You Don’t Have to Pick a Style: How to Mix the Ones You Love
I love a lot of design styles.
Curated vintage European. Moody bohemian. French countryside cottage. Scandinavian. Urban industrial.
It would be difficult for me to pick one and stay inside that box.
And I don’t think that’s because I’m a designer and constantly playing with ideas. I think most people are like this.
I get asked all the time:
“How do I know my design style?”
Usually, the person asking already knows what they like. That’s the funny part.
They’ll show me a room they love, then another one that looks completely different. They might love the sofa from one, the colors from another, an antique piece they found somewhere else, and a light fixture that doesn’t seem to fit neatly into any of it.
Then comes the question:
“So what style am I?”
Maybe several.
And that’s completely fine.
Sometimes we settle on a combination of styles because having a few words to describe what you like can be helpful. Maybe it’s coastal farmhouse. Maybe it’s industrial chic.
But you can absolutely love farmhouse style and not have to live the rest of your life surrounded by muted colors.
Don’t get too caught up in the names.
Pay attention to the pieces you’re drawn to.
The colors you keep going back to.
The textures you enjoy.
The rooms that make you stop scrolling.
The old things you would drag home even though you have absolutely no idea where you’re going to put them.
Your style doesn’t need to have a name.
And if you really want it to have one, make one up.
Call it Modern Grandma With a Thing for Green Velvet.
There. Now we have a style.
The much more useful question is:
How do I take all these different things I love and make them work together?
Because that is where design comes in.
Start With the Pieces, Not the Style
Forget for a minute whether something is farmhouse, industrial, Scandinavian, traditional, bohemian or French.
Look at the actual thing.
Maybe you love a chunky old farmhouse table.
Great.
That doesn’t mean the chairs around it need to be farmhouse chairs. Maybe they’re simple, clean-lined chairs. Maybe a very modern light fixture hangs above it. Maybe there’s an old oil painting on the wall and a ridiculously colorful rug underneath everything.
You aren’t decorating according to a category.
You’re building a room.
And when you start thinking that way, you have considerably more freedom.
The question becomes less:
“Does this match my style?”
and more:
“Does this work with everything else?”
Those are two very different questions.
This is also why I like starting a room with something you already love. A piece of furniture, a rug, a painting, even something a little strange can give you far more direction than choosing a style from a list ever will.
Continue reading: Start With the One Thing You Love →
Find Something That Connects Them
Pieces from completely different styles can sit beautifully beside each other when they have something in common.
It might be color.
Material.
Shape.
Scale.
Texture.
Maybe you have an ornate antique cabinet with black painted details and, across the room, a very modern black metal floor lamp.
They don’t match.
They don’t need to.
The black connects them.
Maybe your clean, modern sofa sits beside an old primitive wood table. That same warm wood appears again in a picture frame or chair on the other side of the room.
Now the old table doesn’t feel random.
It belongs.
You don’t need everything in the room to connect to everything else. You just need enough little relationships that the room starts to make sense.
Color is especially good at doing this. If you’re struggling to figure out what belongs together, sometimes the answer is already sitting in a photograph, a textile, a painting or something else you love. Pulling a palette from an existing image can give very different pieces a common language without making the room feel overly coordinated.
Continue reading: How to Use AI to Create the Perfect Color Palette in Seconds →
Let Some Things Be Quiet
When you’re mixing several styles, restraint matters.
You can have the strange antique cabinet.
The patterned rug.
The modern sofa.
The old painting.
The industrial light fixture.
But they don’t all need to be the star.
If you have one piece with a lot of personality, surround it with a few things that are simpler.
If your rug is colorful and heavily patterned, perhaps your largest upholstered pieces are quieter.
If the antique cabinet is incredibly ornate, don’t feel obligated to put an ornate chair beside it just because they’re both old.
Sometimes the best thing you can put beside an interesting piece is something very simple.
It gives your eye somewhere to rest.
