Reality Check: Owning How You Actually Live in Your Space
One of the biggest mistakes in decorating is that we tend to decorate based on who we aspire to be, instead of who we actually are. Read that again.
One of the jobs of an interior designer is understanding how our clients actually live. Do they have children? Do they have pets? Are they clean freaks, or maybe a little more laid back? A lot of this can be assessed by simply looking around their space, without asking questions. One might notice too many small appliances left out on the kitchen counters, a large pile of mail and paperwork on the counter, or six pairs of shoes lying in the front entry. So, whether you are working with a designer or working on a project yourself, do an assessment of how you live. And be honest.
I can look at magazine spreads featuring coastal living rooms with an abundance of neutral beiges, whites and natural woven fibers. While it’s beautiful and I can aspire to wanting that look in my home, I know it’s not going to work once I complete the reality check exercise.
I have two dogs, and three kidult boys in their twenties who will be visiting. I also have a new grandbaby and six large dogs between the boys. I like red wine, and I sometimes spill. Given just these three things alone, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never own a white or light colored sofa.
A good interior designer will guide you to make appropriate selections when there are discrepancies between the decor you want versus what is appropriate based on your lifestyle. A bad interior designer lets you order the white sofa that they know will be ruined in a matter of months.
In terms of flooring, you don’t need to give up entirely on the dream of having light or neutral carpeting. Our upstairs area in the last two houses we’ve lived in have had a neutral and light carpet. While it read as light in color, it had enough colored flecks in it to hide a wide variety of sins.
Ethan Allen rugs come with the option to add a Guardsman protection plan. It’s not an application, but rather insurance that covers you for five years. If you or your guests spill the red wine, and they can’t remove the stain, they will provide you with a credit to replace it. It’s peace of mind, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Another area where I’ve done some soul searching is with my kitchen and pantry needs. As much as I love a nice, open kitchen, I am someone who uses it a lot and has an insane amount of small kitchen appliances. While they’re called small, they are anything but. In the house we just built, I have a generous back kitchen, or “messy kitchen,” where I can do messy prep work and keep things like the stand mixer and air fryer out on the counter without cluttering up my main kitchen.
A lot of homes now will have space for a home office. And in many households one, if not two spouses are working from home now. When sharing isn’t an option, creative solutions are needed to ensure both parties will have places where they can comfortably work. Maybe a whole extra room isn’t possible, but you can carve a nook out of an unused area. Some back kitchens and laundry rooms are now being designed to accommodate a desk area or storage for paperwork and “stuff.”
Finally, our master closet and bathroom is another area where how I actually live versus how I want to live is important in design. As much as I want to do a Marie Kondo-esque purge of 90% of my clothing, I have a hard time implementing that in practice. I’ve been gaining and losing the same 20 lbs each and every year for decades, so my closet includes items that span across three sizes. Based on this, and the fact that I keep inching over and stealing more of my husband’s side in our current closet, we designed separate master closets in this home. We designed the closets to include cabinets and drawers for added storage. The tall ceilings in our home also allowed us to include pull-down racks in both closets, so that we can store off-season items, or items that don’t quite fit, up higher when not in daily rotation.
Understanding and accepting the reality of how you live is key in making your spaces work for you. No matter how painful it might be to divulge your trouble spots, being honest with yourself or your interior decorator is going to result in a much better space that suits your lifestyle.