Design by Contented Interiors. Photography by Khand Tenney.

If you’re like me, you love gorgeous things. Just with my fashion choices, I feel like I can be in love with many different styles on any given day. Some days I’m channeling my inner biker and others I’m more playful and preppy. Needless to say, but I love a lot of various interior design styles as well. This is really helpful when working with different clients with different tastes, but narrowing down what style my own house should be can be more challenging than you might guess. 

Because of my own challenges, I’ve come up with two ways for the students in my Chic, Kid-Proof Living Rooms course to determine their own personal style. One of those ways I’ll share now. 

In the course’s introduction module, I ask the students to imagine their favorite place that they have ever been to, or a place to where they regularly go. They then identify what it is about that place (interior or exterior) that they love and how that place makes them feel. Once they identify the key characteristics and feelings, they determine how they can use those characteristics to evoke those feelings that they love.

In the video, I use the Taj Mahal as an example of a place you might have once visited and you found it to be the most memorable spatial experience you’ve ever had. I then show an image of an interior that has several of the qualities of the Taj Mahal, without actually looking like the Taj Mahal. It’s a really eye-opening experience, because students find that they may like different qualities in a space that aren’t necessarily specific to a style. Which leads them to realize an interior doesn’t have to be completely one style. Rarely does a person perfectly fit into one personality type (like being type A–I’m type A sometimes, but not always!). In the same vein, why should your interior only reflect one style?

If you want to determine how to merge aesthetic preferences with your partner? Learn more about my Chic, Kid-Proof Living Rooms course. Don’t have time to get educated or design your own space? We truly excel when merging two spouse’s [generally] vastly different interior styles together when working with our Comprehensive Service clients. Something else? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading!