My top tips for styling A home you’ll love

Styling a room, a bookshelf, a coffee table - it’s my favorite piece of the puzzle! Styling ties the design together and adds the finishing touches that make the space extra special: positioning all the furniture pieces just so, adding the perfect combination of decorative accessories to provide just the right visual interest to a tabletop or mantle, adorning a blank wall to make it a focal point, or fluffing the pillows and arranging the bedding and draperies.

Aside from a passion for it, I feel like I have a real knack for this. And some of my clients tell me that adding these finishing touches is a challenging thing to get right.

SO - I am going to share with you my top three tips for elevating the quality of an interior space. These are my tried-and-true tactics for bringing out the full potential in a space. If you like the images on my website, you will probably find that these approaches really resonate with you.

A styled, uncluttered bookcase can make all the difference to a room.

1. EMBRACE THE PERSONAL

I think what makes a room a showstopper is its personality. Although the vignettes in high-end furniture showrooms are stunning, they really lack a personal, intimate quality - because no one lives there.

Any home, even the most pristine, needs to express the unique aura of the person or people who reside there. Personal touches are really the thing that makes a room so inviting, so engaging.  

I always like to include personal photos or family pictures in the rooms I design. Or, perhaps, there are family heirloom pieces to be included that add visual interest. I feel that you should have items in every room of your house that truly bring you joy. Forget what other’s may think - if it brings YOU joy, that’s what matters.

Sometimes people think that they need to rid their homes of all of their collected items and personal treasures to make the space magazine-quality. Not so. The key to including personal touches and cherished items is to get the placement and the quantity right. Avoid the desire to over clutter and allow for some negative space.

I always say that your home should be your happiest place. By surrounding yourself with items you love, in the right way, you will create that place where you truly enjoy spending time.

2. THE REASON FOR COHESION

A thoughtfully decorated home has a thematic thread running through it. It is something that makes all the rooms work well together, as parts of a cohesive whole.

MOST of my clients come to me because they are unhappy with the fact that their home feels disjointed. Each room doesn’t connect to the others. Each space has its own personality. There isn’t a connectedness from one area to another.

I think this is a classic design dilemma. And it is something that interior designers pay very close attention to. Sometimes called Unity or Harmony, the cohesion between spaces in the home is very important to achieving an overall feel-good and comfortable energy and aesthetic.

It could be a color (one you love!!) that is repeated in several different elements or areas of your home. If you’ve taken a spin through our work here at The Carolina Home, you may have noticed that we LOVE blue. I work with it as much as I can because it makes my heart happy.

Additionally, you could work with a consistent motif, finish material, or pattern, using it throughout your home to create interconnectedness. There could be a semblance of features within furniture pieces, or repetition of a stylistic quality across rooms.

Whatever it is, it makes the various rooms of your home speak to each other, as if they are fluent in the same language. But yet, if done well, there won’t be a redundancy or a matchy-matchiness about everything. There is both unity AND variety working seamlessly together.

This cohesion among all parts is the thing that interior designers tend to be quite good at achieving, but that homeowners struggle to get right. I always say that, when composing beautiful homes, the question to ask should never be, “Does this go with this?” or “Do these two things match?” but rather “Do these two things work well together?” If you curate a thoughtful collection of items within your home, where there is some thread of commonality, everything will look fabulous together!

3. FUNCTION AND PURPOSE

Have you ever been to a museum house, such as the historical home of an important figure in history? Rooms may be roped off, and furniture marked with “Please do not touch” signs.

That is the direct opposite of how we want our homes to be. In the homes of today, we strive to have all of our functional needs met. We want each element to have a useful purpose. There needs to be a fit between our physical selves and the components of our living environments. Our homes need to work for us!!

And it is often just that thing — that part of a home that is no longer working right — that prompts a new client to reach out to me. There might be a storage issue, or it could be that meal preparation tasks encounter some challenges thanks to an outdated kitchen. A too-tight shower may make your morning ritual unpleasant. Poor lighting can give you headaches. Kids' toys abound, with no means for accommodation (I know this one well). The list goes on.

Your home needs to support your daily life, not impede it. How you and your family operates minute-to-minute, and how your home functions should be in sync. There should be nothing out-of-bounds for you or your children. Everything should feel comfortable, practical, convenient, and intentional - but it also should (AND CAN) look good. There should be a perfect fit between your desired lifestyle and the way your home functions and feels. And I promise - IT IS POSSIBLE.

So that’s it. My big three. My three key strategies for creating a home that is your happiest place!!