A Heart That Beats for Home

42. 10 Interior Design Tips to Elevate Your Home

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Transform your living space into a serene sanctuary and explore fundamental design principles that balance tones, patterns, and textures, ensuring your space feels both aesthetically pleasing and deeply personal.

Unlock the secrets of enhancing your home's ambiance with practical tips on drapery and furniture selection. From extending curtain rods to selecting furniture with visible legs, I offer strategies that will make your rooms appear larger and brighter. Dive into the world of paint and color, where consistent, grayed-down hues create a calming environment, and high-quality, neutral furniture provides versatility for evolving styles. With these tools, you'll craft a cohesive and welcoming home.

Finally, embrace the joy of personalizing your space with meaningful decor. Discover budget-friendly ideas for transforming furniture, incorporating family heirlooms, and adding personal touches that reflect your unique style and memories. This episode is a treasure trove of creative possibilities, all designed to help you reimagine your home. Share these insights with friends who might benefit, and together, let's cultivate beautiful spaces that foster strong connections and cherished memories.

Resources:

How to Hang Drapery:
https://mccabe-house.com/blog/how-to-hanging-drapery-panels

Amazon Custom Drapes:


Pairing Furniture Legs:
https://mccabe-house.com/blog/how-to-mix-the-right-furniture-pieces-in-a-space

Pain Color:
https://milliehartinteriors.com/products/warm-neutrals-sherwin-williams-paint-palette-neutral-interior-paint-colors-accessible-beige-color-scheme-aesthetic-white-compliments

https://www.bhg.com/decorating/color/neutrals/neutral-paint-colors/

https://freshabodes.com/benjamin-moores-best-neutral-paint-colors/

How to Layer Accessories and Art:
https://www.karacoxinteriors.com/journal/how-to-layer-accessories-like-a-pro

JOIN ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Follow Along @ - https://www.instagram.com/nikkicronksmith/

Speaker 1:

Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart that Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're going to laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection, just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello friends, welcome back. Thanks for being here for another week. Always so glad to have you here with us week after week on the podcast. So thanks for tuning in for yet another week. Super excited for these next two weeks we are going to be doing just some super low-key, chill stuff. This week we're going to be talking about interior design tips and next week we're going to be talking about some of my favorite things that maybe will be some inspiration for you for the holiday season in your gift giving. It's that time of year where we are coming into needing to kind of start thinking about what we're getting for our family members, for the other special and important people in our lives, and sometimes we can just freeze and have no idea what we should be getting, and so I am just going to go through some of my very favorite things that I have found gadgets, products, just all kinds of different things for both yourself and for others in your life. So that'll be super fun next week. But this week we are going to dive into 10 tips in interior design.

Speaker 1:

For those of you that don't know, my degree and background is in interior design. That was what I went to college for. It is what I did in the workforce for about the first 10, not quite 10 years of my career before deciding to take a different route to have more availability to be home with my children. But I did own and operate a design firm for about eight years and still is something that runs deep in my DNA and my blood and I absolutely love it. I don't do it for hire anymore, but I do still love to take on a little project here and there with a friend or something in my own house and just pastime that I love is looking at floor plans and just touching all the textiles and just getting my hand onto any kind of building product, whether it be marble or kitchen cabinets. I just love getting into the details of interior design.

Speaker 1:

We had talked about this a tiny bit. If you've listened to the Declutter your Life series from March, we did one on decluttering your home and I spent just a few minutes talking about how to warm up your space or how to make your space more inviting, and talked specifically about how to hang grapery, and I had so many people say that was the best tip. I need more of that in my life, and so we're going to talk about that one again today, but also give you nine others. So these will be my top 10 design tips that I came up with. I'm sure there's lots more, but for simplicity's sake and to be able to not overwhelm my top 10 interior design tips to make your house feel more like a home, so let's dive right in so we can tackle all of these. The very first one is I have to start here, because if people don't start here, I feel like you never get the outcome that you want.

Speaker 1:

In the space that you're trying to redo or just to make more comfortable, and that is number one. You have to declutter, and absolutely less is more the eye and the brain. They want to see free space and things that are not contained, things that are just loosely on a dresser or a counter, that don't have a place. They take away from the feel that you want of just calm and peace. So when you are starting a project, maybe you want to redo your living room or a bedroom. Before you even start to tackle that, I encourage you to take maybe a couple weeks or a month and go through everything. Go through every dresser drawer, every kitchen drawer, everything in your closet or your pantry, every single knickknack that's on your counter or your dressers, and go through it and decide which of these things actually really bring me joy, like what's here that I love, what's here that when I see it, it kind of gives me like a nostalgia, or it just reminds me of something, or this is special. Those are the things that you want to keep, the random knickknacks that you've just accumulated over the last 25 years of living in that space. Start to get rid of some of those things. When you're going through your dresser and your drawers, if you haven't worn things, if you don't put something on and say I absolutely love this, then it should be going out.

