Story highlights
- Modern, personal decorating styles aren't as rigid as they used to be
- Ditch the anxiety: Don't second-guess your decor choices, just start decorating
- Know when to call in the pros, because they know something you don't
You have a new home or your first apartment and dozens of crazy ideas to make it look the way you want. But do you really know your own decorating style?
Perhaps it was easy to see that your mom had a taste for historic, Colonial decorating. Maybe you've always marveled at the way a friend embraced midcentury modern style to create the perfect "Mad Men" pad.
But if your decor seems to lack that kind of continuity and flair, you're not alone.
Fight feeling overwhelmed
In this day and age, asking someone to name their decorating style is almost a trick question, said Better Homes and Gardens home content director Jill Waage.
Thanks to nebulous decorator terms such as "eclectic" or "personalization," interior decor isn't as easy to typify as it was even 10 years ago. (Remember "Moroccan style"?) That makes decorating harder than it used to be, Waage said.
Since 1924, Better Homes and Gardens (first published under the name "Fruit, Garden and Home" in 1922) has been giving all manner of home economics and homemaking advice. Readers' questions have always betrayed an anxiety over home decor.
"Pick a decade," Waage said. "People are still looking for tips about how to use color, arrange furniture, always looking to make their home better."
What's different in 2014, Waage said, is that homeowners itching for a living room makeover are indelibly changed by the design information available to them.
By now a generation has grown up witnessing complete home redecorations within the span of a 30-minute television show. Early adopters of Pinterest and devotees of tutorial-disseminating decor blogs are largely empowered -- or sometimes overwhelmed -- by this media, Waage said.
The magazine still delivers decorating tips and examples, but instead of a few fresh looks every month, tips now include online color choice generators and automatic room planners.
Even with a new understanding of the mechanics of decorating, it's still difficult to orchestrate the room of your dreams, or even realize what it is you like in the first place, she said.
So what's a DIY decorater to do?
Be brave enough to try
Bravery and experience are what helped self-taught blogger, photographer and decorator Emily Clark handle her home decor. Figuring out which interior styles influence you is born from self confidence that only comes with age, she said.
She no longer focuses on the giant set of matching furniture she and her husband bought as newlyweds in their first grown-up home. She encourages <