"What's the point if we're not gonna buy anything?"

AFTER: Gina's redesigned living room

When your home feels like Pinterest but better because it’s your stuff, styled by you.

Gina was one of my first interior redesign clients outside of my friend circle.
She was intrigued by the idea of a new look in her home without buying new stuff but didn’t have high expectations. She'd hit a rut with her home & felt pretty hopeless about it.

When I came for the initial consultation, I asked if she had images of homes she loved. Her reply “What’s the point if we’re not gonna buy anything?” Fair question!

So we talked about design elements & principles and how knowing the specific ones you’re most drawn to (aka your aesthetic style) helps you create that ‘vibe’ with anything. Style isn’t what you have, it’s about how you bring it all together 😉

Gina finally showed me ONE magazine cutout, which we used to create a Pinterest board. We looked especially for some bookshelf inspiration because she wanted help styling her bookshelf. We observed that she was most drawn to images with subtle contrasts and lots of spaciousness.

Gina's bookshelf inspiration on Pinterest

A week later, I came back with ideas for rearranging & styling Gina's bedroom and living room based on observing the design elements & principles that she loved most = her aesthetic style from her Pinterest board.

Gina's aesthetic style:
CONTRAST= black + white, square + round forms.
UNITY = repeating colors + shapes spread evenly around the room
SPACE = between books and objects on the shelf.

We got to work restyling her furniture based on these design elements & principles. Below is Gina's living room before and after, 5 hours later. No shopping needed, we only used the items in her home ;)

Rearranging based on her aesthetic style and placing the black lamp as the focal point, achieves a similar look to the Pinterest inspiration image above.

BEFORE: Gina's living room at 10 am

AFTER: Gina's living room at 5 pm

I love Gina’s story because it’s a great reminder that beautiful personal style is more about intentionality 😍 than how much beautiful stuff you buy. YAS!

If you want timeless style, start with a timeless source: design elements and principles. Read more about design elements & principles and what aesthetic style is here.