And it gives the piece you love room to actually be noticed.
Use Contrast on Purpose
One of my favorite things about mixing styles is that you can create combinations you would never get if you bought everything from one collection.
Old beside new.
Rough beside refined.
Ornate beside simple.
Dark beside light.
A primitive wooden bench against a clean plaster wall.
An ornate antique mirror over a very simple console.
A modern sofa underneath an old oil painting.
A sleek lamp sitting on a battered old table.
Those differences aren’t necessarily things you need to fix.
Sometimes they’re exactly why the room works.
The modern piece keeps the antique from making the room feel too traditional.
The antique keeps the modern room from feeling sterile.
The rough piece makes the polished one feel more interesting.
Contrast gives each piece something to play against.
And this is one of the easiest ways to keep a room from looking like everything arrived on the same delivery truck.
Continue reading: How to Make an STR Look Collected Instead of Shipped In From Amazon →
Repeat Yourself a Little
If something feels out of place, sometimes the solution isn’t removing it.
It’s repeating it.
Let’s say you bring an industrial metal light fixture into a room that otherwise has very little industrial influence.
By itself, it might feel disconnected.
Add a black metal frame somewhere else. Maybe an iron side table. Maybe there’s already black in the artwork.
Now the fixture has friends.
The same thing works with color.
If you have one deep burgundy chair in an otherwise neutral room, you don’t necessarily need another burgundy chair. Pull a little of that color into the artwork, a pillow or the rug.
Not enough to make everything match.
Just enough to make it intentional.
Don’t Try to Represent Every Style Equally
This isn’t a recipe.
You don’t need 20 percent French, 20 percent Scandinavian, 20 percent bohemian, 20 percent industrial and 20 percent farmhouse.
One room might be fairly simple and clean, with one incredible antique piece doing most of the talking.
Another might have far more color, pattern and texture.
Your kitchen may be warm and rustic while your bedroom is darker and moodier.
That’s okay.
A home doesn’t need every room to be a slightly different copy of the same idea.
There should simply be things that carry through the house: colors you repeat, materials you love, certain shapes, finishes, artwork, old pieces, whatever naturally keeps showing up because you keep choosing it.
That’s what makes the rooms feel like they belong to the same person.
Stop Asking Whether You’re Allowed to Put Those Together
This may be the biggest one.
You find an old French chair you love.
But your house isn’t French.
You find a weird primitive cabinet.
But your living room is fairly modern.
You fall in love with a colorful rug.
But it doesn’t look anything like the pictures you originally saved for the room.
Who cares?
Try it.
Move things around.
Put the old chair beside the modern table and see what happens.
Pull the colorful rug underneath the clean-lined sofa.
Put the industrial lamp in the otherwise very pretty bedroom.
Some combinations won’t work. That’s part of it.
But sometimes the thing that technically shouldn’t go in the room is the thing that finally makes the room interesting.
Your Home Should Look Like You Live There
I don’t really want to walk into someone’s house and immediately know which design category they chose.
I would rather notice the things they love.
The antique they found years ago.
The piece of art they couldn’t stop thinking about.
The ridiculous chair they bought even though it didn’t “go.”
The colors they apparently can’t stop using.
The clean modern sofa they put beside the table that looks like it has been around for 150 years.
Those things tell me something.
And when they’re put together thoughtfully, they create something you couldn’t have ordered as a matching set.
So pull from the things you love.
Look for ways to connect them.
Repeat colors and materials when you need to create a little continuity.
Balance the louder pieces with quieter ones.
Use contrast instead of being afraid of it.
And give yourself permission to bring home the thing that doesn’t technically match.
Because the goal was never to make your home look perfectly like a style.
The goal is to learn how to make the things you love look good together.
Continue Reading
Start With the One Thing You Love
How to Use AI to Create the Perfect Color Palette in Seconds
How to Make an STR Look Collected Instead of Shipped In From Amazon
You Don’t Have to Pick a Style: How to Mix the Ones You Love
I love a lot of design styles.
