The Decor Snob Guide to Home Decor Ideas and Decorating Styles

By Blake Lockwood | Curated by Blake Lockwood | Reviewed by Blake Lockwood

Blake Lockwood, the seasoned interior designer behind Decor Snob, has made a name for himself with over 30 years of industry experience. As a member of esteemed associations such as the NCIDQ, CIDA, NAAB, and CCIDC, he upholds high standards in his work.  His content is always people-first, reliable, and engaging.

Home Decor Ideas

Are you looking for some great home decorating ideas? Ideas can be derived from literally anywhere – from food packaging, music videos, films, cartoons, and of course from more conventional sources such as seeing items of furniture and design concepts in magazines, shops or real-life contexts like a friend’s house, hotels, and restaurants.

Creative home decor is an excellent way to showcase your personality through interior design. The only way you can be truly happy in your own home is if the interior design choices reflect your personality, where you can enjoy and be yourself. Our home is the one place where we should always be able to relax, unwind, and play. 

What type of Decor Ideas are you looking for?

Ideas by Style

 Decor Ideas by Room

Country-Based Decor Ideas

Animal-Based Decor Ideas

Social Media Trending Decor Ideas

Pop Culture Decor Ideas

How to Decide on a Home Decor Style

The most important thing when looking to be creative in your home decor is to try and explore new things. Stay true to your own personal tastes, and understand that inspiration can occur anywhere, even in the most unexpected of places.

Here on Decor Snob, my goal is to help you find interior design inspiration. Below you will find a growing list of home decor ideas and interior decorating styles.

We are all creative people, to some extent, even if we consider ourselves as being more logical and practical-minded. Applying that creativity and our own personal ideas is how we make our homes our own. That stretches from creating unusual color palettes or quirky room layouts to designing and building your own home furniture. We all portray a home makeover differently in our own minds and use creative skills to create the best home we can.

An interior is not only meant to be beautifully decorated but is supposed to create or evoke a mood or feeling and to reflect the personality of an individual or family living in the home. Before painting and rearranging your furniture, maybe spend some time thinking about your family and how you live. Look through magazines for home decorating ideas to draw or rooms that appeal to you. Maybe take inspiration from your possessions or your hobbies. The decor of your home should evoke comfort and good memories.

Finding Inspiration

home decorating ideas

For some of us, creative and personal design choices come easily. But others will need a little bit of a push or time seeking inspiration.

If you aren’t coming across any decorating ideas that get your creative cogs turning in your mind, don’t despair. Research is as much about figuring out what you don’t like, as exploring what you do like and can adapt to your own home.

To get your room or home exactly as you’ve dreamed, the research can be the longest, but the most fun, part of a home decoration makeover. By spending time on bringing your ideas to life and paying attention to the finer details, you’ll be able to reap the rewards when your new home reflects your taste perfectly.

Research will also show you products and ideas you never thought possible or were aware that they existed. So make sure you dive into your project with an open mind.


Basic Interior Design Principles

home decoration ideas

Interior design ideas are more than just the addition of eye-catching fixtures, fittings, and furnishings – you really need to know how to put a room together. Here are some basic principles for you to follow:

  • Focal point: You need to establish the natural focal point of the room (the first thing to meet the eye as soon as you enter a room). This could be a fireplace, a window, or even a built-in bookcase. If you do not have a natural focal point of the room, try to create one using a dynamic work of art or colored area rug.

  • Furniture: Determining whether your current furniture is right for the room and the impression you want to make. If the pieces that you currently have do not work or are too big or small for the size of the room, then consider buying new furniture, or alternatively swapping for something else around the house that may be more convenient.

  • Lighting: Lighting should be chosen for the functions of the space, as well as visual appeal. Accent lighting can improve texture and color, and highlight details within a room.

  • Furniture arrangement: Draw your room on planning paper first, with accurate measurements. Next, measure your furniture and put cut-out plans of it onto your floor plan, to see how things can fit in different spaces. Generally, you should try to direct the major furniture pieces in the direction of the pivot point, and keep open a main corridor for access to seats, bookshelves, etc. Strive to achieve a balance between tall and short pieces of furniture – this is something that is not easy to represent in your plan unless you consider color-coding your furniture in the plan according to size.

Enjoy using these practical tips for coming up with your own interior design ideas.

How to Collect your Ideas and Inspiration

We all arrange our ideas and inspiration in different ways. Our brains all work differently and we use different tools to help us arrange our interior design inspiration.

