….empowering tips for the (frustrated!) DIY Design Lover

Hey Design Lovers!

Raise your hand if you ever feel frustrated with your decorating results. Either your home just doesn’t hit the mark, despite your efforts, or maybe there’s one room that’s driving you nuts.

No doubt about it: Decorating stress stinks.

If it hits you when you walk into your home, it silently drains you daily. If it hits you when you walk into someone else’s home, you feel that quiet, uncomfortable pang of… envy. Either way, you wonder if you can ever have that beautiful home “other people have.”

The good news is you can!

The better news is the solution isn’t as hard as you think.

There are 4 super common myths that seriously perpetuate interior design frustration, confusion and lack-luster end results. Move past these 4 myths and you can finally get into the driver’s seat and on the road to creating your own beautiful interiors – that home you’d love to live in once and for all.

How many of these myths have found their way into your thinking?

Myth #1. It Takes Tons of Natural Born Talent to Get Beautiful Decorating Results.

Eh, not necessarily. If that were true, then it’d also be true that only Mozart can make music worth listening to and only Wolfgang Puck can make a totally delicious meal.

Sure, talent never hurts in any endeavor, but the more powerful and reliable tool in decorating is strategy and control.

Decorating your home without strategy is like attempting to bake a triple layer Death-by-Chocolate Cake without a specific ingredient list and an equally explicit recipe. Good luck.

Believe it or not, decorating or interior design is actually a highly strategic pursuit.

There ARE recipes and there are formulas.

Where to start your particular project? Formula.

How do put together a color plan to face lift a room or start from scratch? Clear formula and strategy.

How to arrange the furniture? Formula and strategy.

You name the design step needed to redo your “X” and I’ll point you to a potent and simple formula.

But IGNORE design formulas and you will inadvertently use design ingredients in the wrong way and those ingredients will backfire on you EVERY TIME.

Design Tip Takeaway: It doesn’t take mega talent to be able to make your home look truly beautiful, I’ve helped people who felt almost no confidence or natural ability with design.

In truth, decorating is a learned skill. It’s not about working harder. It IS about working smarter. You don’t need tons of talent to make beautiful rooms happen; you have to learn some of the formulas and then you’re golden. You need the right mix of formula and strategy.

Myth #2. It Takes Big Budgets to Get Beautiful Decorating Results So Why Should I Bother?

Hmmm, another myth to let go. Don’t get me wrong, money never hurts. But I’ve seen so many truly disastrous-looking rooms that had a TON of money thrown at them.  And I’ve seen truly beautiful rooms happen on limited budgets.

Design Tip Takeaway: Hands down, the most important thing in decorating where budgeting is concerned is learning to maximize and control your spend.

Where should you spend; where should you pull back; how to amplify it all. Above all, how do you control the budget?

I like creating and teaching Power Budgeting for interior design. Power Budgets are line item project budgets that make sure you get the most mileage out of every dollar, pound or pesos you have to spend. Done right, PB’s become your design touchstone and safety net.

Try it now: Make a short list of every item you need to purchase to redo your “X.” Research that shopping list and then let it guide you. Trade up on the sofa, down on the coffee table, but let that budget be your safety net.

It doesn’t take big budgets to make beautiful rooms happen. It takes wise budget strategy to make beautiful rooms happen.

Myth #3. There’s something wrong with me because I have decorating stress.

Actually, no. If you feel decorating stress, that makes you unbelievably normal.

Leading interior design magazine Elle Décor recently reported on decorating stress.

Let me summarize: In a design survey conducted by Houzz.com, 98% of respondents reported being unhappy with their home’s décor!

98%!!! Still think you’re the odd-duck?

Design is one of those things that looks wildly easy to do until you try to do it yourself. Like ice skating.

What looked like a breeze on a half -hour HGTV episode results in you staring at the paint wall in Home Depot for 43 minutes wondering, “Who the hell invented all of these flipping shades of green?”

You finally walk out of the store clutching “only” 13 multi-color paint swatches, get them home, and determine that now they all look weird. So you tell the painter, forget it, just paint it all beige. (But which SHADE of beige?!?)

Design Tip Takeaway: First, stop comparing yourself and your home to your neighbors or those uber-perfect styled out magazine images. You are way more normal than you think!

Design stress is as normal as the stress you’d feel being lost on a 12 hour road trip. You’ll feel deeply uncomfortable until you get the NAV system running or you unfold the map.

There is nothing wrong with you because you feel stressed from decorating. You just need some good intel and support. Start searching for sources to find design know how, design formula. You’ll be amazed at what where you can go with a map to follow. You are normal.

Myth #4: Beautifully Decorated Homes Are Reserved for “Those Other People.”

Those glossy magazine pages call your name. You sigh with envy as you surf Pinterest or Houzz.

Who are those lucky people who live “there?” Why can’t you live like that?

True, beautiful design is beautifully life enhancing, but once you too know the secret, you can create a home that lifts you every time you look at it, spend time in it or welcome family and friends there.

But to attain that, first you need to make a serious mindset shift.

Let me explain.

I had an aunt who always looked amazingly stylish. If you didn’t know her and passed her on the street you’d think, “Wow, that woman is so pulled together, she must really be living the life.” But my Aunt Syl really didn’t have wild taste or a privileged life.

Actually, she lived modestly and walked a hard path. But she did think she deserved beauty. She wanted beauty in her life and so she figured out how to make the most of whatever resources she had to get it. Where to shop, what to buy, how much to buy, how to repurpose things, how to combine things, how long to hold onto things.

Design Tip Takeaway: Interior decorating to create a beautiful nest isn’t that different than making yourself look great – super hair, the make-up just so and that mmmm outfit.

Truly ANYONE can create a beautiful home that you love living in and waking up to each day.

It doesn’t start with being kissed by the design goddess or a Fifth Avenue address. It starts with mindset! With you deciding you want the gift of beauty in your life and that you deserve that beauty.

You deserve life enhancing and spirit lifting beauty in your life. Try that mantra on for a sec. If it feels uncomfortable for you, there’s your proof that this mindset shift is EXACTLY the first empowering design change you need to make in order to clear the path so you CAN create that totally beautiful, fits-you-like-a-glove, home you love living in.

I’m rooting for you! And now that you know all of the myths,