Speaker 1:

I am at the stage in my life I know we've talked about this quite a bit, but I am just leaning out everything, and if there is something that I have not worn, it's leaving my house. The other day I was going through my closet to kind of start the same process here we're going to be hopefully doing some stuff in our bedroom and was just going through my closet and I had so many different sweaters that I love and that look decent on me, but I realized when I was looking in the mirror like I am never going to pick a patterned piece of clothing over a solid piece of clothing, and so I literally just went through and took about 95% out of everything that's patterned out of my closet. I know it's so boring, but it's who I am. I'm a neutral. Black, cream, tan, denim, white is pretty much what I wear all the time, and so just getting rid of anything else what that does, then, is number one makes the project way easier when you are renovating or remodeling because you have so much less stuff to maneuver around, and then it just gives a refresh and there is definitely peace that comes when we get rid of stuff and there's just extra space. And so start there and get rid of stuff and declutter and then ask yourself are there things in this space that maybe I can repurpose?

Speaker 1:

Maybe you have a huge stack of books next to your bed that you've been accumulating, you know, for years. I'm guilty of that when you go through those books, either find a place for them to go so that they're not stacked next to your bed or next to your sofa. And maybe there's some hardcover ones that you just say I just don't need to keep them anymore. Maybe real quickly go through them, take off all of their sleeve and look at them and say is there any that are kind of pretty, that are neutral, that maybe we could use in some accessorizing when we come back in and are resetting some of this? If so, put those aside, get rid of the rest. Same thing with bases and baskets. Is there way too much of this stuff?

Speaker 1:

Honestly, sometimes the thing that can actually declutter our space is organizational bins and baskets, where we actually overpurchase these kind of items. And then we have all these baskets and bins and random stuff finds their way in them or we just have too much and so just going through those and getting rid of and maybe looking at some of them and saying, are they outdated? Do I even want them? Is the rattan falling apart? Is the basket in bad shape? If they're not something that's worth saving, pitch it. But sometimes you also have to look at it and say is this worth repurposing?

Speaker 1:

My favorite thing to do is when I'm redoing a space is if there is stuff that I'm just kind of over. Maybe I loved a certain vase or you know a container or a knickknack. If you keep things that you think you know what this might have potential, keep those and then spray paint them all one color. So maybe it's white, maybe it's black. I did this up at our lake house when we bought it. It was fully furnished and just so much stuff in there and just took a bunch of random vases and knickknacked some wood carved ducks that I never would keep out. But when I took them out in the garage and I spray painted them all a high gloss white, all of a sudden they became the most amazing accessories to put on bookshelves or on a fireplace, and so sometimes too, especially if you're working on a budget, look at some of the things that you're over that have run their course and say what would this look like if I just spray painted it Same with a lamp base? Now you need to do it the right way so things don't chip and get crazy and messy, but there is so much potential in what you have just with kind of making it monochromatic or a neutral color and bringing it back for a second life. So that's just a little tip when you're cleaning things out and ultimately clean.

Speaker 1:

Clear spaces are important to have optimal design and peace in your home. So number one is start with decluttering and if your home just feels overwhelming right now and you don't like any space, just starting with that will start to give you a sense of peace and more joy in those spaces. Number two is start to look and find inspiration. I love the fact that imitation is flattery and I know sometimes we feel like, oh my gosh, like I can't copy somebody or I can't do this or that. Honestly, for me, if somebody copies something, it's a form of flattery. In today's day and age there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be able to have a folder on your phone or in Pinterest or somewhere with 15 to 20 pictures kind of a vision board, for what you like, and use those pictures as a point of reference when you're shopping online for your new bedding for your bedroom that you're doing and you're randomly trying to pick out a bedspread, instead of just trying to guess what you want. Go through those pictures and ask yourself is there a common theme in all of these pictures? And most likely you will probably find, oh, my goodness, they all have all white bedding, or they all have, you know, two-tone kind of monochromatic bedding, or they all have this one feature Most often, the things that we repeatedly pin or repeatedly save have themes of things that we like.

Speaker 1:

When I'm on my Pinterest board, a lot of times I'll click on something to pin and it will say you've already pinned this, would you like to repin it? And it's always like awesome. That is good confirmation that I really like what that looks like. I like the feel of that, and so, as you're thinking about different spaces in your home that you want to maybe spruce up, go ahead and start looking for pictures that inspire you, pictures that are drawing you in, that make you say I would really like to live in that space and organize them in a way that when you start to do projects on your own, you can look through and see what are the common themes, what's the common wood top, what's the common bedding, what's the common kitchen counter color or type. You will be amazed at how much similarity will run through the things that you found inspiration from. So that's number two is start to find inspiration so you can use it kind of as a cheat sheet.

