June marks the beginning of summer and the month of brides and grooms. The most popular month to get hitched. As a couple, you will face many challenges together. The first may very well be how to agree (or maybe agree to disagree) on the decor and furnishings in your new home.
Blending styles, preferences and even attitudes about decor can be daunting if no one is willing to compromise. When two adults, who previously had separate lives and separate homes try to assimilate into a new abode, it can be a challenge to determine what goes, what stays and what new things you can buy together.
Evaluating our own collective years of marriage, joining households, decorating and redecorating, we thought we would share some helpful hints for decorating the home after the big merger.
1. Share your ideas - your new relationship is a two way street, with two different opinions, two variations of style and two ways to go about doing anything. Be honest with your spouse, but also openly share ideas about the types of style, furniture and accessories that appeal to you. If both of you are the visual type, use Pinterest or interior designer blogs to present visual representations of style, mixtures of patterns and the perfect melange of colors.
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3. Make it Personal - Be sure to make your home your own. The visual aids on Pinterest and design blogs may point you in the right direction, but you have your own style that will show through. Showcase those beautiful new wedding photos or add art and accessories to your spaces that is a combination of your interests. His books will join her books on the coffee table. His laptop and her laptop will each need a space in the office. Those personal touches will transform your space into one that uniquely displays your own personality, in your own eclectic style.
4. Consider Guests and Family - When making major purchases such as living room furniture and bedroom furniture, consider your audience. If you are planning on doing large amounts of entertaining or if you happen to frequently have overnight guests, all of these factors should be considered when choosing what furniture may be important to keep or to purhcase. You don't want to invite your friends over for a housewarming and offer them the floor rather than a chair or sofa.
5. Decorate Your Own Space Your Way - If you are lucky enough to have the space, try to designate an area or room that is just his or just hers. She may have a studio and he may have a game room. Each person can be allowed to decorate their own space in their own way. This could translate into incorporating some of their old furniture that didn't work in the rest of the house to add to the style of the new space. If each person has their own retreat, in their own style, with their own furniture and their own personal things, the other spaces in which compromises are reached will feel less like something is being taken away and more like both styles are reflected in new, unique ways.
6. Accessorizing - This sounds more complicated and perhaps a bit more decoratively intensive than it has to be. Photo collages, vases, family heirlooms, antiques, lamps and rugs often fall into the accessory category. We like to think of rugs as standard home decor, but not everyone thinks like us, so a rug can be considered an extra, outside of standard design. Accessories emphasize your style and your personality in either subtle or grand ways.
If both of you arrive with too many accessories between both of you, divide them up among rooms or store some and rotate them regularly to consistently create a fresh look. Accessories should definitely blend well with your new, jointly created style and space. This is one of the reasons we love the versatility of our indoor/outdoor collections and transitional collections. These rugs are multipurpose, can fit a variety of decors and hold up to heavy traffic or low traffic depending on how much your household expands.
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| Loloi Piper Collection |
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| Surya Rain Collection |
7. Be Respectful and Practical - It is important to be respectful of your spouse's needs and wants while keeping furniture and accessories practical and functional, when they need to be. If your spouse requires a functional work space with versatile storage, your grandmother's roll top antique desk may not be the best choice for an office. If your spouse loves to relax in front of the television with feet propped on a coffee table, the glass top piece you had in your apartment may not work best in your new space. Remember that your spouse has just as many needs and wants as you do, so don't ignore them and decide on a piece that is completely nonfunctional.
8. Experiment - Move furniture, change bedspreads, buy new throw pillows and try rugs in varying configurations. Find the best fit for your home by testing out different looks. Determine a rug fit by considering furniture placement. Perhaps the rug you currently have in inventory is too small for your new living room. When purchasing items from the home and combining them with items already owned, experiment with colors, textures and styles. To keep the experiment a constant work in progress, purchase items that can be returned or exchanged for other items that may be a better fit. This is one of the reasons why we offer a 30-day money back guarantee, sometimes you just have to see it in the space.
9. Tap into Each Other's Strengths - If one of you is a better overall, big picture person and one of you better manages the little details, be sure to use these strengths each to its advantage. The joining of your home should be a joint effort. A home that is too one sided will only feel comfortable to one person, rather than to both of you. Use the best sides of your personalities to create a home that is a perfect representation of the combination of you both.
Start by prepping your home and measuring your space. A beautiful rug can set the tone for decorating the new home that you build together.
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| Eclectic Design Photo Courtesy of Homedit.com |
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