Little Things That Make a Home Feel More Like You

There is a particular kind of home that looks absolutely beautiful in photographs.

Everything matches. The cushions are perfectly plumped. There isn't a charging cable in sight. Nobody appears to own a remote control, and we're fairly certain nobody has ever walked through the front door and immediately abandoned a pair of shoes there.

They're lovely to look at.

But sometimes the homes we remember most aren't the perfect ones.

They're the ones that tell us something about the people who live there.

The photograph on the mantelpiece. The slightly battered chair nobody is allowed to throw away. A shelf overflowing with books. Something brought home from a holiday twenty years ago. The ridiculous ornament that makes absolutely no sense with anything else in the room but makes its owner smile every time they see it.

Because perhaps making a house feel like home isn't really about decorating.

It's about leaving little pieces of yourself everywhere.

Your home doesn't need a theme

At some point, decorating became something we're apparently supposed to complete.

Choose a style. Pick a colour palette. Buy the correct accessories. Stand back and admire the finished room.

Except homes don't really work like that.

They evolve.

Something comes home from a weekend away. Somebody gives you a picture. You inherit a piece of furniture. A plant takes over a corner. You suddenly decide you love a colour you've ignored for the previous twenty years.

And gradually the room changes.

That's not getting your interior design wrong.

That's living in it.

A home doesn't have to belong neatly to a particular aesthetic. If you love it and it makes sense to you, it has already earned its place.

Keep the things that tell your story

Not everything in our homes needs to be beautiful in the conventional sense.

Some things are beautiful because of what they mean.

A chipped bowl that belonged to your grandmother. A child's painting that would probably not trouble the National Gallery. A shell picked up on a beach. A photograph where nobody is looking at the camera properly.

These are the things that quietly turn rooms into our rooms.

Trends will come and go. Colours will fall in and out of fashion. Somebody will inevitably announce that a particular kind of furniture is officially over.

But nobody else gets to decide whether something you treasure belongs in your home.

It does.

Let yourself like what you like

This should be extraordinarily simple.

Oddly, it isn't.

We're surrounded by images telling us what a stylish home is supposed to look like. And inspiration can be wonderful — right up until it starts making us question things we genuinely enjoy.

So here's a small permission slip from The Lovely List:

You are allowed to like things that aren't fashionable.

You can have colour when everyone else has gone beige.

You can have beige when everyone else has decided beige is over.

You can display your collection of slightly peculiar ceramic animals.

You can mix old things with new things.

You can put something in a room for no better reason than it makes you happy.

There are enough rules in life already.

Your sitting room really doesn't need any more.

Think about how a room feels

We tend to talk about how homes look, but the way they feel is often much more important.

Think about the rooms you're naturally drawn to.

There might be a comfortable chair in exactly the right spot. Soft light instead of one enormous overhead bulb interrogating everybody. A blanket within reach. A familiar scent. Music playing somewhere. A pile of books beside the sofa.

None of those things necessarily transforms a room in a photograph.

But they transform what it feels like to be there.

And ultimately, that's what a home is for.

Not being photographed.

Being lived in.

Make the ordinary things lovely

There is a slightly strange habit many of us have of saving our nicest things.

The good glasses are kept for visitors.

The beautiful candle is apparently too beautiful to light.

The nice notebook remains untouched because our handwriting couldn't possibly be worthy of page one.

Meanwhile, we're using the things we don't particularly like every single day.

Perhaps we've got that backwards.

The ordinary days make up most of our lives.

So use the mug you love.

Put flowers in the vase.

Wear the nice slippers.

Light the candle on a completely unremarkable Tuesday.

You don't need company coming over to make your own home lovely for you.

Give yourself something nice to look at

This doesn't require redecorating.

Sometimes one tiny change can alter how a corner of your home feels.

Move a plant.

Bring something out of a cupboard.

Put a favourite photograph in a frame.

Arrange three things you love together on a shelf.

Pick a few flowers from the garden.

Move the chair towards the window.

The goal isn't to create a Pinterest-worthy vignette.

It's simply to occasionally catch sight of something and think:

Oh, I like that.

That counts.

Leave room for life

This might be the most important one.

Your home is going to look lived in.

Because you live there.

There will be post on the table.

Shoes will occasionally migrate away from wherever shoes are supposedly meant to live.

Someone will leave a glass beside the sofa.

There will be a mysterious pile of washing that has been clean and dry for three days but has somehow not completed the final six-foot journey into the wardrobe.

This isn't evidence that you've failed at having a beautiful home.

It's evidence that life is happening there.

Of course, tidying can make us feel calmer. Organisation can make life easier. And there's something deeply satisfying about walking into a freshly cleaned room.

But perfection is a rather exhausting standard for somewhere you're supposed to feel safe enough to put your feet up.

Home should feel like you

Perhaps that's the real test.

Not whether somebody else would choose your wallpaper.

Not whether everything coordinates.

Not whether your shelves resemble the ones you saved on Pinterest.

But whether, when you close the front door behind you, something in you thinks:

Ah. I'm home.

Because the loveliest homes aren't necessarily the ones where everything matches.

They're the ones where everything somehow belongs.

The old things. The new things. The useful things. The slightly ridiculous things. The beautiful things and the things nobody else would understand.

All those tiny choices gradually become a portrait of the people who live there.

And perhaps that's what makes a house feel like home in the first place.