5 Decorating Rules You Should Break Now
5 Decorating Rules You Should Break
There are 5 Decorating Rules that you can break and still maintain a beautiful and inviting home. Breaking these decorating rules saves you money–a key if you’re like most of us and don’t have a designer budget. Breaking the decorating rules can also be essential to your peace of mind as not every decorating rule works with the messy reality of life.
- Rule # 1: Keep a Neutral Pallet.
In the world of dreamy Instagram pictures, you can forget that we live in the real world where homes are lived in and messy. A soft beige couch can quickly turn into a sticky fingerprint attracting nightmare. Light carpet is hard to keep clean and dark wood floors show dust like crazy. Time to break a decorating rule.
When you Should Break It: If you need permission to buy a patterned couch that hides stains or to install sensible flooring—you have it. Some of the best homes break the neutral pallet rule. Just remember to surround your bold choices with neutrals for the best impact.
Not every decorating rule works with the messy reality of life. Click To Tweet- Rule # 2 Every Home Improvement Should Add Resale Value.
Why you Should Break It: It’s your home, and you’re living in it. Unless you have a plan for selling your home every 2-3 years, you should decorate and remodel so your home works for you. If you love colorful walls—go for it. If you want to knock out a wall to give you a larger bedroom, then you should have a larger bedroom. We can fall into the trap of believing that the end goal is to have the most generic, universally appealing house so it’s ready for resale. The little talked about truth is that unique, energetically decorated homes sell fast when they’re done right. It’s when we get stuck “in-between” well thought out décor and design and generic that our home begins to look like everyone else’s.
Unique, energetically decorated homes sell fast when done right. Click To Tweet
- Rule # 3 Steer Clear of Trends
This might not be a hard and fast decorating rule, but we tend to steer away from trends because they can have a short life, and we don’t want to get stuck looking out of date.
Why you might want to break it: There’s nothing innately wrong with home decorating trends—in fact, there’s lots of advantages. Firstly, you can find a variety of inexpensive home décor precisely because it’s trendy. That means more bang for your decorating buck. Secondly, it’s a great way to get started when you’re new to decorating and you’re not entirely sure what’s “you” yet. Trendy décor is featured in store displays designed to help you put it altogether without needing a lot of decorating know-how. Plus, there’s lots of great Instagram pictures for ideas, so you can be exactly in-style without having to commit to finding your style.
Some decorating rules need to be broken. Click To Tweet- Rule # 4 Follow Decorating Trends: I know that I’m being contradictory but bear with me here.
When you should break it: This decorating rule needs to be broken when the trend doesn’t work with your style or the architectural style of the home. I live in a Mediterranean home and farmhouse is the current trend. While it’s not impossible to modernize the farmhouse look for a Mediterranean, it does require a strong and capable hand. Embracing a trend that doesn’t work with the architecture can make it seem like you’re living in two houses–one style on the outside, and another style on the inside.
Plus, Embracing the latest trend can be a lot of work—especially if this isn’t your first home and you already own (not necessarily on trend) pieces that you love. It’s okay to decorate based on the style of your architecture, or what you already own. Just be honest with yourself. If you’re hanging onto dried flower wreaths or Miami Vice peach couches, it’s time to rid your home of old trends. Just don’t throw out great pieces simply because they aren’t exactly what is trendy today.
- Rule # 5 Stick with a similar color pallet throughout the house. Colors should flow naturally from room to room. Every room that can “see each other” needs to be painted and decorated in colors that go together and create a cohesive feeling.
Where you should break it. In rooms that don’t connect to each other, it can be fun to go a little crazy. Choose a room that isn’t constantly in view from another room—such as a small bathroom, or a walk-in-closet, and then let your creative juices fly. These are great opportunities for wallpaper or a bold color on every wall, and mosaic tiles on the floors. Where such bold choices would overwhelm a kitchen, those same choices energize small areas.
Let me know what you think? What other decorating rules do you think need to be broken? Let us know in the comments below.
