Tips for decorating your home to please all its residents
Trying to decorate a house is stressful, let alone decorating it so all the people living there will like it too.
One thing I realized quickly; you want everyone living there to feel at home.
So, when it comes to compromises, try these tips:
Pick your battles: Is there one room you’d rather have more say in decorating than another? Seek out a happy medium. OK, so you’ve decided on a colour. You want light shades; your partner wants something with a bit more punch. Is there a shade in between that you both agree on?
Accept an eclectic style if your tastes aren’t the same as those you live with.
Try to keep community areas neutral but make bedrooms or office workspaces personalized. But there’s so much more than painting to the first-home experience:
Furnishing the place: Like duh! Sadly, furniture doesn’t grow on trees, even though it seemed so easy to make choices when your parents were getting the items for your room in their house.
Cutlery and dishware: I was fortunate enough to have a lot of this passed down to me. There was a set of plates my mom never used that I took for myself, for instance.
Linens: Finding things that “match” your paint colours that are also soft and comfortable, easy to care for — for example, there’s no big issue if you don’t tumble dry the item — and that you actually like.
Decor: Paintings, picture frames, knick-knacks, vases and every other miscellaneous item.
Phew, I need a minute, I’m feeling overwhelmed. And as a first timer to this, it’s easy to feel that way.
You don’t want to fail at that major-scale DIY.
But there’s a lot to learn along the way too. It’s experiential, it’s tedious, and understanding how you want your home to feel and how to get there will be an interesting journey.