Speaker 1:

The third one is the power of three, and there's two different places specifically really three, but two specifically that we're going to talk about the power of three in design. And the first one is every space should pretty much have a light, a medium and a dark tone in the space to make it feel grounded. Of course there's exceptions to this rule. When somebody wants a super, super sleek, modern, all-white kitchen, you might not have that really dark item. But typically, again, if you're looking at those inspiration pictures, you will find that even that really really white kitchen probably has something like a dark wood bowl with some fruit in it. That's grounding it, or maybe it has a darker floor, rooms that feel comfortable and that feel inviting, you will typically find that they have a balance of all three of those color tones light, medium and dark. And again, this could be maybe you want really light walls and you have, you know, all light bedding in your room, but maybe then it's going to be dark wood dressers, maybe it's going to be darker black accessory. Or maybe in a living room that has lighter couches and lighter walls and a lighter rug, maybe it's going to be a little bit darker wood tone on the floor or the accessories. So be looking. If something feels off in your room, it probably either feels too heavy because there's too much dark, or it feels too light and like things are floating and it needs some dark elements to ground it. So that's just the power of three, for the first is light, medium and dark tones.

Speaker 1:

The second one is when it comes to pattern and fabric, and so typically rule of thumb is you want to have a solid, you want to have a small pattern and you want to have a large pattern. It used to be so hard for me to mix patterns together. When I first came into design school. I thought, nope, if I have a pattern. That's the only pattern I can use, and that is not true. There is so many fun ways that you can play with pattern, but it has to be scaled and the weight of things has to be correct. So if you had a, for example, a large floral, you could absolutely put a small polka dot or a you know a pinstripe fabric in the same colorways with it, and then a solid or a texture.

Speaker 1:

And so when you look around your room again, if you feel like something is missing, ask yourself do I have a solid, a small pattern and a larger pattern in this room? And if not, that might be a super simple fix. So in a living room it might be something like your sofa is a solid, a large pillow is a small print, and maybe you have a chair that has a large buffalo clad or that has something else on it, or reverse. Maybe you have a small pattern on a chair and a larger pattern on either a drapery or a pillow. Could be something as simple as a patterned throw blanket, even if it's monochromatic. Maybe it has a herringbone stitch to it, that a cream and a white, but it has a little bit bigger pattern on top of the solid sofa next to the chair that has a tiny little you know print or texture to it and that usually will help you in balancing your room if something fills off the other thing in three. That is not necessarily a power of three, but our eyes tend to enjoy odd numbers more than they enjoy.

Speaker 1:

Even so, if you are trying to accessorize a coffee table or accessorize a dresser and you keep messing with it and nothing feels right, you probably have two, four or six items. Most often, to really make things work, I find that three or five is the item number that you need, that you need two candlesticks and floral vase, or you need two picture frames and a wood box. It's that odd number that kind of helps your brain do that and process it correctly. There's absolutely times where we're going to do something exactly symmetrical. Maybe it's a fireplace situation on a mantle where we're doing something like that, or we're trying to very intentionally have that order. But most often you will find that an odd number of accessories, an odd number of pillows on a bed, is going to be what you enjoy best.

Speaker 1:

Again, I'm just looking at my bed and I kind of laugh. I've got my two sets of pillows that we sleep on. I have three big Euro shams. I have two small leather kidney pillows and then I have another kind of textured pillow in front of it. So three shams, three decorative pillows, and it's a perfect balance. Behind me is a dresser with five items a vase, two candlesticks, a wood box and a picture frame. So really, just kind of looking at it and saying, does it feel up, balanced? Do I have an even number of objects? And if I take one out or add one more in, is it more pleasing to be? So again, light, medium and dark, small pattern, large pattern and a solid, and then the power of three when working with accessories.

Speaker 1:

Number four is texture talks, and texture is so important in design. If you're somebody that's like I really don't want to have light, medium and dark you can a lot of times. Number one you'll be surprised when you actually look at a space that almost every space you will see has. That Just naturally it happens. But also you can accomplish so much with depth and appeal and coziness when you do that same thing, but instead you do it with texture.

Speaker 1:

So maybe you don't want a large pattern and a small pattern in your room. You want your whole bedroom to be very monochromatic, not a lot of pattern. You can get that exact same appeal by doing it in all the same colorway but mixing up textures. So maybe you're going to have some leather or some fringe or some wool and some suede, maybe something a little bit more furry. That is what my bedroom is. It's all monochromatic, but I've got leather pillows and I've got fur pillows and I've got linen pillows that have a nice edge and a stripe to them, but it's all in the same monochromatic tone. And so texture is really, really important and it can add a ton of interest to your room, but keeping it very, very monochromatic and the same tone. So that's another one that's really important.

