Inside Your Home

Let’s talk about design. Because it’s not enough to overhaul your finances, join forces with a big scary bank, tromp in and out of open houses for months, endure nerve wracking negotiations, pass an inspection, and finally get the keys to your new house. Now you have to decorate it!

And take it from me….just opening up a Sears catalog and pointing to the first couch/bed/dining table you see does NOT count as decorating. That’s just filling space. And while simply filling the space with functional stuff technically works, why not create a home filled with items that actively bring you joy and reflect who you are? Yes, it’ll take a little more time and effort, but the good news is it needn’t cost a lot, and there’s no rush. Use your hand-me-downs and old furniture for a while until your energy level (and wallet) recover from the major transition you just made into your new home.

Some people may want to simply hire a designer–and that’s great, if you can afford it. Good designers take the time to understand your taste and living style, and will use their special discounts to get you good deals on furniture. Be sure to get references for a designer, and interview them before signing anything. I have a friend who hired a designer with a good reputation who turned out to be a total disaster. The designer was constantly missing deadlines, was uncommunicative, and unloaded her personal life onto my friend. My friend’s home turned out great, but it was hardly worth all the torment.

Most of us will want to try to decorate on our own. It can be incredibly gratifying to make something beautiful on your own, so I commend you for making the effort. I’ve decorated several homes from scratch, so I have learned the hard way some of the do’s and don’ts of design, which I am happy to share with you.

DO: Take your time

Most designers will tell you that you should live with a space for a while before really diving into decorating. This is good advice. See what you use, where you spend your time, and slowly it will become more clear what kind of stuff you need and how you will use it.

DON’T: Throw money at the problem

People sometimes buy luxury all brand new furniture, thinking that if they have expensive things, the result must look good. Just because it’s expensive does not mean it’s good taste. Have you ever seen the inside of Donald Trump’s house? That place is garish times a million (billion, sorry).

You can find amazing classic furniture used for a fraction of the price of generic, modern furniture.

DO: Buy used

Try shopping on Craigslist and at thrift, antique, and consignment stores. Not only is it good for the environment and less expensive, you can often find really high-quality and unique pieces. Since you’re not in a rush (RIGHT?), you can browse until you find the breathtaking couch that you simply cannot live without. Another benefit of buying used is that if the piece doesn’t quite fit, or if you want to rearrange the room down the road, you can usually sell it for the same price you paid for it. Furniture depreciates a lot when you buy it brand new, but it barely depreciates at all when you buy it used and treat it well.

DON’T: Let people pass off hand-me-downs

Once people hear you’re moving, all their old junk will come out of the basement and garage. “Hey, I’ve got just the coffee table for you!” they’ll coo. It’ll be hard for you to resist accepting your friends’ and family’s old stuff for free, but you must say no. If you absolutely love it, then take it. But you do not want to move into a new house and immediately have to deal with a pile of junk you don’t really want. It was in your relatives’ garage for a reason, after all.

DO: Plan ahead

Take a video of your home while you’re waiting to close. Measure everything and draw out a floorplan. That way you can use your downtime during escrow to start shopping and creating mood boards…which brings us to or biggest and final “DO”.

DO: Make a mood board

So what’s a mood board? It sounds lame, like a spin-off of those ’70s mood rings. And I’ll certainly not defend the name. But don’t let the connotations stop you; mood boards are incredibly useful.

The idea is to simply collect images of things you like. You can also collect colors, photos of rooms you like, and so on. Then you put all these images together into a concrete representation of Your Style. Designers do this, and smart DIY homeowners do this, too. You don’t have to get a science fair-style poster board or get too elaborate with this. Your mood board can be as simple as a stack of magazine cut-outs (I like to cut out magazine pictures and paste them into a notebook). Or it can be a poster board, if that works for you. You can even create mood board collections online, which is really handy since much of your inspiration might come from design blogs or online stores.

There are lots of different services you can use, but my favorite is Polyvore. The site actually markets itself as a sort of teenage fashion collage tool, but it’s really useful for interior design. All you do is clip images you like online with Polyvore’s handy toolbar clipper. I’m a big fan of minimal clicking, and it takes only 3 clicks to add an image you find to your Polyvore account. I created the mood board below on Polyvore in only 10 minutes. Admittedly, I had a huge cache of images I love, but Polyvore really sped up the process.