SHOP: Lennon Sectional | Storage Ottoman
I have a lot of experience with indecisive decorating. Not trouble with how to decorate, but I have a hard time committing.
Working with design clients in the past that have struggled with decision-making has also given me empathy for this problem. How it can take the fun out of decorating and make it a long and frustrating process if you let it.
Here are 5 things my experience has taught me about how to avoid decorating paralysis:
1. Define your style.
Let’s face it, there are many different ways you could go with your space and most of them would look good. Your friends may all have an opinion, social media is flooded with ideas and, if you’re like me, you’re also attracted to more than one style.
That’s why it’s so important to spend time on this step, especially if you’re naturally indecisive, and hone in on the style that is really you. (The good news is, you can have fun with this part and be as indecisive as you want during the style defining process – collecting or pinning as many ideas as you like.)
SHOP: Proximity Side Chair
It’s always fun to see how definite preferences emerge when you start paring down the ideas at the end of the process.
{Read this post for a complete guide on how to define your style.}
2. Create a moodboard.
There are so many beautiful things and great design ideas in furniture showrooms, and that has the potential to be overwhelming for the indecisive.
Having a mood board, and taking it with you whenever you shop for furniture or accessories, will keep you focused on the style you’ve already defined and the choices you’ve already made.
If you’ve followed the guide on defining your style, the mood board will be a natural outcome.
3. Don’t ask everyone’s opinion on how to decorate.
Everyone has an opinion, and many of them are probably good, but if you listen to and try to follow them all you’ll never have a completely decorated space – or it will be decorated, but nothing like what you originally intended it to be.
SHOP: Digby Sofa
If you’re someone who knows what you like, but don’t trust your design ability, choose a friend whose style you like and opinion you trust, or your design consultant at the furniture store, or an interior designer whose work you’ve seen and admire to bounce ideas off of.
The idea is to choose just one trusted source, or at the most two, to minimize confusion. You want them to help you make decisions on how to decorate, not make you more indecisive.
4. Decorate something.
Onesie-twosie shopping is the indecisive decorators worst enemy – dragging home a piece at a time. Of course, since nothing else is completed, it may not seem like it looks or feels right.
Or what if you find something better? Or what if it doesn’t ultimately go with the other things you find? These types of questions can put us in an endless cycle of indecisiveness.
SHOP: Cambridge Bed With Storage
Once you’ve pinned down your style, commit to decorating something completely based on your mood board. If you’re decorating a house, decorate at least one room, as much as possible, all at once. If you’re decorating a room and can only afford to do one corner, do it. Furniture. Accessories. Completely.
This brings your mood board to life and commits you to the style you’ve chosen. It also confirms that you do know what you’re doing and really will like the end result because you can see an example of it right in front of you.
5. Be willing to compromise.
Sometimes part of our indecisiveness, or at least mine, comes from visualizing things in our head that don’t exist, and then shopping – really hoping we’ll run across them some day. We can’t decide on anything else, because maybe…
At the end of the day a well decorated room is not just one thing, it’s a beautiful sum of all of the various parts put together. If compromising on one piece (that will look just as good, or maybe better, when combined with everything else) means having a finished space that you can enjoy, do it.
Decorating is an important part of having an inviting and functional home, but we will definitely have more important decisions to make in our lives.
And the sooner we make the decorating decisions, the sooner we can relax and enjoy our beautiful home. Because it will be. Follow the process and trust yourself. :-)
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