Hi, friends! Today I'm continuing my Home Decor 101 series with a reader question that really got me thinking.
@jessisrad36 asked, "I would LOVE to see a post about seamlessly mixing decor styles with your significant other… I just bought a house with my boyfriend and let's just say we may have differing opinions about interior design. I'd love to hear about your experience!"
I want to say upfront that this topic isn't just for couples. It could apply to roommates, large families or really anyone living in a home together. So if it seems like I am only discussing couples without kiddos, it's because that's what kind of household I live in–so please forgive me, k? Maybe you have a really opinionated eight-year-old. I get that.
So first, a little back story about my experiences decorating with my husband, Jeremy. This summer we started renovating and decorating our third house we've lived in together. He's the kind of dude who selectively cares about decorating. I can make ten big choices in a row and he will be happy with all of them, but on the eleventh choice, he will suddenly have a VERY strong opinion, and it usually feels like it came out of nowhere. He keeps me on my toes.
He has very good taste, and I love that about him. But his range of what he likes is much, much, much smaller than mine. It's exactly like our taste in clothes actually. He would be happy to wear a plaid shirt from J.Crew every day for the rest of his life. To mix it up, he wears gingham. Me, no way. I love J.Crew, but I also love about 1,000 other stores and styles and I want to mix it up constantly. So we're different.
#oppositesattract
So, let's dive in! Here are my thoughts on navigating the waters of co-decorating with your partner or roommate.
1. Choosing a theme together.
Choosing a general style we both love, and creating a mood board is the single best thing we have done to simplify our process and nurture a shared vision. Our process started by talking about places we've traveled to, hotels and cafes that left an impression on us. Then we went through my overstuffed private pin board that I'd created. I asked Jeremy to pick out all the things that stood out to him (and I took notes).
All you need are a few inspiration images you both love, and a place you've both been to use as a reference for the vibe you are going for! Once you have that, it's MUCH EASIER to choose colors you both love, wood stains, metals for hardware and fixtures and trends you feel you'd like to embrace or skip.
Just by having a few conversations and going through some images, we picked a theme. It wasn't hard. It honestly came really naturally. Now when we're shopping for a countertop, a floor tile or a new couch, we have a unified vision to start from. It has really simplified the process for us!
2. Mixing two styles.
It's important to represent each member of your family/household in the decor. The best way to do this is to imagine how the house would look if each person had it 100% in their style, then mix those different elements together.
For us, it's a mixture of color (me) and some rustic elements (him). Our styles are good on their own, but even better together.
The good news is that mixing styles always makes a space more interesting! So don't be afraid to really incorporate different perspectives, even if you feel like complete opposites.
3. Mastering give + take.
Decorating a house is a personal thing. Especially when you first move in. Two people might be envisioning the "perfect space" very differently.
It's important to really listen to your partner, ask questions and try to get inside their head. If you are genuinely trying to understand their vision, then you're already on the right track!
It sucks, but you're not always going to agree on every little detail. One of you loves penny tile, one of you hates it. One of you thinks wallpaper should be a priority in the budget, but the other would rather put that money toward a new sofa. This is real life.
Learn to be a master of compromise and always keep an open mind! In our new space we have already shifted our priorities countless times. And I'm not going to lie–it's overwhelming sometimes. The thing that has made us rock solid is compromise. I am putting Jeremy's studio at a very high priority in our budget (and that renovation is real spensive!). He knows that and appreciates that, and in return, he's been a real sweetheart about all the brass I want to do (all about that brass, you guys!). #giveandtake #compromise #soulmates yep!
OK–so, my favorite part! Your turn! Please tell me all your stories about decorating with your partner-in-crime, whether it be a roomie, a husband or a whole family! I am super excited to hear your tips. xx- Elsie
Credits// Author and Photography: Elsie Larson. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess actions.
Sounds like fun. Thanks for sharing.
My husband has a special place in his heart for many little things that I would rather chuck… Such as the drawings made by children we don’t know, the broken guitar and the price tag currently hanging on our living room wall, but with compromise I think we have inspired a very eclectic style, and I’m glad he is willing to share his input.
This upcoming semester I’m rooming with one of my best friends. Her room is cave-like though, and I need tons of sun. Luckily we have a two-room double, but we will still be sharing the space. This post gave me some good ideas to share with her in order to work on creating a room we both love!
This is so helpful! Love this perspective.
One of the biggest things I learned while decorating our 2 rentals is that my husband WANTS to be involved! Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of assumed that he would just leave it to me. On the contrary. He has artistic sensibilities and opinions, and often they are very good opinions!
For our current house we definately did decide on a theme up front. It has made it much easier to make decisions as both of us know what realm they fit into. In our bathroom, for example, I let him pick the color, but knew it would fit into the colors we had previously discussed as fitting our house.
It can be a lot of fun to build your home together 🙂
Hi
I decorated our house with my other half, and we ended up arguing about who was doing more work than the other.
We ended up paying for an expensive decorator, as busy parents, we just could not do it all!
Love this! My husband and I are in the middle of renovating our first home. There has been so much give and take so far and we haven’t really even started the decorating yet! It’s funny because I feel like my style has changed so much since we’ve been married the last couple years because I want our home to be a place where he feels comfortable and loves. I, like you, have a much larger spectrum of styles that I love to choose from.
I love this post! Me and my boyfriend have different tastes since I love colors and he adores everything white and minimalistic. Sometimes we need to make compromises and that means that our apartment is colorful but very minimalistic 😀
As far as the actual bones of the house goes, I generally let my husband make the final decision. I weigh in here and there but mostly it is him. Though I did request all white walls and my wish was granted.