Make a Scrapbook or Mood board

One of my favorite ways to play and register what I like is with scrapbooks and mood boards. Scrapbooks are a great way to record anything – notes, lists, pictures, drawings – in one place for reference.

Another method is creating a mood board. Mood boards are a more concentrated collation of colors, prints, and notes, that gives an essence of what you want your room or home to eventually become.

Save Paper, Use Pinterest

If you prefer a keyboard and a mouse over pen and paper, Pinterest is a popular digital tool for collating images onto different “boards”. You’ll notice that I have a Pinterest button on every page of this website, so if you find any ideas you want to keep, just Pin It!

Photo: Eskuche Design

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23 Responses

  1. please post some bedrooms and closets..I LOVE your designs!! You are so very inspirational!!!

  2. A rising star for 2017 is blue (which I LOVE). I would love to see some photos that showcase a mix of navy and cobalt to showcase a room. If we want to get even crazier, I would love to see blues mixed with mod geo designs and a splash of warm metallics mixed in. Fantastic blog and fantastic inspiration!

  3. As a new homeowner, your blog has given me so many decorating ideas! Bold design decisions are so hard to make because there are so many what ifs: what if I hate it, will this match my furniture, will this affect my resale value. This article made me realize that this is MY home and it’s a reflection of me and no one else. My favorite decor style is Parisian, but it looks so expensive. How can I incorporate that simple elegance into my home without breaking the budget? Do you know any affordable websites, or perhaps DIY projects that will help me establish a Parisian vibe?

  4. I love the Bohemian and Spanish decor styles! However, I think that the designs where there is an option to modify the design easily are the absolute winners. No one wants to live in the same decor for decades, but changing the whole set of furniture is costly. So my bet is on the Spanish one, because it’s clean and minimalistic, yet colorful, thanks to the cushions and the wallpaper, and changing these cost less than changing the whole design. Do you have any tips for those who like to change the design often?

  5. Wow !
    Awesome post ! Really interior decorating styles are so amazing !
    I love African Safari Decor so much !
    Thanks a lot for sharing this amazing helpful post !

  6. The holiday season is coming and most of us are redecorating our homes, I’m looking for some inspiration to redecorate our home. I agree that we should trust our own taste upon finding inspiration with our home decor. I would suggest having a theme so you can avoid mismatching decors which aren’t very pleasing to the eyes. Thanks!

  7. For me, the best part of your article is when you talked about the importance of exploring new things when looking to be creative in your home decor while maintaining your personal taste. My sister visited me today and told me that my house looks lifeless. Because of this, I felt the motivation to do some renovations by adding some equipment. For me, it is important that the decors that you will buy will complement the overall style of your house. I will make sure to remember all your tips when looking for a home decor.

  8. Now that is the best collection of Ideas for decorating interiors. Definitely would try using some of these.
    Thanks for the suggestion.

  9. Love to read this article, thank you so much for sharing this post with us. It gives me information that I’m looking for 🙂

  10. To make the house beautiful every single little things plays more vital role. I like your point to be creative while home decor and maintaining your personal taste at the same time. Beautiful images with article and Thanks for the suggestion.

  11. You have shared a very informative post. Thanks for the awesome ideas. I have been searching for the tips on home decor as I wanted to redecorate my living room. Now I have got clear ideas to decor my bedroom & living room. Bundle of thanks to you.

  12. Thanks for sharing the blog with informative content. Keep sharing more idea with us.

  13. It is a very informative article. Explained very nicely and used stunning images also in this article which these are really helpful for those people who people want to make some different in a short time. I really like the ideas given by you these are really helpful…Thanks for the wonderful ideas.

  14. I personally like Mid-Century Modern decor it looks warm and comfy. Nice blog by the way. Thanks for sharing these great ideas.

  15. Indeed an impressive article about decorating the home. We often waste a lot of money while decorating the home which never worth at all.

    I was looking to decorate my home in a low budget. Seems like this article will definitely help me out.

  16. I just love these home decors. Especially the Coastal Decor. The most interesting one is definitely the desk one, And that wall painting is just amazing Such creative post! I absolutely love this idea. Thank you.

  17. Thanks for your Marvelous Posting! I quite enjoyed reading it. A blog provides the best suitable information to Decor a Home with creative thoughts. I just want to say Superb Article !!

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