Many people cannot afford the expense of hiring a professional interior designer. For those unfamiliar with interior design, there are many nuances, techniques, and methods that are vital to avoiding common decorating mistakes. For those without degrees in interior design, these useful tips will help you sidestep any potential decorating mistakes in your home.

Lacking in Lighting

Most experts recommend lighting a room in layers, meaning there’s more than one overhead light connected to a single wall switch. Attach a dimmer to your overhead light. Incorporate lamps with different light settings. Make it easy to change the mood of a room by utilizing various lighting options. For example, your living room is a great place for your kids to play when the overhead light is on a high setting and the lamps are lit up. However, this room quickly turns into a romantic movie-watching setting with a few adjustments of the lights.

Not Considering Proportions

A room that feels crowded is usually the resulted of ignoring the space’s proportions. Even though the room is big enough for the couch you have in there, it might be out of proportion to the space’s measurements. Proportion is tricky because room should have big, small, tall, short, long, and wide things in it but too much one particular shape or size and everything is off. Consider the proportions of a room as you decorate it.

Single Color Wash

When decorating your home, you want to use a color palette that includes at least three shades. Focusing on a single color makes a space feel too uniform and boring. If you really like the monochromatic look, try to find simple ways to add a pop of another color here or there to add some character to the room.

Too Much Decor

Probably one of the most common decorating mistakes people make is adding too many pieces to a single room. Every wall doesn’t need to be covered in art and framed pictures. A sofa need doesn’t two dozen throw pills. Edit down what you have so your room doesn’t feel busy or cluttered. Decor pieces that you love should be stored and brought during another season so you can effortlessly switch the mood of a room without buying new decorative touches.

Over Designed

After studying magazines and catalogs, reading blogs, and researching endlessly, you’ve perfectly designed a room in your home. Take a step back? Does it look too perfect? Maybe it seems like Martha Stewart had half a dozen espressos and styled your room with a T-square and compass? You live in your home, and while the space shouldn’t be messy or chaotic, rooms should still look inviting and warm. You want guests to enter your space and immediately tell it belongs to you because of the personal touches you add.

Not Enough Storage

Many don’t consider storage as a component of interior design but, in fact, it plays a vital role. Everyone has stuff and while some of those items serve a decorative purpose, most of it needs to be stored away for the right occasion. As you decorate your home, consider adding trunks, closets, hooks, racks, drawers, bins, baskets, or any other storage tool you can so that everything goes in its proper place. For instance, you probably have most of your holiday decor out right now, but once January 1 rolls around, all of those pieces will need to be repacked and stored. Instead of overstuffing a closet, invest in a decorative trunk you can place in your living room or guest room that can store your precious holiday decorations.

Too Trendy

If you designed your home several years ago, you might now notice that some of the pieces seem dated. This is usually of issues of relying too much on trends to design a space. Luckily, it’s easy to fix this common decorating mistake. Consider your interior design style and find classic ways to incorporate that aesthetic into your home. A few trendy touches are absolutely fine but if you have a rustic home, a classic feature, such as a rolling barn door (currently on sales for 30 percent off with promo code HOLLY30), is a decorative element that never goes out of style.

Remember, decorating a home is an ongoing project you will work on for as long as you live in the space. Everyone is bound to make a few interior decorating mistakes but learn from, and your panache for design will evolve.