Speaker 1:

Even if you are not doing monochromatic, it's really important to look at the different textures that you have in your room. Doing monochromatic, it's really important to look at the different textures that you have in your room. If you have two chairs and a sofa and maybe a loveseat, and every single thing is leather, it's probably not going to feel as warm and inviting as if you had a leather sofa and maybe a suede couple of side chairs, or mixing up those patterns and those textures really, really helps when it comes to just having balance in a room. So number four is check your texture, because texture actually tops and has personality. Layering is tip number five.

Speaker 1:

So often there are layers that are missing in homes of people who maybe just don't have as much of a knack for designing spaces. And it might be something where you have a ton of wood floor and you have the most beautiful furniture and you have gorgeous drapes, but, man, it just really needs to be anchored and that layer on the floor of a great rug. Or you might have the great rug and the great furniture and the great bravery, but your walls are just absolutely bare and it needs some really great art pieces or some interest and some texture on the walls. And so layers look like things like rugs, furniture, drapery, paint, color accessories on the table, in fact, the other one. Sometimes you walk into a space, it feels super sterile and I know instantly well, all your pieces are beautiful, but your coffee table is just a shiny slab of wood, your end tables are just a piece of glass with a lamp. You need layers, you need some plants, you need some candles, you need some stacked books, you need some interest to help break up those surfaces. And so check your room and see if it feels like maybe it's missing a layer or two If your room and see if it feels like maybe it's missing a layer or two If your room is missing drapery or a window cover. A lot of times that will make a room feel unfinished. Same thing with a large corner of a room that has nothing in it. It needs that great chair and ottoman or it needs some kind of a plant in a beautiful cement big planter, like it needs something else to fill that space. So look around your room if you feel like something is off and ask yourself am I missing a layer here in this room somewhere? Number six is go back to drapery 101.

Speaker 1:

The thing that is probably hardest for me to observe in other people's homes. I do not go into homes and analyze them at all, but the one thing that is very hard for me is when people totally steal from themselves because they hang their drapery wrong and I shouldn't say they hang it wrong. They hang it against what design school would teach us to do. And when I say you're stealing from yourself, it's because when you don't hang your drapery the correct way that I'm going to talk to you about the way that we've been trained. You are stealing sunlight and you are stealing the impression of space, because the way that most people hang draperies makes our rooms look smaller and they make our rooms look darker. And here's what most people do.

Speaker 1:

Most people will go to their window, they will measure their window and they will go to the local hardware store or to Bed Bath Beyond, or they'll get on Amazon and they will order a drapery that is the length of the top of the window, most times to the floor. Sometimes people even just go to the bottom of the window, which is even worse, and that's what they will buy. And they will buy a curtain rod that is the width of their window. And so then they go and they hang that curtain rod literally right above their window trim. They hang those two panels right to the edges of their window and now, instead of their window being 30 inches before, when it had nothing on it, they've hung these panels right in line with the window and now they have like a 20 inch slice of window, because five to 10 inches on either side of their window is covered with drapery.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that hanging drapery right at the top of your window ledge or your window frame does, is your eye. When you have a curtain rod that's a linear line, a horizontal line above your window your eye when you walk into a room is going to stop where that rod is at. So when I walk into a room and there's beautiful 10-foot ceilings and somebody has hung their draperies at seven foot tall right above their window, my eye goes to seven foot and down. It doesn't even see those additional three feet of wall and beautiful space above, and all the windows look small because half of them are covered with drapery panels. So the number one thing that you can do to brighten your space, to make your room look so much taller and just more polished, is take your curtain rod to the ceiling and some people just they're like I don't get it. Why would you do that? I have attached a ton of resources in the show notes so that you can see the one that's the drapery.

Speaker 1:

Link is going to show you drawings side by side of exactly what I just explained, how people typically do it and how we would encourage you to do it, and you will immediately see the difference in what it does to a space when you take this tip alone and use it. So again, you're going to go up almost to your ceiling line, maybe a couple inches below, almost to your ceiling line, maybe a couple inches below, and then you are going to hang your curtain rod way beyond the edges of your window frame so that when your draperies are open during the day they are not covering but maybe an inch or two of the actual glass of your window. The panel should start hanging at the edge of your wood trim and go either to the left or the right of the trim so that when it is stacked because it's open, your drapery panel should be covering wall, not window. All of a sudden your space will feel so huge because you have just made this one tiny switch in how you did your drapery. So make sure you go look at this link. It also talks about some situations with lengths. Your fabric should always just be kissing the floor, maybe a quarter of an inch above the floor. You don't want two, three, four inches at the bottom. Literally it should just be kissing the floor and all the way up to the ceiling, way out, left to right, beyond your window. So some really great visual there for you to go look at there is also, if you go back, I will try to remember to pin it here in the episode as well, but either back in that March episode I linked a direct Amazon link to curtains, to draperies that you can get even at Amazon, where you can put in custom measurements and have those shipped to you.

