How to Find Your Interior Design Style and Stick With It

by Evelyn Long

Discovering your preferred interior design style is challenging, whether starting from scratch or hoping to change the look of your home. It helps to find inspiration wherever you can, but you want your space to be a reflection of you.

Learn how to uncover a well-defined style you'll love for years to come.

Discovering Your Interior Design Style

You may have grandiose ideas of what your dream home should look like — maybe painted cabinets, exposed beams or patterned bathroom tile have long appealed to you. Nevertheless, deciding on an interior design style and sticking with it is harder than it looks.

With so many options at your fingertips, you may feel overwhelmed when styling an entire home.

Inspiration Boards

Inspiration or mood boards are popular ways to gain insight into your home design tastes. Some people collect magazine clippings and samples, pasting them on a poster board to combine their preferences.

You can also look for ideas on Pinterest, creating digital boards to see which design trends appeal to you and how to decorate each room. Pinterest also makes it easier to find specific products and purchase items you love online, allowing you to replicate your dream home styles.

Read more blogs on inspiration boards here.

Social Media

In addition to Pinterest, other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook make design more accessible for the average person. In 2022, nearly 67% of small businesses, including designers, used social media. On these networks, users can follow their favorite interior design experts and shops, save images, and connect with others to understand trends and their tastes.

You might use specific hashtags to find relevant inspiration — for instance, #farmhousehome or #minimalism. Some designers also deliver video content with tutorials on setting up a comfortable space.

Check out Whispering Bold on Instagram.

Personality Questionnaire

Those personality quizzes you enjoy taking in your free time are actually a valuable tool in helping you discover your interior design style. An extrovert may be more drawn to bold, bright colors in a maximalist design, while introverts could lean toward neutral shades and cozy textures. Artistic individuals could imagine a more eclectic or bohemian design with one-of-a-kind decorative pieces.

Not all personality quizzes are created equal, which is why it is best to answer questionnaires about core personality traits and lifestyles. For design clues, consider which colors, textures and patterns evoke a particular feeling or mood.

Creating a Cohesive Design Plan for Your Home

Once you have an inkling of the interior design style you like the most, you must devise a design plan. At this stage, you should focus more on foundational elements — paint, hardware, surfaces and lines — than what each completed room will look like.

Color Palette

Start your design plan with a base color palette — a primary tone and accent color for each room. You may even want to consider one shade for the whole house to create a seamless theme. Neutrals remain timeless and comfortable in any home — about 59% of homeowners prefer a simple, calming design.

Once you've chosen the base color, consider secondary hues. These may be integrated into furnishings, accessories or artwork.

Select only three to five colors for your palette to avoid an overwhelming space, following a 60-30-10 technique for each room or the house overall.

Materials and Textures

The materials and textures you use also affect the decorative style you're after, so ensuring your selections are cohesive is essential. You want these fine details to create visual interest in your home, not look out of place.

For instance, linen and rattan are warm and organic, ideal for contemporary, coastal or bohemian interiors. Even kitchen cabinets make a difference, with smoother, flat surfaces leaning modern. 

Furniture

The right furnishings will create a focal point and help ground your home. When selecting pieces, ensure they are proportional to the room size to avoid bulkiness or being too small.

You may also find opportunities to include secondary colors in your palette, such as a blue-gray sofa in coastal decor or a rust leather or pine green velvet chair for mid century modern style.

Furniture may also allow you to include more natural materials and textures — like a wood drum coffee table or wrought iron legs on a side table next to your bed. Regardless of what you choose, furniture is quite an investment, so it should always be of the highest quality and provide optimal comfort.

Other Decorative Items

The smallest decorative items can significantly impact the look of your home interiors. For example, black or brushed gold hardware in a white kitchen will stand out.

Lighting is also essential — consider hanging pendant lights over the island, as well as chandeliers and table lamps. A black wagon wheel chandelier is common in farmhouse style, while crystals often adorn chandeliers in luxe interiors.

Other fine details — paintings, ornaments, window trimmings and statues — should also complement colors and materials.

How to Implement Your Interior Design Taste Throughout Your Home

At this point, you know what you like and have an idea of how your home should look overall. Now comes the hard part of implementing your design preferences throughout each room. Use the following tips to transform your residence from drab to fab.

Create a Focal Point

Every room should have a focal point, whether an accent wall, furniture piece or unique feature. This may be something you create or already be a part of your home. For example, the living room could have a beautiful stone fireplace you can arrange furniture around. Meanwhile, a large headboard and bed may be the focal point in your bedroom.

You may also need to upgrade the focal point. Consider refacing an outdated fireplace or creating an exposed brick wall — a neat idea for an industrial design. Brick is a relatively inexpensive material, so this project may cost about $100, depending on the wall's size.

Consider Function and Flow

Remember to arrange decor with purpose, function and flow. How do you meander through a room when you walk into it? Does it make sense according to the setup? You may need to rethink the space if you have to walk around bulky furniture or have obstructed views.

Also read: Finding the Optimal Distance Between Furniture and Fixtures for Your Home

It helps to consider what you intend to use the room for, such as activities — this can guide your decorative decisions and help you pick out the correct items and layout. Start with the most important elements — seating, workspace and storage — and follow with ornamental adornments.

For flow, ensure your setup doesn't lead to overcrowding. An area rug is handy for defining zones within a room.

Be Consistent

Consistency is vital to a harmonious and unifying interior design. You already know your preferred aesthetic — like farmhouse, transitional, boho or coastal — will greatly influence your selections. Now, you want to create repetition and rhythm using shapes, patterns and colors.

Even a maximalist home needs some consistency. For instance, you might select a floral motif to carry throughout the design in pillows, curtains or art. You may also want to repeat textiles like silk, velvet or faux fur.

Grouping and layering decor are also essential to creating consistency. Cluster similar items like photo frames and vases or layer your color palette. One way you can do this is by using the boldest color in your palette as decorative pillows on a neutral sofa with a complementary throw blanket. 

Go With Your Instinct

Finding your interior design style and making it stick comes down to emotion and sensation — how does the space and design make you feel? It's normal for your preferences to evolve, and you'll want to shift with them.

Famed interior designer Nate Berkus understands the difficulty in knowing what you like when you have yet to live with it. His best advice is to ignore the input from others when you're making important decisions and go with whatever feels right to you.

Overcoming Design Challenges With an Interior Designer

Transforming a house into a comfortable home is challenging if you lack vision and decisiveness — a reason why some people become professional interior designers. If you're unsure how to integrate your decorative tastes throughout your dwelling, it helps to consult with someone who does.

An interior designer can create designs you might not have thought of on your own. Their expertise is especially invaluable when working with tight spaces or tying certain elements together, such as modern touches with family heirlooms.

Of course, no one wants their design decisions to become outdated quickly. To stay ahead of trends, designer Kate Pearce suggests considering how many times styles have reappeared throughout history. For example, the popular checkerboard patterns and archways have reemerged several times since the neoclassical and classical periods. A professional can help you integrate these choices into your home in timeless ways.

Design the Home of Your Dreams With Your Treasured Style

You should always enjoy spending time in your house. To this end, ensuring its design matches your tastes is essential. Uncover your aesthetic and plan your style to create the home of your dreams.

Evelyn Long is the Editor-in-Chief of Renovated Magazine, where she writes on interior design and home organization content. She is passionate about making home styling easier for all homeowners and renters by writing about home interior trends. Subscribe to renovated.com/subscribe for more posts by Evelyn!