How to Find your Interior Design Style

I have been in love with interior design for as long as I can remember. I've always loved decorating my bedroom, even as a child, grabbing random decorations from around the house. My designs weren't all that great back then, but I've definitely improved in the last few years.

Growing up, my parents would always let me repaint my bedroom every couple of years, even if my colour choices were a little different. I grew up with the creative freedom that many people are not as fortunate to have. This creative freedom helped me to expand my ideas and design opportunities.

I - like many of us - spend an embarrassing amount of time scrolling Pinterest and Instagram, looking at other designers' work. There's always plenty of inspiring images to be found online, but what do you do when you find something you like?

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Know what style you want to capture

Finding your personal style can be difficult at first, but browsing images online or reading magazines can help you to find something that you like.

Choose a design that encapsulates your personality: are you colourful and bubbly? Or are you more sophisticated and reserved? This can help you find a design style that suits you and your home.

A colourful and bubbly space may have fun art prints on the walls and mixed patterns throughout the space. The colour tones can set the mood as well. Greens and blues are often more calming, while pinks and yellows are more exciting. Depending on what you want the space to do, the choice of colour in a space can make or break the space.

A more sophisticated and reserved space may use more neutral colour tones like grey, white and beige. Neutral colour tones are also much easier to accent with more texture and light pattern to add a bit of interest. Throw pillows and curtains can help add some interest into a space without breaking the bank.

Neutral colour tones are very popular right now, especially in terms of wall paint and larger furniture pieces. Choosing neutral colours like grey and beige are very easy to work into a space, but they can often be 'too safe' and require more texture and pattern for depth and interest.

Find an image that sparks creativity

Browsing social media is often a very easy and accessible way to find design inspiration. Once you know what design style you're looking for, (eg. modern, rustic, eclectic, minimalist, etc.) then you can start looking for inspiration to get you started.

Finding inspiration for a space does not mean copying from other designers. Finding inspiration means finding decorations and furniture that you like, or finding wall paint colours that suit your home. (I'll talk about finding paint colours in another post)

Pick out what you like about the image

Once you find an image of a space you like, pick out the top two or three things that you like about the space. Maybe the image you chose has a beautiful leather sofa and a big mirror and a soft area rug.

By picking out certain things that you like about a space, this makes it much easier to create a certain feeling within your space. Once you have a couple things picked out, now you can move ahead and look into how you can achieve these things.

Get designing!

Remember: interior design isn't cheap. A great way to find unique design ideas and decorations is by thrifting! Often, once you know what design style you want to achieve, you can work backwards through these steps by finding a piece of décor or furniture that you can design around.

Happy designing!