Americans spend almost $28 billion on interior decorating every year, and there are good reasons why. Our homes are incredibly personal spaces—they’re where we walk around in our underwear, where we talk to ourselves, where we spend intimate moments with our families. That’s why decorating our homes isn’t frivolous—it’s important that the space we live in feels comfortable, usable, and, maybe most importantly, personal.
Making your home beautiful while reflecting your personality can seem daunting, though. Design shows on TV offer an impossible standard of supposed taste, and it’s easy to believe that you need a professional interior designer or your house will look tacky or cheap. In reality, it’s not that hard to infuse your house with your personality. The key is to remember that you live there, not the interior designers of the world. Here are six practical approaches to making your home decor reflect your personality.
Space for your stuff
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The first step toward making a house feel like an intimate space that reflects your personality is making space for the things you love. If you collect something, think about how to display that collection either in a specific place in the home or distributed throughout the space. If you’re an avid reader, for example, instead of concentrating your books in a specific room, consider having books integrated throughout the space. If you collect art, put it on the walls throughout without worrying whether you have an “eye” for it, or if it’s not expensive—display those colorful garage sale, flea-market paintings that bring you joy on display.
The key is to make the things you love visible and part of the space. Not only does it literally bring the visual aspects of your personality into each room, it will make you happy every time you see it.
Be practical
One easy way to make a house feel generic is to approach each room as a neutral space from the very beginning. The spaces in your home can all have specific uses and applications. Some are obvious—kitchens are kitchens, bathrooms are bathrooms—but other spaces can be used in any way you want. Bedrooms can be offices, libraries, crafting rooms, recording studios, or anything else. Landings, hallways, and closets can be used in a variety of creative ways, too. When designing the look and feel of these spaces, start with how you will use the room—not how the real estate agent described it, or how the previous owners used it. Forget about trends and decorate the space based on the function you’ll use it for. That will make it easier to use the space the way you want to, which will make it feel more personal.
Embrace chaos
Many people experience a form of “decision paralysis” when decorating their home because they’re worried about getting it right, or that people will think they have bad taste. This often results in very neutral design decisions—after all, people might be bored by a neutral, safe aesthetic, but they won’t make fun of you for it.
That results in a house that will never feel like you, however—if you want your space to reflect your personality, you have to embrace the chaos and stop worrying about perfection. That means choosing furniture, colors, and accent pieces that you enjoy regardless of whether they “work” in a traditional sense. The key here is to embrace “slow decorating”—focusing on decor that will last and function, as opposed to instant gratification—and take your time. Your space will come together as you edit and refine your choices—and in the meantime, the stuff that gives you energy will be on display and in use, making your house feel personalized.
Go small
Bringing your personality into your home’s decor doesn’t have to give you a panic attack. If you’re not comfortable with painting your walls your favorite colors or leaning into your decidedly oddball taste in vintage furniture, go more neutral with the big stuff and use accents and details to make it personal. This could be an accent wall in a favorite color, a display wall with art or other items that bring you joy, or just thoughtfully placing smaller items throughout that reflect your taste and bring just a hint of your style throughout. You can keep increasing the level of unique details over time, too, moving at a pace you’re comfortable with.
Use your history
We are all the sum of our experiences. Every trip, every relationship, every job and adventure shapes us into the people we are. Lean into that when designing the look of your home. Mementos and souvenirs, photos of your friends and shared experiences, and other bits of your past can be inserted into the overall design of your house to give every room a personal feel.
One easy trick is to bring something along from your prior home that you love. This could be anything—a doorknob or drawer handle you love, a light fixture, or a piece of furniture that has been with you for years. An example from my own life is a cereal bowl from my childhood with a cartoon character on it—when I moved into my first apartment, I used it as a bowl for my keys and spare change, and I’ve brought it with me to every subsequent home. I no longer have a need for it, but just having it in the space makes me feel more at home. Stuff like that will bring a sense of history and continuity to the design that will be all about you and your journey, even if it doesn’t entirely make sense in the design.
Subtle not literal
It’s natural to turn to established themes and design traditions for a starting point when designing your home. Maybe you like a “nautical” theme, or you’re into cottagecore. But if you go too literal with these kinds of themes you’re not really making the place reflect your personality—unless your entire personality is, in fact, nautical in nature.
Instead of decking your space out in the literal visuals—ship’s wheels! sailboat wallpaper! seashells everywhere!—dial it down to a more subtle. If nautical is your thing, use a color palette inspired by that approach, and use only as many literal touches as you like. Keeping it subtle with color let’s you calibrate the theme to your liking instead of drowning your personality in a prefabricated style.
And don’t be afraid to deviate. Just because you find a color palette for your cottagecore dreams doesn’t mean you can’t deviate from it or tweak the specifics. Choosing a color that makes you happy, even if it’s not officially considered correct for the theme you’re working from, is key to making it all feel like yours.