Decorating is completely up to me, though I keep him in mind on every decision. Over the past couple years of being together I have started to figure out what he does and doesn’t like and I make sure to consider that before purchasing something. It has been working quite well!
Leah Faye
Lavender & Clover
I grew up sharing a bedroom with my sister, so I am no stranger to mixing styles and decor-compromise!
I’ve always been a very visual person and really care how a space looks and feels. My husband, on the other hand, is all about practicality. We just got married 6 months ago, so it has been such a fun adventure trying to make our first house feel more like a home. The problem isn’t that our styles clash and that we can’t find a compromise–it’s that he genuinely does not care whatsoever, so I can feel overwhelmed when trying to make decisions because I don’t really have any guidelines (I know, tough problem to have, right?). I want our space to be a mixture of the both of us, not just my own style, so I try my best to keep a balance. Slowly, our space is becoming a reflection of us together, which I love.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! It’s so nice to know that #thestruggleisreal when it comes to sharing spaces with other people haha!
I moved into my partner’s place in February, and we’re still figuring it out. He is a minimalist…he hates having more than one piece of art on a wall (goodbye gallery walls!), likes surfaces to be clear of stuff, and hates superfluous furniture. I like eclectic, cozy styles that appeal to my romanticism of bygone eras. Overflowing bookcases, lots of art, cozy chairs, and a table on which to set a teacup near any sitting area. So it’s going VERY slowly. So far, he has built me lots of bookcases, and I agreed to an armoire instead of a dresser (no horizontal space to collect visual clutter.) We’ve also tried to make sure that each of us has one room where we have a bit more control and that feels calm and happy. For him, that’s the bedroom. For me it’s the living room, where i have books, a desk, and where my cat spends a lot of time.
My husband is an architect, which is a tough type to be married to because he is very picky about design. We both share the same desire to live in a certain type of home in a certain area of the city we live in, but all the houses we’ve looked at have been huge projects we couldn’t afford, or just not ideal in certain areas. He has really great ideas on how to make spaces more practical for living purposes & I learn a lot from him in that regard. We recently finished designing a house together that he drew the plans for. We kept a shared board on Pinterest & spent a lot of nights with an open bottle of wine, tweaking the drawings to suit our mutual needs. We are pricing sub-contractors currently off our finished drawings & plan to blog about the building process once it gets underway. So far it’s been really fun! Keeping the shared boards on Pinterest & having our wine-design nights have really helped keep the lines of communication open for what we both expect out of the home we plan to start a family in 🙂
I was just going through pin boards with my husband last night (torture for him!) so this is crazy perfect timing! We just moved, and I want a very different feel this time. I like SO many different styles, and although I’d probably lean one way if it was just me, he definitely prefers the opposite spectrum, so it forces me to choose something. We’ll see if that actually happens here! By the way, I think my favorite room of yours EVER is the most recent one, the pinkish second dining room with the heavy wood table. I love it!
I’m so excited to see the after on the Nashville house. It seems like an amazing layout and bones to work with. Will there just be a ‘final’ reveal or some behind the scenes progress posts.
Cool place! You did a great job decorating together!
x M.
http://nevermindnm.blogspot.com/
This is great, because I will soon be needing to combine different styles into one home!
I would like to point out you missed #3 and went straight to #4… haha! oops 🙂
This is the second marriage for both me and my husband. I spent 10 years living alone in between these marriages. Having to consider another person’s input on the sofa we buy or the color we paint the living room is difficult for me, but I’m trying. We are beginning a major renovation of our house, both inside and out. While we’ve agreed on walls to be removed, structural problems to be fixed (we have a creole cottage in New Orleans built in 1904) and indoor and outdoor paint, I am feeling a little apprehensive about our furniture choices. He has excellent taste, but it’s completely different than mine. He’s more aesthetic/contemporary/modern; I’m more classic/spa-like/boho. We want to create spaces where we both feel comfortable and “at home.” Compromise is a big part I know, and he’s better at it than I am for sure. We did the Pinterest board, but it just confirmed how far apart we were in what we preferred. Thanks for the insight and tips. I’m always on the lookout for other fellow compromisers’ ideas.
I like the idea of starting a Pinterest board and them showing it to the other. My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years now but still live separately. I sometimes think about our interior style if we would move in together. I have this amazing golden chair in which I read every day and I absolutely love it. He thinks it’s the most kitsch thing ever (which admittedly, it is). Also, I asked him the other day how he would feel about a unicorn head on his wall, haha, but it surprised me that he said ‘well if it’s a cool one I wouldn’t mind’. My biggest ‘fear’ will be our differences in stuff though. I read Marie Kondo’s book a while ago and basically threw out half of what i own. Everywhere I look in his house I see stuff that I would love to throw out :p But then again, we do build furniture together and both love the results. So there is definitely an overlap in taste as well. We’ll see with more time what will come from our eclectic mix 🙂
I love hearing how other people make decor decisions with their partners! I’ll describe an idea and my boyfriend will be against it but once he sees a picture, he usually comes around. We always have the right to “veto” design decisions. I wanted to paint our bathroom deep teal and he wanted royal blue, so we bought three teal and one royal blue sample. We both ended up liking the royal blue better, so he won that one!
I find that my husband often feels overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices available and the daunting task of researching them all (which I’m sort of a nerd for), so after we talk about a general idea, I’ll present him with what I think are 3 or 4 good options and we’ll (usually) go with whichever he likes best. If none of them are a hit or he doesn’t seem convinced, I’ll come back with a few more options.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I especially enjoyed your ruminations on give & take and choosing areas of priority.