooms face? Are they light and spacious? Small and dark?

screenshot your Pinterest board so you can show us the style and colours that you’re drawn to?

Maybe go for shades of olive green, cream, soft pink and denim blue then

I'm like this too. It's a lack of confidence.

I planned our kitchen from scratch recently. I found a kitchen that I loved but was way out of our budget. It wasn't necessarily the cabinets, but the colours, the walls, the shelving, how they organised what was on the shelves/walls etc

Through the whole process, I carried my picture of the kitchen about and before any purchase I thought 'Would the person who has this kitchen choose that?'

Worked for me and I love my new kitchen!

I have based my decoration colours on the lighting available. Most of our house is pretty dark, it had blue carpets and lighter blue walls when we moved in! Felt very cold. So I have gone for warmer shades. The rooms are on the small side so have kept walls light (but not white). Maybe think about carpet/flooring first as it's far easier to match paints to flooring than the other way round. Each of our rooms has a different colour scheme. Things like curtains, blinds, rugs, cushions came later once I'd established the main colours. I did use a colour wheel for figuring out what might best go together for some rooms.

Above all, take your time and enjoy it!