Timeless Home Design Tips

Designing your home for today and the future can be a challenge. You want all the fun styles and patterns you see on Instagram and Pinterest, but you also want to ensure you still love it in 5-10+ years. Renovating and decorating your home is an investment, so you certainly don’t want to find yourself wishing you made different design decisions down the road.

Working with a designer can really help with these decisions. We have not only been following trends for decades, but we know and have experience with quality, what lasts, and what doesn’t. We’re also exceptionally skilled at gathering all of those inspirational photos you’ve collected, asking the right questions to hone in on your unique style, and assist in making the right design decisions you’re guaranteed to love now and in the future.

I’ve put together a free guide with secrets to timeless home design; be sure to download this for comprehensive tips. Today I’m sharing a few more design secrets I incorporate in my design process to ensure my clients love their home for years to come.

Look at your history

Design is personal and what you may love in a home, someone else may not. That’s why it’s important to look at your own personal style trend (You may not know you have a style, but I promise you do!). Browse through your Pinterest Boards or saved images from as far back as you can go. What common theme do you see? Are most of your images light and bright or dark and moody? Is there a specific color scheme that seems consistent? What about specific design elements? Trends come and go, but your style and what you’re drawn to is unique to you, so this is the first place you should look in determining which design direction to go to ensure you’ll love it for years.

home style

One of the first things you should consider when building, renovating or redecorating is the style and architecture of your home. I’m a huge fan of eclectic style and bringing in multiple style elements into a space, but it’s important to compliment the original style of the home first and foremost. Not only will this ensure the home flows and doesn’t seem out of place, it will also stand the test of time as well as appeal to others down the road if you eventually sell. I always encourage bringing in different style elements where they are easily able to be changed such as lighting, rugs, paint, and non foundational furniture pieces (ie a funky accent chair vs a large sectional).

involve everyone

I’m not saying to bring in every aunt, cousin, friend, and co-worker when it comes to design decisions (I actually discourage that for many reasons I won’t get into here), but an obvious oversight I see happen time and time again is that one person living in the home is trying to make all of the design decisions. Now every home and family works differently, and I completely get that, but we always encourage, from the beginning of our process, to meet as many family members that are living in the home and try to involve them throughout the design process whenever we can. I do this when making design decisions in my own home as well. When the decisions are made by everyone living in the home, it’s appreciated more, it feels more like everyone’s home, and thus, enjoyed for much longer than if one person makes all of the decisions. I say it over and over but design is so personal, it’s important that your home reflects the people who live in it through and through.

Be sure to check out our free timeless home design guide with practical tips on making timeless design selections for your home.