Speaker 1:

They're always going to be a little bit more expensive, but almost any box store Pottery Barn is a great one that does really large panels. You can get them 96, 108, 120. So you can get much longer panels if you're looking and you're doing it this way, so make sure that you check that. If something feels off in your room, this very well could be the one thing that drastically improves your space. So number six is drapery. Make sure that you're hanging those drapes in the right spot. Number seven is watch the length of your furniture, specifically in areas like living room not as much in bedrooms, but certainly it applies there too.

Speaker 1:

But in our more open living spaces it is important that you pay attention to the legs on your furniture. Anytime that we have legs that lift furniture off a little bit, where the fabric doesn't go all the way to the floor, our eyes will also see the space under that piece of furniture and automatically our room becomes bigger. So if you walk into a room and there again is a, maybe there's a big old sectional and you can't see any leg because the fabric goes right to the bottom, and then there's a big old recliner chair that the fabric goes all the way to the bottom and then you have a cocktail table that's just a big old boxy trunk, you're not getting any floor visually to be able to see, and so it's really important again I've included another wonderful link for you to look at different legs of furniture and how to kind of mix and match them. Typically, I would only like to see one piece of furniture that goes all the way to the ground with no exposed legs. So if your couch is a beautiful leather couch that goes all the way down and maybe has a very, very small exposed leg, then your side chairs should not be the same. Your side chairs should have a beautiful leg detail that has a lot of free space underneath.

Speaker 1:

There's great ways again in this document that I attached for you to be able to see what legs really work good together. How do I mix and match and it looks like things belong together. Just something that you can check is do I have way too many legs? Does every single thing I have my sofa, my chairs, my coffee table, my end table, does everything have legs and it's just like sticks of wood everywhere I look, or do I have just all huge, bulky pieces of furniture where my eye cannot wander under any of it and it just feels a little bit like a game of Roblox or Minecraft in your living room? So make sure that you're checking the legs of your furniture and when you're purchasing things, if you're maybe doing a new bedroom set, which this goes right into eight. So I'm actually just going to go into eight and then we'll talk about that. So number seven is watch your legs on your furniture.

Speaker 1:

Number eight is try to avoid buying full sets of furniture. I know that all of our furniture stores are set up so that you can walk in and you say I like that seven piece set. It's a couch, a love seat, a chair, a coffee table, two end tables, and it's easy and it's convenient, but it looks like a furniture store. When you get it home, everything is the same Same thing with bedroom. You go in and they have the bed that has the two side tables, that has the high boy dresser, that has the long dresser, and every single thing is the same length, the same finish, the same textures and it can be very, very boring. And so I know it's a little bit more stressful for people that don't like decision-making.

Speaker 1:

But try to break apart your sets and buy a bed. Maybe you get a beautiful fabric headboard bed and then you get two matching nightstands, which I personally, a nightstand trick that I always use. You will never see me buy a true nightstand. They're short, they're small. I love small dressers as my nightstands because they're taller. Especially if you have a taller bedroom and you get a tall headboard, to be able to have something of a little bit more height and substance makes a huge difference. So for me it would be the fabric tall headboard next to two wood dressers that might be are in one tone, and then maybe my other dresser set has a different finish that compliments or has maybe a leather front or something else. So just try your best to break up those sets.

Speaker 1:

Maybe in a living room set you end up buying a sofa and a love seat that match, but then really don't allow yourself to buy the same chair and ottoman. Go have somebody help you in the store and say I really want an oversized chair with a wood arm and a wood leg that just is still comfy and it's oversized. But it's not the same upholstered piece and the same fabric oversized barrel arm. Holstered piece in the same fabric oversized barrel arm, just something that has a little bit more variety to it. And again go back to your inspiration pictures. When you look at your inspiration pictures, literally take them into a store and say this is what I'm trying to do, so I need a fabric sofa that goes to the ground, I need two side chairs that are in leather with a wood leg, I need a copper end table, I need a metal and wood coffee table. Like. Literally use those things to help salespeople and professionals that are in a lot of these stores, like Room Board, pottery Barn, crate Barrel, even things like Ashley Furniture and some of the lower end furniture stores that we have in our hometowns.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times we'll have somebody that at least has a little bit of experience with helping you put some things together and just really try to avoid the temptation of buying an entire set. If you have already done that, the other thing that you can do is look through your house and say, okay, I already did that. I don't love it, it doesn't feel great to me. How can you take some of those pieces and rearrange them into different areas of your house so that maybe one of your side tables from your living room goes into a guest bedroom and you buy a new piece for one side of the couch? There are ways to start to break apart that set if you already have it, to try to make it look more curated and more individualized to your personal style.

