How My Design Style Has Changed & Figuring Out Your Own

A lot of my clients struggle because they don't know their design style. Or maybe they think they know but when it comes down to making decisions for their home they are all over the place. I've seen this struggle become a huge obstacle when it comes to decorating their homes.  I try to help most of my clients find out what it is they really love and I always remind them that figuring out your design style is not an overnight process. It has taken me years to get where I am at today.

To get a feel for my current design aesthetic take a look at a sampling of my Pinterest Living Room pins.

I find that I tend to gravitate towards lots of white and lots of color.

Sarah Tuttle Interiors

I love almost everything about this room. I'd probably add a little more color and some more graphic punches  but other than that this room is very  "me".

Now lest you think I've always been so design savvy please feast your eyes on our home 7 years ago when we were first married....

At the time I must say this was very "in" if you lived in Utah in 2005. I saved for months to buy that red and tan Pottery Barn Duvet cover and matching shams. That faux fern on the dresser was a T.J. Maxx find and I was obsessed with it. I also decided to put floating shelves a million feet up on the wall. I guess if I ever wanted to actually use that alarm clock I would need to stand up on my bed to reach it.

And then there was our Living Room.  I tried my best to mimic a Pottery Barn catalog. Do you think I succeeded?

Although part of me wants to look back on these pictures and cringe another part of me is proud of the home I created. I did the best I could with what I had and what I "thought" looked good. It has been fun, however, to see my style evolve over the years. 

The home I have now is SO different. Not only have I learned what it actually means to have style but I've really been able to discover what my own personal style is. 

There are a few key points I've figured out on this "design style journey" that have led me where I am today. This first point is,,

Let go of wanting it all // What I mean by this is, let go of wanting all the design styles in your home. For example, I love a lot of things about this room: 

But you will never see this room in my house. I  may take aspects of it, like the striped window bench and the striped rug and incorporate some of those elements in my home but I won't be mimicking this entire room. I have learned to look at this room, appreciate it and then let it go when it comes to my own home. Just because a style of design makes you excited doesn't mean it's a right fit for you or your home. 

Now this is not to say that you can't mix styles! Because of course you can. But thing carefully about the elements you are choosing to mix and make sure they are "you". 

The second point...

Stop buying stuff just because it's on sale //  I can't tell you how many clients I visit that have hoards and  hoards of things they have purchased because they were on sale or because someone gave it to them for free. These are the woman who spend way too much time browsing the home decor section of Target. (you know who you are). I am definitely one of these people! For example I really love this little gold accent table. I mean $59! I feel like that's too good to pass up. 

But I have absolutely no where to put it. I mean not one spot. And if I did put it anywhere it wouldn't really make sense in the spot it ends up. 

I feel like you are doing your house a disservice by filling it with things that you don't truly love or fit the style of your home. Most of the time we don't end up using much of what my client has collected.  So in the end your "sale" items were just a waste of money. If you can't think of place to put something or if it's not "perfect" for a certain spot chances are you won't end up using it. Save your money for the pieces that you really love and are "just perfect" for the spaces you end up putting them in. 

The last tip is to..

Start curating rooms you love and figure out what it is that you love about them. 

I've been obsessed with this bathroom from Sarah Richardson ever since I first saw it. I love the pops of dark pink, the white and accents of black. I love how it feels a little traditional but not too traditional. I can identify what I love about this room and carry it into my own home.

I am sure my design style will always be ever-chaning but at it's core I hope there will always be colorful and happy rooms involved! 

How have you figured out your design style? 

Marble Contact Paper

For the next few months I'll be sharing in the Fiesta Movement by tackling design projects in my home and community. This months' theme is Style. This month I've decided to tackle finishing up my home office. 

Thank you all so much for your help with my desk chair! I have decided to go with option 2 and I'll be letting you all know how it turns out! Moving along with another project in my office... 

I have had these little side tables for a few months and I knew I wanted to spruce them up. 

I bought them at Target for a steal but they were lacking that expensive feel that I wanted. For a long time I knew I wanted to add marble to the top of the tables but having custom marble cut to this exact size proved to be tricky. After reading this post I decided to try my hand at marble contact paper. 

The paper was super super super easy to use and I love what it did for my side tables. 

I also added these Anthro knobs to each table. 

I am obsessed with marble paper and I want to cover all of my furniture in it! 

disclosure: This is a sponsored post and I was compensated for my participation. The opinions expressed are my own.

Deciding on my Desk Chair

For the next few months I'll be sharing in the Fiesta Movement by tackling design projects in my home and community. This months' theme is Style. This month I've decided to tackle finishing up my home office and I need your help! 

