interiors

How Interior Design Styles Elevate a Homes Interior

Interior Design and Decorator Tips

What is Interior Design Style?

There are many different interior design styles. An interior design style is a look for your interior, where furniture, furnishings, and decor items are chosen for being in the same style family. This means the finished look of a room or home will be one particular style genre. Some examples of Interior Design Styles are Traditional; Classic; Boho; Industrial; Hamptons; Coastal; French Provincial; Contemporary; Modern and Art Deco.

Why should each home or room have an interior design style?

It gives a more cohesive look, rather than the room or home being scattered and piece-like in its style. A cohesive style makes it easier if you are wanting to create a statement room or statement in general. A room or home without style may feel like something is off, it also may feel boring and plain.

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Slow Living and Interior Design

MD Meanderings

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Slow Living and Interior Design

Originally published October 2022. Updated in August 2026 with fresh insights into creating a more intentional home, making thoughtful design decisions, and considering what your home truly needs before investing in more.

In a world where we’re constantly encouraged to buy more, update more and keep up with the latest trends, there is something increasingly appealing about taking a slower, more intentional approach to our homes — particularly when we want to make thoughtful decisions about where our time, energy and money go.

What is Slow Living?

Slow living is a way of approaching life with greater intention rather than constantly rushing, consuming and moving on to the next thing. Applied to interior design, it encourages us to pause before making decisions, consider what we genuinely need, and create homes that evolve thoughtfully over time.

Shop Your Own Home First

One of the simplest ways to embrace a slower approach to your home is to shop your own home first.

If I need something to complete a task, I first look at what I already have and consider whether it could be used as it is or adapted slightly to suit the purpose. I also try to shop locally where possible and support small businesses.

If I decide that I do need to purchase something, I try not to rush the decision. I pause for a few days and consider where the item will live, what purpose it will serve, and whether I already own something that could do the job.

Could I borrow or rent the item? Could I buy it pre-loved? Am I prepared to maintain and care for it over time?

These small pauses can help us make more intentional decisions about what we bring into our homes.

Stop Making Isolated Purchases

The key is to move from making isolated purchases to taking a holistic approach to your home.

For example, you realise you need a new lounge. Instead of simply choosing one you like in your favourite colour, you consider the bigger picture. What is the overall style of your home? What colours and materials are already present? What other furniture needs to work alongside it? How large can the lounge be while still allowing the room to function comfortably?

You might then choose a dark mocha lounge with square arms and specific dimensions so it works with the overall design, complements the other elements in the room and sits correctly with the rug and available circulation space.

The result is a more harmonious room because the lounge is not an isolated purchase. It is part of a considered design.

Buy With Intention

Slow living doesn’t mean you can never buy anything new for your home. It means becoming more intentional about what you do buy.

Before making a purchase, consider how the item will work within your home as a whole. Does it solve a genuine problem? Does it support the way you live? Do you have a clear place for it, and does it work with what you already own?

This doesn’t mean every item needs to be purely practical. Sometimes the things we love most in our homes are there simply because they bring us joy. But even those purchases are more likely to feel right when they are chosen thoughtfully, rather than bought impulsively and left to find a place later.

When you have a clear vision for your home, individual purchases become easier to assess. You can make decisions with greater confidence, avoid accumulating items that don’t quite work, and gradually create a home that feels cohesive, personal and genuinely reflective of the way you live.

Design For How You Actually Live

A home should support the way you actually live — not an imagined version of your life.

Consider how each room is used, who uses it, what activities take place there and what your household genuinely needs from the space. This includes thinking about seating, storage, circulation, furniture placement and how the room needs to function throughout the day.

At My Decorator, we begin by getting to know you and understanding how you live. We learn about your routines, your needs, your preferences and the things that matter most to you.

We then use this understanding to create an interior that is both beautiful and genuinely suited to your lifestyle.

Our approach is to consider the home as a whole rather than making isolated decisions about individual pieces of furniture. This can reduce the frustration of travelling from store to store trying to find pieces that work together, or discovering that something you love doesn’t actually fit the space as intended.

Our design plans can include detailed furniture layouts and measurements, helping us consider how each element will fit within the room and allowing enough space for comfortable movement and everyday life.

Create Slowly, With Direction

A clear plan can help reduce the overwhelm that often comes with making multiple decisions about a home. Rather than making one purchase at a time and hoping everything eventually comes together, our approach gives you a considered direction to work from.

All of this can help reduce unnecessary purchases and create a more considered approach to designing a home — one that evolves with you over time, rather than constantly needing to be replaced or updated.

This allows you to make decisions with greater confidence and, where appropriate, invest in quality pieces that can remain part of your home for many years.

We have used this approach to our interior design for well over seventeen years now. We find this more thoughtful and planned approach to interior design brings beautiful results that are full of a lot of heart and soul and personal meaning.

If your home no longer feels quite right, but you’re unsure where to begin, you don’t necessarily need to start by buying more.

A Design Consultation is the ideal first step.

Together, we can look at how you live throughout your home, what is and isn’t working, what could be adapted or repurposed, and where thoughtful changes could make the biggest difference.

Sometimes the answer is a new layout. Sometimes it’s making better use of what you already own. Sometimes it’s creating a clear direction for future changes across your home.

The goal isn’t to fill your home with more. It’s to create a home that feels considered, functional and genuinely supportive of the life you’re living.

If you’re ready to create a clearer direction for your home, a Design Consultation is the ideal place to begin.

Click the Book a Consultation button below and let’s create a clear direction for your home.

Designing with intention,

 

Prue

My Decorator

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Podcast about Decorating Interiors for the New Year

Listen to our latest episode:  Slow Living and Interior Design

 

 

What if creating a home you love isn’t about constantly buying something new? In this episode, we explore a more intentional approach to interior design — one that considers how you live, what you already own, and what your home genuinely needs to support your life.

For more resources related to this topic see below blog posts:

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mydecorator/episodes/Top-10-Techniques-Interior-Designers-Use-in-Room-Design-e2l9d5k

 

interior of room corner with table and mirror for woman

12 Ways Your Home’s Interior is Outdated, and Easy Fixes

Building/Renovating, Interior Design and Decorator Tips

Sometimes we aren’t aware of how outdated our homes become over time. I don’t know about you but every year is speeding past like it is just one day so it’s very easy to find yourself unaware of the changes that have been happening in the interiors of homes and what is classified as current. I just wanted to share some ideas and thoughts, in case you wanted to familiarise yourself with some new possibilities for change.

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Feeling Overwhelmed? We Have 15 Reasons Why You Should Hire My Decorator

Interior Design and Decorator Tips

A common misnomer is that Interior Designers impose their views, tastes and opinions on you and you get no say. A misnomer is we enter your home in a flurry of colour, in our designer clothes and heels, and just take over. Leaving you with a stylish yet highly unpractical home that you feel no connection too. I’m not sure where this portrayal has come from but I know that it drives so many designers completely mad as it’s simply not true.

I could go on about other misnomers about our industry and work from grossly exceeding the budget to unrealistic designs. Instead, I’d like to share some of the things you’ll benefit from when you work with us. Below we share 15 reasons why you should hire My Decorator to assist you with your homes interior design.

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Don’t Abandon Your Interior Design Project because of Lockdown

Interior Design and Decorator Tips

I know, I just used one of the most unpopular words of 2020 – 2021. Lockdown. But….. I assure you I’m only going to use that word a few more times throughout this post. I promise. I also am going to endeavor to reframe this whole situation for you. I know a lot of you had big dreams to see the interior of your home transformed into your dream homes this year. Keep reading I have a plan that can still help you see that begin to happen.

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