Speaker 1:

So number eight is avoid full sets of furniture. Number nine is always go with less pigment than you think you want in a paint color when you think you want a color. So I'm all about tons of pigment when you're going dark colors, when you're going blacks and moody and things like that when it's neutrals. But so often, so often, people say I want a blue room and they show me paint samples and it's like, oh, my goodness, that is not just going to be a blue room, that is going to be like tropical, turquoise, bright blue, aquarium blue. People do not realize how little pigment you need to have a little bit of a blue tone or a little bit of a green tone. Obviously, there's the exception to this in the kid's room, where somebody wants that something crazy or sports themed, but in your main living spaces, very, very seldom will you find a picture on the internet and you go.

Speaker 1:

I love that space and it has a paint color that's similar to what you're holding in your hand. The color is going to look blue to you on the wall or it's going to look a little green, but it is going to be a fraction of the pigment that you are probably picking out, be a fraction of the pigment that you are probably picking out, and so my rule is always go so much grayer in the color that you want than you actually think you need. So again, I'm going to attach some great links for some great colors and you'll see, even though they're listed as neutrals, you will see immediately that the neutral colors will have one row that says blues and green, and it will absolutely look like a blue or a green on there, but it won't look like grass green or turquoise blue, that oftentimes people navigate to those colors because they think that's what they want, and it is so jarring. It is so jarring you have to go neutral and dull down in color on your walls and again, lots of pigment. If they're going to go dark, just go dark. I just painted our house black at the lake a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1:

There is something very aesthetically pleasing about a very, very dark, moody area. Maybe it's in one small room or an office, but otherwise the majority of your paint needs to be so much more grayed down than you think. If your daughter wants a pink room, awesome, give her a pink room, but it doesn't have to be hot pink. Most often when you see a picture that you love, that's soothing, that's like this, is calming and wonderful. It is the slightest, slightest tint of pink on the wall and maybe there's some darker pinks in the bedding or in the drapery. But when walls are so bright it is very jarring to our system. It's hard to undercompensate for that when you're doing other things in the room and it can just look so busy and so overwhelming. And so always when you're looking at things in the room and it can just look so busy and so overwhelming, and so always when you're looking at colors go way grayer than you think.

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And almost any paint nap you can go and get a small little $4, $5 tester. Go get it and paint a good chunk of area and say, do I really want this? And if you went for a bold color, you're probably going to go. If there's one thing that you're going to invest money in in design, I would say hire somebody to pick out your paint colors. Paint colors can be very, very tricky for the layman that is not used to doing that. And just paying a designer to come in, even if it costs you $500 for an hour consult to have somebody come in and pick out your paint colors, will save you so much agony, so much time, so many paint samples and taping to the wall and testers. It will save you from having to repaint rooms when you come back and you're like this is not at all what I wanted and so sometimes you do that's just a great thing to pay the professional for is just to come do a color console.

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You don't have to paint every room of your house a different color. I think people make this mistake too. They think, okay, I'm going to do this kid's room that color and this kid's room that color, and I'm going to do my office this color and I'm going to do the kitchen this color and the dining room this color. I have three paint colors in my house, maybe four. Now Could we get the basement? Every bedroom except for my son's on our upstairs floor is the same color. It's just a good neutral. My entire first floor is the same color, except for my dining room which is a little bit darker. My basement is all one color, even the bathroom down there. It's just all the same. You don't have to have a different paint color. It is absolutely okay to have one or two paint colors that are throughout your entire home and then you use other things, like we talked about the drapery, the fabrics, the textures, the layering to get different feels and different vibe in those different spaces. Again, a kid's room that maybe has the same color wall as the rest of the house, but in that little girl's room maybe her bedspread is just an awesome huge large floral print pattern and she has two beautiful stripes pillows and a fuzzy hot pink kidney pillow on her bed. That room is going to have a totally different feel than your master bedroom that painted the exact same color but has all monochromatic and neutral and leathers and fur, and you don't have to make everything so drastically different to get different feels. So just remember that as well when picking out paint colors.

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And then number 10 is keep the big items neutral. I'm a really big believer in there's a handful of things that you should buy in your home that are higher quality your bed frame, your mattresses, your couches which obviously your mattresses are going to be neutral. But on those bigger purchases, I just feel like it makes sense to make those in neutral. So if you buy a cream sofa or a tan sofa or a chocolate leather sofa sofa or a tan sofa or a chocolate leather sofa, you can change your home so many times just by changing wall color, by changing accessories and pillows and throws. But if you decide, I really love that hunter green corduroy sofa and you go all in on that hunter green corduroy sofa, in five years, I promise you you will not love the hunter green corduroy sofa. In five years, I promise you you will not love the hunter green corduroy sofa. And so by getting the neutral couch and, if you're in your hunter green stage, maybe getting a couple of pillows or getting a side chair in, that just makes everything so much more adaptable down the years because good pieces of furniture should last you a long time.