Curated vintage European. Moody bohemian. French countryside cottage. Scandinavian. Urban industrial.
It would be difficult for me to pick one and stay inside that box.
And I don’t think that’s because I’m a designer and constantly playing with ideas. I think most people are like this.
I get asked all the time:
“How do I know my design style?”
Usually, the person asking already knows what they like. That’s the funny part.
They’ll show me a room they love, then another one that looks completely different. They might love the sofa from one, the colors from another, an antique piece they found somewhere else, and a light fixture that doesn’t seem to fit neatly into any of it.
Then comes the question:
“So what style am I?”
Maybe several.
And that’s completely fine.
Sometimes we settle on a combination of styles because having a few words to describe what you like can be helpful. Maybe it’s coastal farmhouse. Maybe it’s industrial chic.
But you can absolutely love farmhouse style and not have to live the rest of your life surrounded by muted colors.
Don’t get too caught up in the names.
Pay attention to the pieces you’re drawn to.
The colors you keep going back to.
The textures you enjoy.
The rooms that make you stop scrolling.
The old things you would drag home even though you have absolutely no idea where you’re going to put them.
Your style doesn’t need to have a name.
And if you really want it to have one, make one up.
Call it Modern Grandma With a Thing for Green Velvet.
There. Now we have a style.
The much more useful question is:
How do I take all these different things I love and make them work together?
Because that is where design comes in.
Start With the Pieces, Not the Style
Forget for a minute whether something is farmhouse, industrial, Scandinavian, traditional, bohemian or French.
Look at the actual thing.
Maybe you love a chunky old farmhouse table.
Great.
That doesn’t mean the chairs around it need to be farmhouse chairs. Maybe they’re simple, clean-lined chairs. Maybe a very modern light fixture hangs above it. Maybe there’s an old oil painting on the wall and a ridiculously colorful rug underneath everything.
You aren’t decorating according to a category.
You’re building a room.
And when you start thinking that way, you have considerably more freedom.
The question becomes less:
“Does this match my style?”
and more:
“Does this work with everything else?”
Those are two very different questions.
This is also why I like starting a room with something you already love. A piece of furniture, a rug, a painting, even something a little strange can give you far more direction than choosing a style from a list ever will.
Continue reading: Start With the One Thing You Love →
Find Something That Connects Them
Pieces from completely different styles can sit beautifully beside each other when they have something in common.
It might be color.
Material.
Shape.
Scale.
Texture.
Maybe you have an ornate antique cabinet with black painted details and, across the room, a very modern black metal floor lamp.
They don’t match.
They don’t need to.
The black connects them.
Maybe your clean, modern sofa sits beside an old primitive wood table. That same warm wood appears again in a picture frame or chair on the other side of the room.
Now the old table doesn’t feel random.
It belongs.
You don’t need everything in the room to connect to everything else. You just need enough little relationships that the room starts to make sense.
Color is especially good at doing this. If you’re struggling to figure out what belongs together, sometimes the answer is already sitting in a photograph, a textile, a painting or something else you love. Pulling a palette from an existing image can give very different pieces a common language without making the room feel overly coordinated.
Continue reading: How to Use AI to Create the Perfect Color Palette in Seconds →
Let Some Things Be Quiet
When you’re mixing several styles, restraint matters.
You can have the strange antique cabinet.
The patterned rug.
The modern sofa.
The old painting.
The industrial light fixture.
But they don’t all need to be the star.
If you have one piece with a lot of personality, surround it with a few things that are simpler.
If your rug is colorful and heavily patterned, perhaps your largest upholstered pieces are quieter.
If the antique cabinet is incredibly ornate, don’t feel obligated to put an ornate chair beside it just because they’re both old.
Sometimes the best thing you can put beside an interesting piece is something very simple.
It gives your eye somewhere to rest.
