Designing for How You Live
On Designing a Home That Reflects Who You Are, Not Who You Follow
“What design style is that? I love it.”
“I saw this on Instagram, I think I might replicate it in my living room.”
These are the statements that trigger me day after day.
As controversial as it might sound, I do think social media can be wildly unhelpful when you’re in the middle of a renovation. The endless scroll has blurred the line between inspiration and imitation. Too often, a home that should be deeply personal, a sanctuary you retreat to and a place you share with the people you love most, becomes a replica of someone else’s life and habits.
I should be able to walk into your home and know you. I should be able to sense where you travel, whether you love adventures to Patagonia’s vast landscapes or strolls along the Seine (pastry and shopping bags in hand). I should be able to take an educated guess at what hangs in your wardrobe: structured, neutral, capsule pieces, or layers of colour, print and texture. I should know whether you love to cook, to read, to host. Your home should tell your story without you ever having to explain it.
Instead, I often walk into spaces that tell me far more about the algorithm than the person who lives there.
You turned that alcove into a bar because social media told you to (and if you’re really honest with yourself you don’t even love drinking). Now the beautiful glassware on display is just another surface collecting dust and it’s actually starting to irk you to look at.
So how do you design for how you live, not how you think you should live?
1. Observe your life before you design it
Before you buy a single piece of furniture or save another image, notice how you actually move through your space. Where do you drop your bag when you walk in the door? Where do you sit in the evening, and where do you never sit? Which rooms feel effortless, and which ones feel slightly annoying? Design should resolve friction, not create it. If something in your home constantly bothers you, chances are its more than a styling issue.
2. Design around habits, not aspirations
There’s nothing wrong with aspiration, but mistaking it for reality is where homes begin to unravel. A formal dining table won’t turn you into a natural host if you don’t already love having people round, and a floor to ceiling bookcase won’t make you an avid reader. Filling your home with physical expressions of habits and interests you don’t actually have serves no one, least of all you.
3. Let function lead, then layer in the beauty
The most successful spaces always begin with function. Once the layout works, once storage is resolved, once circulation feels intuitive, then you can layer in beauty. This is where materials, texture, colour and objects come in.
4. Stop asking “what style is this?”
Style is not a category you pick from a dropdown menu. It’s a byproduct of decisions. When you choose materials you love, layouts that suit you, and objects that mean something to you, a “style” emerges naturally. Labelling that style is optional.
5. Collect slowly and intentionally
The most compelling homes are never finished all at once. They evolve. They hold pieces found on trips, objects inherited or collected over time, artwork that speaks to you even if nobody else gets it. When everything arrives at once, the space feels staged. When things arrive gradually, it feels lived-in, because it is.
6. Design for emotion, not performance
Ask yourself how you want to feel in each room. Calm. Energised. Grounded. Design decisions should support those emotions. Soft lighting in the evening, materials you love. A home should support your nervous system, not overstimulate it.
The most successful interiors aren’t always the ones that photograph best, they’re the spaces you return to instinctively because they feel like an extension of who you are. Sometimes, they even reconnect you with a part of yourself you don’t access anywhere else. If your home (likely your most significant investment) isn’t the place where you feel most yourself, where you can work, rest and play with ease, then you haven’t really designed it for you at all.
Designing for how you live requires you to look inward instead of outward. It requires questioning yourself every time you take out the credit card or stroll around the furniture store. In a world where it is so easy to replicate, consume and perform, choosing to design a home that is deeply, unapologetically yours might just be the most radical design decision you can make.
