We're moving into a house in 4 weeks after 6 years of renting in the UK. We owned before but in tropical Oz where the style was all Mediterranean/clean/modern/blond wood/simple lines and tropical gardens around the POOL!- but here...well, the house is a standard 4 bedroom estate house in Hants, 10 years old. The walls are white, the floor (downstairs) is all reddish brown laminate, the general theme is neutral bordering on 'we don't know what to do with it so we painted it white and left it'.. which is fine BUT I cannot decide on a theme/colour scheme at all!
Our furniture arrived from Oz a couple of months ago and is in storage, mainly cos we knew we were moving again. It's all Ikea'esque and BIG (much larger rooms in Oz!). I'm happy enough with it BUT the other 'touches' are all a bit quirky- a quirkiness I think I may have outgrown, like 18" high gold buddhas and SE Asian wall hangings. We had some seriously non-matching stuff there, too (given by the in-laws who favour whimsy and country cottage...) but the house was big enough to absorb each themed area.
But I can't for the life of me decide how to theme this new house! I see loads of stuff that I think looks great but there's zero coherence in it! I can't even decide on the colours! In Oz we did blue (the sofa which may need recovering now!), ochre, & yellow but I now err towards teal/chocolate brown/pale cream but not its contrast, cerise!
We want to re-front the kitchen and work tops as well but at least I have an idea about that (plain beech fronts and dark speckled granite-look tops: Homebase!). We also need new light shades/fittings which will set the tone of the room/s, esp the dining and living rooms, as in a chandelier speaks of one sort of style, industrial down-lighters another, iyswim.
Do YOU look at your house and see jarring mishmash or did you sit down one day and PLAN?