If you remember I've been working on redoing my office for awhile now.  My initial color scheme for the office came from this fabric combo that I pulled from my fabric showroom. 

I knew right away I wanted to incorporate Schumacher's Birds and Butterflies fabric. 

However I'm having the hardest time deciding where to put it in my office! My first thought was to do it as a roman shade. 

But then I fell in love with  Schumacher's Vientiane Ikat Print for the roman shade. 

I think the coral will be a really great contrast to the black walls. 

I've been wanting to get a new desk chair for awhile now so one thought I had was to reupholster a chair in the fabric. 

Chairs can be pretty expensive to reupholster so I had an idea to have a custom slipcover made for an Ikea chair. 

I would use a basic Henriksdal chair because I love the shape. Then I was thinking to have a custom slipcover made from this etsy shop. This idea would probably end up costing quite a bit of money when all is said and done so that is my one hesitation with this option. Another hesitation I have is that I would worry the fabric would get a little dirty after all the use it will get. It's also a pretty stiff fabric so I worry about it getting wrinkled.  

So that brings me to my next option...

I thought I could buy one of these World Market dining chairs and then just reupholster the back in the fabric and leave the seat green. This would enable me to still get to use the fabric but I wouldn't have to worry about it getting dirty and wrinkled all the time.

Should I choose option one or option two?

I'll be revealing which option I chose later in the month so stay tuned!

disclosure: This is a sponsored post and I was compensated for my participation. The opinions expressed are my own.

My New Love for Black Walls

If you follow me on instagram (@kirstenkrason) you might have seen that I have painted my office black! My office is the last room in my house left to decorate (but let's be honest I'm sure I'll be re-decorating everything at some point) and for some reason it's made me want to try a totally different approach to the way I decorate my home. Everything in my house is fairly light and bright and I love it.  My old office was extremely feminine and that really fits my personality but for some reason I have been infatuated with black walls recently. I can't explain it. I have always loved contrast and drama in rooms but usually I create that effect with pattern and color. It was a hard decision and up until I put that first paint-stroke on the wall I was doubting myself. The good news is that I love it! And for those of you who are wondering I used the same paint color that Bryn used.

These are the rooms I have been using for motivation and inspiration.


Traditional Family Room by Cambridge Architects & Designers LDa Architecture & Interiors

Contemporary Bedroom by Washington Interior Designers & Decorators huntley & co

Victoria Smith {SFGirlByBay} Home Tour in Rue Magazine 

interior by Jonny Valiant

image via Nate Berkus Interiors

image via Smitten Studio

I would say this bathroom palette is exactly the vibe I am going for in my office. I love the shot of color and the sharp contrast of the white against the black. 

And for those of you who might think I have gone completely insane don't worry, there will still be lots of color. Here's a little fabric preview...

Hopefully more progress pictures are to come! 

What about you?  Would you ever paint a room black? 

Where to Put Small Lamps

My friend Chelsea of Yours Truly recently approached me the chance to participate in a "white box challenge" as a part of her new online home accessory & furnishings store, Joy & Revelry.

She picked an item from her shop and sent it to three bloggers with the challenge of incorporating the item into their homes. The trick was that none of us knew what the item would be! 

I was ecstatic when a pair of tiny lamps showed up on my doorstep.  

This set of Katie Mini Ball lamps is beautiful. I knew I could find a way to incorporate them into my home but where! I played around with them in a few different places but the small scale just didn't fit any of my usual places. 

Finally I decided that they needed to be on teeny tiny tables! I am slowly working on transforming my office into an office/guest room. These lamps are perfect on these small scale tables I picked up at Target. 

Our loveseat is a sleeper sofa and the tables act as nightstands when we have guests over. 

I added some of my design books on the table to prop up the lamps and give them more substance. I love how they look like pretty jeweled accessories on my tables.  My $50 clearance Target tables look so much more expensive with these pretty lamps on top of them. 

See where Emily Clark put her lamps here! 

To learn more about Chelsea you can watch a short video on her site here.  And, if you’d like to do some shopping, she’s offering 10% off with this promo code: YT_WHITEBOX_10 (expires Aug. 1st, 2013).

Tips for Building a New Home on a Small Budget

I've received some reader emails about what to spend their money on when building a new house. Most of us stretch financially to get into our homes in the first place and we don't have a lot left over for upgrades. We saved for four years to buy our townhome and when we went to the design center to choose finishes and upgrades we realized we didn't have a lot left over for all the "extras".  I had really been looking forward to choosing fun options for our new house but when we showed up I realized the options in our budget weren't the options I had been dreaming of.

SAVE //  I, like many many others, really love white kitchens. I set my heart on something like this:

image via House Beautiful 

However when we went to choose our cabinets I learned white cabinets would be an extra $3,000... gulp. Not in the budget. So we went with brown instead. They were a $0 upgrade.

