Home Decor October 13, 2020

Skill 3: Learn How to Find Your Style & Inspiration

Before you can start to style your home, you really need to understand what your design style is.

If you don’t, you may run the risk of buy lots of pieces that are not cohesive together and can make your space look chaotic.

Where to Find Inspiration

I will continue to stress how important inspiration is.

You don’t have to come up with all the ideas yourself, there is no shame in looking at what designers are doing and taking elements of that and incorporating in your own home.

I’ve talked about this before in this post, but will expand on that here.

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Pinterest is still my favorite way to save and collect ideas. You can create boards for each room in your home which I find helpful.

I use Pinterest to find inspiration and save products I may want to buy for that room.

They do a great job of recommending pins based off of what you search and save, and there is never a lack of ideas here.

Instagram

Instagram is another great place to find visuals for inspiration.

If you don’t know who to follow, I have my favorite accounts listed in the post below.

Recommended: 10 Interior Design Instagrams for Grandmillennial Design

Another useful strategy is to follow certain hashtags. I am always finding inspiration in the #grandmillennial hashtag. When you follow hashtags you will get photos that use that hashtag to pop up on your feed. I have found a lot of unexpected inspiration this way.

Instagram allows you to save photos and organize them into folders which is helpful.

Below is a snapshot of what my saved folder looks like:

Facebook

Facebook design groups are a great resource for getting design inspiration as well as feedback. In this post about grandmillennial style, I linked my favorite design group.

These groups are full of people passionate about interior design and can be a great place to see what other people are doing in their homes as well as get advice for your own home.

Magazines

Home decor magazines are still alive and well. I subscribe to House Beautiful and Veranda (which is priced at $3.25 for a year at the time I am writing this), but there are so many more out there.

I love the physical nature of magazines. It is helpful for me to be able to hand up inspiration on a bulletin board, and magazines make that easy.

Antique Glossaries

I think that every home should have some antique pieces.

They create a unique space.

If you don’t know what you like yet, I suggest scrolling through an antique glossary such as this one from Christie’s.

Look through the pictures of the styles and see what you like.

What to Look For

Now that you know where to look, you may ask what are we looking for?

There are going to be images that you are just naturally drawn to. I like to look at those pictures and ask which elements I like the most.

It may be that you like the whole room together, but look closely and try to figure out why.

As you keep saving images, a pattern may emerge. For example, scrolling through my bedroom board on Pinterest I found a reoccurring theme of light blue, pleated curtains. I love them and knew that is what I wanted to in my own home.

Make a List

This part is important for the next skill: make a list of what you like. I keep a running list on my phone of keywords used to describe the things I like.

This may be brands that you see that you like, general style categories, or the name of a furniture style.

We will discuss this more in the next post, but for now look for inspiration and write down what you like.