13 Places To Find Design Inspiration For Your Home Decor

Sometimes it can be really hard to find design inspiration when it comes to updating the look and style of rooms in your home, or the whole house for that matter. You can easily suffer from the visual equivalent of writers block if you’re not careful. Here are the places to look at to help give you that inspiration when it’s not coming to you already…

Your home is a place where you want to feel great. It should be somewhere that makes you feel comfy and safe – and somewhere that hopefully reflects you as a person in terms of your style and taste.

Sometimes however, trying to create this feeling can seem like a losing battle. What colours/style/ideas to use are so varied that you get overwhelmed and end up with something that doesn’t reflect you at all.

As such I wanted to look today at all the different places you can look to get inspiration for your home – some that are obvious and some a little more obscure.

I am sure that after looking at a few of these, you will start to know what you like and what you don’t like – and can make some plans to make your home exactly the way you want it.

Good luck, and I hope you are inspired!

Places To Find Design inspiration

#1 – Magazines

Magazines are a treasure trove of ideas, and there are magazines for every type of style nowadays.

The best thing I find with magazines is a lot of the schemes have handy tips and tricks to create the scheme you like, and also show you where to buy some of the items within the photos – so some of the hard work has been done for you!

TIP – A magazine subscription would be a really useful present to ask for if you have some home projects coming up that you want to be inspired for

Design inspiration #2 – Pinterest

As you must be well aware by now, I’m a little in love with this site. You can find pretty much anything on it if you use the search facility, and it’s all visual so you can hone in on what you love pretty quickly.

It is a place where you can create your own magazine pages full of what you love – for free!

I advise setting up a board for your style likes and get pinning – so that when you are stuck for inspiration for a new scheme in your home you can very quickly and easily find some on your board.

Design inspiration #3 – Photos

Photos you have can often be key to finding things you like. After all, you took the photo so there must have been something about the subject in it that caught your eye.

These could be holiday photos, scenery, places, people etc… – all of them can start to form your style and give you some inspiration to get started.

Design inspiration #4 – Catalogues

Home shop catalogues can be very inspiring – the sets that they photograph the items in are very carefully staged to make the products look as fantastic as possible, and a lot of time and energy has gone into getting them just right.

As such you can find some beautiful schemes within the leaves of a catalogue – and the best thing is that you will know where to get the items from should you choose to!

Design inspiration #5 – Friends and Familys homes

I LOVE looking at my friends and familys homes, as they can give me plenty of ideas of things that I like and can use for design inspiration in my own home too.

Next time you are having coffee with a friend, take a look around and really work out what you love about where you are sitting – what works for you?

I’m not talking about copying – merely being inspired though ;o)

Design inspiration #6 – Holidays

Holiday destinations can fill us with inspiration – there are different colours and light, and our senses are usually on overload when we are away.

Next time you go away really take in what you see, and you could recreate some aspects of another country in your home – this can not only give you inspiration but also makes your home very personal to you and your experiences.

Design inspiration #7 – Show homes

As with catalogues, people are paid to create show homes that have great style and design in them – so you can pick up loads of ideas and tips by taking an afternoon to walk around a few…

Design inspiration #8 – Hotels

Hotels can be very inspiring as a lot of us want to live in a home that feels like a boutique hotel (less mess and less day to day stuff around!).

Why not use some of the tricks they use to get the look you want in your own home.

Design inspiration #9 – Shops (online and in person!)

There’s nothing I like more than wandering around interiors shops looking at room sets etc… to get ideas for what works and what doesn’t, and I have been known to move a few things around in John Lewis when I’m putting a scheme together, so I know that things work well!

Some of my favourite online places to get inspiration are: –

Maisons Du Monde / John Lewis / Loaf/

Also – with Maisons du Monde you can search on specific styles so you can find things that will work together really easily.

Design inspiration #10 – Books and art

Not just books about interiors, but books and art in general can give you clues as to what you love to look at.

Use colours within art as a starting point for a design, or a theme from your favourite book – or even a picture within a book as inspiration.

Design inspiration #11 – Online home sale sites

One of my favourite things (and seemingly one of a lot of peoples favourite things) to do is to look at online home selling sites to see what’s out there – for example Rightmove.

You can get some great inspiration from homes that you aspire to own one day – if you can’t afford to move or don’t want to then why not simply use a few of the ideas from houses that you love within your current home instead.

Design inspiration #12 – Your wardrobe and accessories

Most people wear items that they feel good in, and these items can be a great starting point for a room design as well.

Open your wardrobe and look at what you have in there – you may just find a great colour scheme from it! (not to mention textures and fabric ideas as well)

Design inspiration #13 – Outside

Nature is a wonderful thing – and there are so many colours, textures and ideas to be gained from a walk in your local park or gardens.

Look at the different seasons, do you love the warm colours of autumn or the white and grey tones of winter, or do you prefer the pastels of spring or deeper bright colours of summer? There’s your starting point!

Whatever you look at, you can be inspired by what you love and what you feel when you look at things all around you – it is just being able to pick out what you like from what you don’t that is a skill to learn.

TIP – be inspired – don’t copy! – use the inspiration to create your own take on things, to create a truly unique home