And it gives the piece you love room to actually be noticed.
Use Contrast on Purpose
One of my favorite things about mixing styles is that you can create combinations you would never get if you bought everything from one collection.
Old beside new.
Rough beside refined.
Ornate beside simple.
Dark beside light.
A primitive wooden bench against a clean plaster wall.
An ornate antique mirror over a very simple console.
A modern sofa underneath an old oil painting.
A sleek lamp sitting on a battered old table.
Those differences aren’t necessarily things you need to fix.
Sometimes they’re exactly why the room works.
The modern piece keeps the antique from making the room feel too traditional.
The antique keeps the modern room from feeling sterile.
The rough piece makes the polished one feel more interesting.
Contrast gives each piece something to play against.
And this is one of the easiest ways to keep a room from looking like everything arrived on the same delivery truck.
Continue reading: How to Make an STR Look Collected Instead of Shipped In From Amazon →
Repeat Yourself a Little
If something feels out of place, sometimes the solution isn’t removing it.
It’s repeating it.
Let’s say you bring an industrial metal light fixture into a room that otherwise has very little industrial influence.
By itself, it might feel disconnected.
Add a black metal frame somewhere else. Maybe an iron side table. Maybe there’s already black in the artwork.
Now the fixture has friends.
The same thing works with color.
If you have one deep burgundy chair in an otherwise neutral room, you don’t necessarily need another burgundy chair. Pull a little of that color into the artwork, a pillow or the rug.
Not enough to make everything match.
Just enough to make it intentional.
Don’t Try to Represent Every Style Equally
This isn’t a recipe.
You don’t need 20 percent French, 20 percent Scandinavian, 20 percent bohemian, 20 percent industrial and 20 percent farmhouse.
One room might be fairly simple and clean, with one incredible antique piece doing most of the talking.
Another might have far more color, pattern and texture.
Your kitchen may be warm and rustic while your bedroom is darker and moodier.
That’s okay.
A home doesn’t need every room to be a slightly different copy of the same idea.
There should simply be things that carry through the house: colors you repeat, materials you love, certain shapes, finishes, artwork, old pieces, whatever naturally keeps showing up because you keep choosing it.
That’s what makes the rooms feel like they belong to the same person.
Stop Asking Whether You’re Allowed to Put Those Together
This may be the biggest one.
You find an old French chair you love.
But your house isn’t French.
You find a weird primitive cabinet.
But your living room is fairly modern.
You fall in love with a colorful rug.
But it doesn’t look anything like the pictures you originally saved for the room.
Who cares?
Try it.
Move things around.
Put the old chair beside the modern table and see what happens.
Pull the colorful rug underneath the clean-lined sofa.
Put the industrial lamp in the otherwise very pretty bedroom.
Some combinations won’t work. That’s part of it.
But sometimes the thing that technically shouldn’t go in the room is the thing that finally makes the room interesting.
Your Home Should Look Like You Live There
I don’t really want to walk into someone’s house and immediately know which design category they chose.
I would rather notice the things they love.
The antique they found years ago.
The piece of art they couldn’t stop thinking about.
The ridiculous chair they bought even though it didn’t “go.”
The colors they apparently can’t stop using.
The clean modern sofa they put beside the table that looks like it has been around for 150 years.
Those things tell me something.
And when they’re put together thoughtfully, they create something you couldn’t have ordered as a matching set.
So pull from the things you love.
Look for ways to connect them.
Repeat colors and materials when you need to create a little continuity.
Balance the louder pieces with quieter ones.
Use contrast instead of being afraid of it.
And give yourself permission to bring home the thing that doesn’t technically match.
Because the goal was never to make your home look perfectly like a style.
The goal is to learn how to make the things you love look good together.
Continue Reading
Start With the One Thing You Love
How to Use AI to Create the Perfect Color Palette in Seconds
How to Make an STR Look Collected Instead of Shipped In From Amazon