I chose a modern shaker style that I really like. Because I couldn't have the color I wanted I decided to choose the shape and style I wanted. We can always paint later. I also wanted a beautiful marble countertop but had to settle for white laminate instead. That was another $0 upgrade. 

We also decided to opt out on a backsplash and did it ourselves a couple of years later. 

SPLURGE // We decided to go with hardwood (fake hardwood) floors on our main floor instead of the standard tile. I'm really glad we did this because re-flooring would have been a major pain later on. I am not going to lie though, the dark hardwood shows everything!

The paint color used throughout most of my home is Benjamin Moore's Hazy Skies. 

SAVE //  We had our whole house painted white. We saved a lot by doing one tone instead of two. I figured I'd rather paint walls than ceilings, baseboards and doors.  We later decided on a paint color for the walls but painting our entire house by ourselves was torture. I wish we had paid to just have it done but it saved us a lot of money. I also didn't want to just pick a color at the design center and cross my fingers that it worked out. I wanted to live in my house for a few months and really make the right decision on paint.

 image by Jessica Kettle Photography

SPLURGE // This may seem utterly ridiculous but we upgraded all our doors for $200. At first my husband thought I was crazy that I was so insistent on it but I'm so glad we did it. I love the modern look of the three panels and for some reason it makes my whole home feel more custom. It fits the style of my home so well.  Changing your doors is not really something you are going to want to do later so I'm glad I made this decision upfront.

left image by Britta Anne Photography and right image by Jessica Kettle Photography 

SAVE // We decided against having our windows framed out and just did it a few years later ourselves. The above pictures are of the same window in Jett's room. Before we had our windows framed out I disguised our lack of framing with high and wide curtains.

image by Jylare Smith Photography 

SPLURGE // The best decision we made was to vault our upstairs ceilings. This upgrade was a significant amount but so worth it in my opinion. The vault makes our teeny tiny rooms feel so much bigger. A ceiling vault is something you wouldn't be able to just add on later so it was a good investment upfront. 

SPLURGE // Anything behind the walls is always good to do upfront. We wired our downstairs basement for surround sound because it's something we'd never be able to do afterwards.

Overall just prioritize what things are most important to you. You will make mistakes but it will help you make better decisions when you go to build your next house!

What are the best or worst decisions you all have made in building your homes? 

Using Lockers in Your Decor

I've mentioned before how small Jett's room is. Because we have limited space we also have limited storage. I have been looking for a unique way to utilize the empty space we have in Jett's closet which is why I was excited to have the opportunity to review a locker from School Lockers. 

As you can see some extra storage solutions were needed. Plus his closet really wasn't very exciting. We usually just threw whatever extra stuff we had lying around on the floor of his closet. 

I had a locker growing up in our mud room and it was so fun having my very own space to store my favorite things. I wanted Jett to have a taste of that in his room. We did some minor sprucing up in his closet and... ta da!! 

We chose the Red Kids Locker to review. I wanted something that didn't take up too much space but that also provided some storage for us. 

The stars are a new addition and I'll be blogging about them next week ;)

We are currently using the locker to store Jett's suitcases, hats, soccer clothes and a few other odds and ends that we didn't have a place for. 

I love the idea of using lockers for decor in your home. They can be used for storage but they also add a really unique touch to a room. 

If you are looking for more of an industrial look School Lockers also sells a variety of Metal and Steel Lockers. These are the exact lockers we had in my home growing up. They work well in a home but they also are extremely functional in a garage. My Dad still has these lined up on an entire wall filled with camping gear, boating items, lawn care essentials etc... 

The idea of having gym lockers would be cool in a dining/kitchen space or anywhere you need lots of extra storage! School Lockers has a great selection of Gym Lockers. It might even be fun to use these lockers as a type of library for your children. Each child can have their own row of lockers to store and "check out" their favorite books. The possibilities are endless!           

image via The Woodsfolk

School Lockers' Kid's Lockers come in a variety of color which is a fun way to inject some creativity and life to a space. You could use them like I did in a closet or even use one of their smaller ones as a nightstand. Grouped together they can substitute for a dresser or on their own for a single storage solution. 

image via Room for Children

If you are lucky enough to have some sort of mudroom then the Kid's Coat Lockers would be perfect for you. Your kids will no longer have any excuse for throwing their coats and shoes on the floor. Each child would have enough space for their own belongings plus these cubbies allow for extra space for friends! If you have kids coming and going in and out of your house a lot this locker would be a dream! 

Right now School Lockers is offering 5% off any purchase through June 20th. Use promo code:

 5OFF6TH