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We splurged when we bought this house almost 13 years ago because I needed a custom sofa that was 13 foot long for our living room. I wanted it really long, one piece, very sleek, with a chaise at the end, and so ended up going through room and board and it was an expensive piece of furniture. But that was 13 years ago and I know I'll probably have it for another 10 or 13. It's a beautiful neutral fabric. It's held up wonderfully. Same thing with our bed is restoration hardware, and I debated and debated if I really wanted a custom headboard, but I decided I did, and every day that I see it, I absolutely love it. It's almost eight foot tall. It looks like a winged back chair, very sleek and sexy, and has nail head. I absolutely love it. I could take my bedroom 15 different ways with that headboard because it's a classic neutral piece. And so when you're getting those higher priced items the things that are going to be with you a long time again couches, master bedroom beds and furniture go ahead and spend a little bit more money, but make sure that you do them in a neutral finish so that they will grow with you as styles and tastes change throughout time. So in the piece where we put our money, keep the big items in neutral. So those are the 10 kind of top tips for you.

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I am going to give you just a couple of really quick things that are quick hacks that you can do if you're working on a budget or you just want a small something in your house to get updated. Number one is update your hardware. You would be amazed at how many homes have just builder basic cabinetry, very you know nothing fancy, and they have the white porcelain pole in the bathrooms or the very basic gold or silver pole in the kitchen. By just updating all of your hardware to something a little sweeter, something a little smarter, it is amazing if you got glass knobs for your bathroom and your master or what, just taking off those builder basic white porcelain and replacing them with a great glass knob, maybe in your kitchen, you're taking off all of the white basic or the very basic silver cheap step and you're replacing it with a really beautiful black fleek line pole or knob. It is amazing how much that can smarten up a space and take it from builder basic to a little bit more custom looking, whether it be in your kitchen or your bathroom or even a cheaper piece of furniture that you bought.

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Maybe you have a great dresser in your kid's room and this is where you could do something fun. You have that high boy dresser and you want to paint it. It used to be wood. You're going to sand it down, paint it a great deep navy blue and go to your local Hobby Lobby and get really fun giraffe or elephant head white knob that they sell. They're so fun and put those on the top two drawers of the dresser and then some really great gold knobs on the drawers below. There are so many fun ways that you can dress things up. That is not painting the room a crazy color, that's not going all in on a renovation, but really smarten up a space and make it more uniquely yours.

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The next thing we talked about as well a little bit earlier is thrifting and spray painting things. If you just want to reaccessorize a bunch of bookshelves and you just don't like what it is it looks clustered and overwhelming go to your local thrift store and pick up things that you like, their shape, maybe it's a little knickknack, that's again. I go back to giraffe or elephant. I love little metal animal figurines. You can find those at Goodwill. Or maybe it's a box or a vase or something that just has really fun shape and texture, but the color is awful or it looks super dated. Take those items, spray paint them all white or a black and reaccessorize some of your space with that. You can find great spray paints that look very much like an aged brass. There's so much that you can do to kind of take old, forgotten stuff and turn it into something new that's monochromatic and just works and kind of just gives a sense of peace to the whole room.

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The other thing that you can do that's kind of fun and I do this occasionally, sometimes just with one room, sometimes with an entire floor, sometimes with an entire house, sometimes with an entire house. It is just to reset your home. And what does that look like? It would look like taking all of your accessories in your entire house and maybe bringing them all into your kitchen and laying every single picture frame and candle holder and knickknack in book and putting it on the kitchen counter, cleaning off every surface, whether you took it from bedrooms or your dining room and your living room and just kind of pretending like you just got all of these new accessories at HomeGood and you're going to go reselect where they go, you're going to go make new vignettes, you're going to go do new arrangements? Same thing with artwork, same thing with small pieces of furniture. You should always have the ability to move your end tables from one area to another. When you buy just cute little round tables that sit next to a chair or sit next to your sofa, those are things that can be moved around into different areas and sometimes just getting things out of the space that they're in and then looking at your catalog of all the things that you have and saying you know what? I love that coffee table, but oh my gosh, I love it so much more with the accessories that were just in my bedroom. And so just kind of resetting and reworking your room by getting everything into one space and kind of seeing it and reevaluating how you can distribute it through your home is a super fun way to get a redo on a budget and then also pick a space and start slow.

