The Best Decorating Advice I Ever Received

There are pieces of advice that slip into your life so quietly that you don’t fully understand their weight until years have passed, and then there are the rare sentences that take root the moment they’re spoken, even if you don’t yet know how much they will shape the way you live. 

The best decorating advice I ever received came from my mother, not during some grand conversation or an intentional teaching moment, but on an ordinary afternoon when she was rearranging a shelf in our living room and I happened to be standing nearby, watching the late-day sunlight settle across the room.

She lifted a small framed watercolor she had painted when she was younger, held it in the air for a moment as if listening to something only she could hear, and then placed it at a slight angle on the shelf. 

Without turning fully toward me, she said, almost thoughtfully, “Make your home feel good to you, and everyone else will feel it too.” 

At the time, I assumed she simply meant that personal taste mattered, but the older I get, the more I realize she was offering me a way of seeing my home that would quietly guide me through every space I have lived in since.

How Her Words Returned to Me When I Needed Them Most

When Daniel and I first got married, I carried around a quiet idea that a home should look complete immediately, as if settling into a space required proving to it and to everyone who visited that you knew how to decorate properly.

I spent those early months moving furniture from one wall to another, buying pieces I wasn’t sure about simply because other people seemed to own them, and filling corners with objects that had no meaning except to prevent emptiness. 

I decorated for speed, not for soul, and the result was a home that looked acceptable but never truly felt like ours.

The turning point came one morning when I was sitting on our small sofa, still half-asleep, staring at a living room that didn’t comfort me the way I hoped it would. And for the first time in years, my mother’s sentence came back to me with complete clarity: “Make your home feel good to you.”

When I let those words settle, I realized how often I had been decorating for an audience who didn’t live with us, and how little attention I had given to the rhythm of our actual days where the light landed in the afternoons, where Daniel naturally gravitated with his book, or where I tended to place my coffee mug when I needed a quiet moment.

That was the day I finally began decorating with intention rather than urgency, and little by little the house softened. 

I donated pieces I bought simply to fill space, rearranged furniture so the flow felt natural rather than forced, and displayed items that carried stories instead of buying objects meant only to match a trend.

A Memory From Childhood That Finally Made Sense

During our first year in Florida, when I was once again searching for the right look for our living room and feeling more frustrated than inspired, another memory of my mother surfaced. 

I remembered watching her one autumn evening as she adjusted the pillows on our old sofa with mismatched, worn in places, but so deeply familiar and seeing the calm look on her face when she stepped back and softly said to herself, “Yes… that feels right now.”

Thinking of that moment helped me understand that decorating was never about impressing someone or achieving perfection. It was about creating small pockets of comfort that welcomed you at the end of each day, and about allowing your home to evolve with you instead of forcing it into a magazine-ready pose.

My mother never cared whether someone approved of her choices; she cared whether her home held her family well.

That memory changed the way I approached our Florida house entirely. Instead of asking whether a space looked finished, I asked whether it felt lived in. Instead of worrying about matching every texture perfectly, I paid attention to how we naturally used each corner.

Understanding the Heart of Her Advice

The older I become, the more clearly I see what my mother meant. 

A home that feels good isn’t created by purchasing the perfect décor or by following the latest trends; it is created by choosing pieces that hold meaning, by giving rooms space to breathe, and by allowing everyday life such as the drawings your children tape to the wall, the books you leave open on the coffee table, the warm lamp you switch on during rainy afternoons to guide the atmosphere.

When I look around our home now, the spaces that feel the most beautiful are never the ones that were decorated quickly or copied from someone else. 

They are the spaces shaped by life unfolding naturally: the shelf lined with the girls’ handmade holiday crafts, the corner beside the mantel where I finally created a quiet reading spot, the kitchen counter where a small plant thrives because it sits where the morning light lands just right.

Carrying My Mother’s Voice Into Every Season of Our Home

Her advice still whispers to me when I’m unsure where to place something, when I’m tempted to buy a new piece just because I saw it online, or when I find myself comparing our home to someone else’s. 

It reminds me that a home is not a stage for strangers; it is a private landscape where the people you love move through their days, and if it feels warm to them, then it is already enough.

Whenever I decorate for a holiday or rearrange a corner simply because it needs fresh energy, I can almost hear my mother’s gentle tone. 

She never rushed, never decorated out of obligation, and never let trends dictate her choices. She built a home that held us, and I try every day to do the same for my own family.