The Costly Decorating Mistake I’ll Never Make Again
Because I’ve spent more than a decade as the editor of Country Living, I’ll admit a lot of people ask for my design advice, but here’s the thing I’ve noticed through the years: When it comes to their homes, almost everyone wants instant-gratification.
Social media has a lot to do with this. How many times have you seen a “one-week” design challenge, or an “after” unveil that seemingly came out of nowhere? Here’s why that’s a problem. If you’re a reader of Country Living, you likely gravitate toward layered, lived-in spaces that feel truly personal. These don’t happen overnight with expedited shipping on Wayfair. (For the record, we still love Wayfair.) The houses we regularly feature employ what designer James Farmer refers to as a “cast-iron skillet strategy” to decorating—they’re seasoned over time, which leads to a layered, more nuanced decorative flavor.
In recent years, a movement known as “Slow Decorating” has surfaced that champions a take-your-time approach to decorating a home. Like the Slow Food movement, it also encourages us homeowners to be more thoughtful about how and where we spend. For example, a basket made by a local artisan may be a bit more expensive, but there’s value in supporting honest-to-goodness craftsmanship. The same goes with furniture, artwork…you get the idea.
Now I’ll admit that it took me some time to practice patience, but here’s what I’ve come to realize: The design elements in my home that I don’t love all involve decisions I made in a hurry. In recent years—largely inspired by the homeowners and designers I’ve frequently interviewed for Country Living—I have embraced a few Slow Decorating lessons I’ve learned and feel compelled to share them with you should it save you an impractical purchase or aesthetic regret.
Shop for the Piece, Not the Room
Designer Libby Cameron is a master at interiors that feel acquired over time. (Her collected family home in Maine, seen below, is as lived-in and layered as it gets.) “I like to buy what I love and move things around,” she says. “Furniture should be versatile—it doesn’t have to feel like it was bought for a specific room.”
If I fall in love with an antique piece of furniture, which happens frequently, I ask myself one question: Can I think of three ways I could put this [insert item] to use throughout the house? If I can envision, say, a chest of drawers used in a bedroom, entry, or hallway, I feel okay making the purchase. I find a lot of people approach buying furniture as a fill-in-the-blank strategy. With Slow Decorating, it’s more of a mix-and-match approach.
A living room by designer Libby Cameron features furniture that can move around as needed
Sweat the Small Stuff
It’s the thoughtful little details that bring a room to life—the quirky piece of artwork, the sentimental souvenirs, the curated collections. When I was renovating a farmhouse in Mississippi, I stocked up on pheasant glassware and vintage books by Mississippi authors well before I had any furniture.
Here’s why that was helpful: Acquiring those bitsy pieces here and there helped me feel like I was making progress on the project, which also made it easier to hold out for just the right bigger-ticket items, such as the sofa, sideboard, and so on.
Pheasant glassware, vintage plates, and faded paintings give a Mississippi kitchen a layered-over-time feeling
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Prioritize Quality
You know the saying: Buy once, cry once. It may be slightly painful to pay more for hand-crafted furniture or a quality antique, but in the long run it’ll serve you better than a bookcase made of particle board. In the same way the Slow Food movement says to “know your farmer,” there’s also something to be said for knowing the name of the person who thoughtfully made the items in your home—or the antiques dealers who sourced them for you. (Chances are they’ll also have a good story to share!)
A pretty wooden plate rack by Cosmo Fry
Mix Materials and Eras
“The strongest examples of Slow Decorating are those spaces that you can’t quite assign to any certain era. They feel stuck in time, but in the best, hardest-to-pinpoint way possible,” says Country Living Senior Homes & Style Editor Anna Logan. When you make peace with waiting it out, you’re less likely to jump on trend bandwagons and wind up with a house that can be tied to a very specific moment in time. (Lookin’ at you, Modern Farmhouse.)
RELATED: 95 Living Room Ideas You’ll Love for Classic, Rustic, Traditional, and Modern Family Spaces
Remember: Finished Isn’t the Goal
This may be the hardest one. When it comes to decorating our homes, there’s a real desire to be “finished”—to tie up the loose ends and be done with it. But if our spaces are truly a reflection of ourselves, they should, like us, evolve over time, with additions that reflect new interests and pieces that come with new stories. (“Well, this one time at the Round Top antiques shows…”) In grammatical terms, a home is an ellipsis, not a period. Perhaps no one understands that dot-dot-dot approach to decorating like a collector, who trades box-store convenience for curation over time. While psychological research says that people gain more happiness from experiences than possessions, when possessions are tied to experiences, it’s the best of both worlds.
Rachel Hardage Barrett has written for and edited lifestyle publications for more than 20 years. As the editor-in-chief of Country Living, she has covered all things related to country life—including design, gardening, food, travel, antiques, crafts, and country pop culture—for more than a decade. Before Country Living, Rachel spent several years at Southern Living, where she served as Executive Editor covering travel, food, style, and features. Before Southern Living, Rachel was the Special Projects Director of Real Simple, where she wrote and oversaw books and special issues about food, travel, weddings, organizing, and parenting in addition to working on international editions and licensed products. Before working at lifestyle brands, Rachel started her magazine career at Glamour, where she wrote and edited relationship articles, celebrity interviews, as well as fashion and features content. When she’s not working on the magazine, she can likely be found poking around an antiques shop, perusing country real estate listings, or dreaming of opening a general store.
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