When buying a new home, the urge to make it yours can be totally overwhelming. While it’s natural to want to place your stamp on each room and make your own personal statement, tastes do change. Decorating and design is a process, so make sure to live in your new house for a while and learn about its quirks and its charm. If you do everything all at once, you end up with a stage set instead of a home that should reflect who you are, and who you are becoming.
Hiring an expert is a great way to jump start the decorating and design process. It’s important to use the knowledge of a professional who will hopefully help you avoid expensive mistakes. Space planning isn’t easy and selecting a color palette can be a real challenge. A good decorator will help you develop the confidence to create your style and express your aesthetic, actually saving you money along the way. Be wary of anyone who insists that you do it quickly or according to formula-as we grow and mature our tastes and our needs change- decorating your home should be a pleasure, not a chore. Sometimes it takes years for the right piece to surface and believe me, you’ll be glad that you waited.
I always tell my clients not to rush! Live in the house for a while and let it speak to you. Do you really want new wood floors? Is a second story the best way to expand a mid-century ranch? Major renovations are time consuming and expensive, so doing it once and doing it right is critical. Take a few months to know the flow, maybe even a few seasons. That way, you’ll be able to speak to an architect, a contractor or a designer from a place of knowledge and strength. Remember, whoever walks into your house is your partner, not your boss.
HOME wasn’t built in a day!
This is fabulous advice. And I agree, first hand that having an outside decorator like yourself is the smart way to move forward. Working with you allowed us to achieve an outcome that we would never have imagined on our own. We lived with that room the way it was for so long because we were stuck thinking of how to change it. Like many people, we don’t have a sense of design, color, etc. Thank goodness we found you. From the initial consultation, you provided us with a whole new way to look at the room, literally by suggesting we turn the elements of the room in a different direction physically. We couldn’t love the room more and it’s all because of your ability to envision things that we are not able to see ourselves.