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All of the things that come at us on the internet of all these beautiful spaces, can make us feel so discontent, can make us feel like our home isn't beautiful enough, it's not this enough, not that enough, and it's so important to just pick a space and say I'm just going to do a couple of things here to make it feel more like home Doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money. But what if I just take this room and I'm just going to spend a couple of weeks just cleaning out and decluttering and really deep cleaning and then maybe editing out some stuff, bringing in maybe just a handful of cute new items that I really love, and just starting small? We don't have to gut our whole houses. We don't have to take every single kitchen, you know cabinet and bathroom cabinet out and go by a high end. There are so many things that we can do to just make our homes feel more like ourselves and I want to add to that because I should have mentioned this up when I was talking about accessorizing Be sure to add your family's personal things that are important to you.

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So many people will walk into a HomeGoods or a TJ Maxx, whatever, and just buy a ton of accessories, and that's great and you need some of those to fill in. But what are things that are important to you that you can use as accessories in your home? What do you have, what's the thing that came from your mom's house. Or you know, when my grandfather passed away, he was from Switzerland and he had a Swiss Army knife box, a metal box, and I knew immediately like I want that, because that would be so beautiful on a coffee table or on an end table or on a bookshelf. Maybe it's the thing that your mom had forever, that you just loved and you want it out. Be sure that there's things that bring joy to your family because they have memories behind them. Maybe, instead of purchasing coffee table books, you make a couple of beautiful family albums. My recommendation I love 12 by 12 photo books that are just stunning and those can sit on your coffee table with family pictures of your family. And it's your memories, not a book on New York City or Ralph Lauren. It's your personal memory, and so just think about that too.

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Like what are the things that we have that are special to us that we can incorporate? When we went on our big trip to Switzerland last year my mom and dad and my four sisters and our husbands I came back with a massive cowbell and I'm thinking I don't even know where I'm going to put this, but I know I want a cowbell with a big leather strap because it is such a part of my heritage and that trip for us, and so incorporate those things into your home that have a lot of meaning. We have a wall in our house Again, you can go find it on my Instagram page. I posted it a couple of times where every time that we travel as a family, we bring home something, whether it be shells or sand or rocks or you name it. The only rules are we have to all be together on the trip, it has to be nature, it has to be like something from the earth and it has to be in somewhat of the scheme of my house, so it has to be pretty neutral. We're not bringing home any bright, red, random things that we find, although in Sedona we did come back with quite a few red rocks and that made it on the wall, but it's a good earthy red rock and we put those into shadow boxes and just with a real quick script I'd put what, what trip we were on, and just we have probably a dozen and a half of them and it's shells and it's sand and we can look at them and we can say, oh, remember when we were in the Virgin Islands on that cruise or when we were up at the lake here or we were at Lake Michigan there. It's just a really, really fun way to be able to have things in your home that add to the decor of your home but that also hold a lot of memory and make your home your family's home.

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I think so many people miss the mark of good design is just everything looking perfect. To me, good design is that your home reflects you Not perfect, it's not perfectly curated, but it's a place that reflects you. I want somebody to be able to come into my home and know a lot about me. I've never been one that doesn't allow a bunch of shoes in the front, because I want people to come in and I want people to feel comfortable, and so I have a massive basket probably the biggest basket in my house in the foyer so that when people come, it is just filled with shoes. I don't need to hide them, I don't need to put them away. We're a busy household. I love to be able to stand around a kitchen island and just have lots of conversation and comfortable places to sit and tons of blankets and soft materials and things that people can just get cozy with.

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What do you want your house to say about you and what do you want it to reflect about how you want people to feel in your home? And I think that has to be a consideration when you're looking through. What do I want my spaces to feel like? So, as you really start to go through and you maybe start to clutter and you start to get some inspiration, when you have those inspiration pictures, ask yourself do I love this space? The answer most likely is yes. The next question you should ask yourself is would I feel super comfortable in this space? Because you need to feel comfortable in your space and you need to love it.

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And sometimes we get all these images of things that we think, oh my gosh, it's so beautiful or it's so crisp, it's so modern, it's so this, and you think that couch looks ridiculously uncomfortable, or it is so white that I would never want my kids to even walk through here, because if they touched anything right Like, is it livable, is it comfortable? And does it also have a feeling that's pleasing to you, that brings peace, that you really, aesthetically, you really love that space, and those are the ones you want to try to copy and to imitate into your own space. So there is just a handful of things. I hope that wasn't too overwhelming, but really hope that this gave you a little bit of inspiration into how maybe you could start to just work on a couple things. Your home should feel like the most welcoming place, and your family should feel that also, so I hope that these things are just little tips that you can put into practice.

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If this episode has encouraged you, or maybe you've learned a few things that you didn't know, I'd love for you to share this with maybe some of your girlfriends, maybe somebody that you know is working on a design project or feels overwhelmed with the projects ahead of them at their home. These might just be helpful tips for them. So feel free to share this, either on social media or through a quick text. That means the world to us. When you do, that Helps us get the podcast into other hands of those that are looking to cultivate strong families and have beautiful homes. So until next week, friends, take care.