Designing a home is a fun way to express your style and let your creativity flow. However, it also comes with many challenges, and sometimes, the ideas you have in your head fall flat once they make it to the room.
While good design often comes down to personal preference, you can follow a few rules to ensure you get it right the first time. For a well-put-together space, no matter your style, avoid these ten things people with well-designed homes never do.
Buy Matching Furniture Sets
There’s a reason designers repeatedly advise against buying matching sets—while they take the guesswork out of purchasing furniture for your living and bedroom, they often look generic and lack personality.
Here’s the good news: if you have a matching set, you can break it up by moving pieces around the house. Or, you can sell some of your pieces and replace them with one-of-a-kind treasures. And you don’t need to be in a rush, either. A collected look full of high-quality (not necessarily high-priced) items takes time to curate.
While you can check your local furniture stores for the perfect coordinating but not completely matching pieces, you should also keep an eye on Facebook marketplace, yard sales, and thrift stores.
Use Small Rugs in Large Spaces
Using the wrong size rug in a space makes it feel incomplete. So, if you’re looking at your space and it feels “off,” you may have a too small rug.
For living rooms, the area rug should be big enough for the front legs of the sofa and accent chairs to touch. For the bedroom, you’ll want a rug that leaves about two feet of space open on the side of the bed, but you can experiment with placement.
If you have a rug that you love but fear it’s too small, don’t worry. You can purchase an inexpensive but large jute rug and layer your smaller rug on top.
Keep Their Builder Grade Boob Lights
Builders tend to take all the cost savings cuts they can, including installing standard “boob lights” in new builds. Designers never keep these generic light fixtures and instead, replace them with something more fitting for their space.
You don’t have to replace your builder-grade light fixtures all at once. Instead, replace them whenever motivation sparks to redecorate or work on a room.
Ignore Scale
In interior design, scale refers to the size of one item compared to another. For example, having an oversized sectional couch with tiny family photos above wouldn’t be the correct scale. Instead, you’d want the wall decor above the sofa to be something substantial.
Also, think of scale when you’re trying to balance out a room. A wall with a large fireplace on one side and a small, skinny shelf on the other won’t look right because the scale isn’t considered.
Cover Their Homes in Mass-Produced Decor
There’s nothing wrong with stopping in at Target, Walmart, or The Home Depot to grab decor pieces. But it looks cheap when your entire walls and shelves are littered with mass-produced decor.
Be sure to mix in your mass-produced decor with thrifted and one-of-a-kind pieces. Also, stay away from cheap plastic items, poorly made picture frames, and lots of word art.
Put Carpet in the Bathroom
Carpeting a bathroom began in the 1970s and remained popular throughout the 1990s. I’ve lived in two houses with carpeted bathrooms and can attest to how grungy carpet gets in rooms with lots of moisture.
If you’re putting new flooring in a bathroom, don’t replace it with carpet. Not only does carpet look weird in the restroom and is an outdated flooring choice, but it can also absorb moisture and bacteria, leading to mold growth and allergens. Instead, choose an appropriate waterproof flooring material like LVP, sheet vinyl, or tile.
Go Against Their Home’s Architecture
People with well-designed homes don’t go against their homes’ architecture. For example, a well-designed bungalow looks like a bungalow—not a modern farmhouse. Use your home’s style as a starting point for your design, and then add your personal touch.
We’ve written dozens of detailed guides that can help create designs true to the history and architecture of your home.
Ignore Flow
Flow refers to how you move around your home. There should be a clear path to get from one room to another. Those with well-thought-out designs keep these rules in mind when placing their furniture.
A living room with good flow will have the furniture set up to encourage conversation or lounging in front of the TV, but the furniture won’t block any pathways of travel. In the kitchen, good flow is created by arranging appliances and cooking tools in a way that makes sense for everyday use.
Invest Lots of Money in Trends
Home design trends are a dime a dozen. What’s popular today likely won’t be popular in five years. We’ve seen this recently with the loss in popularity of shiplap and barn doors. If you don’t want to redo your home every few years to keep up with the trends, ensure your permanent pieces are timeless.
Try out trends on accent walls or through decor pieces.
Not Go with Their Gut
The best thing about interior design is that it’s individualized. No matter your style, you can create a well-designed home for you and your family to enjoy. And sometimes, that means breaking the rules. If you have a unique house layout that requires you to create your own rules, go for it. Follow your instincts and design slowly, allowing your house to take shape over many months or years.
