10 Things Every Man Should Know About Interior Design

Women always seem to feel they’re much better than us at creating what they call a ‘liveable atmosphere’. It’s time to prove them wrong! There’s absolutely no reason why a man’s home, or at least one room in his family home, can’t be his castle. Forget about frilly doilies and floral-print curtains unless those are a true reflection of your character. What you really need is a room that oozes testosterone without being too intimidating to more sensitive souls. By outlining ten things that every man should know about interior design, that’s what this guide is all about!

1. Take your time

No good is ever going to come from rushing. Get a good idea of the kind of room you want to design, and then take as much time as you need to locate everything you need to create a space that is perfect for you, marking your territory in a tasteful way.

2. Don’t buy expensive stuff, rent it!

If you’re single and you’re not always planning on living in the same house, buying large items and expensive furniture will prove to be a very bad investment in the long-term, because sooner or later every man who invites some significant other to live with him will hear the four dreaded words: ‘That’s got to go!’.

The advantage with home furniture rental is you can try a whole lot of different looks without being committed to any of them. You can also probably get quite a few more awesome gadgets than you could otherwise afford.

3. Keep it simple

When working out what you should get, it’s usually best to go for big, chunky, and uncluttered. Men are not really well known for tidiness. There are a few rare exceptions, but in general we’re usually doing more important things than dusting the top of the bookcase. If you clutter up your space, you’ll find it a lot more difficult to stay organised, and that will slow you down.

4. Give yourself a lot of surfaces

The thing about guys is we usually have a lot of stuff and it’s not like women’s stuff that you can tuck away prettily in a drawer. We like to have it readily to hand so we can use it. The problem with this is that there never seems to be anywhere to put anything. This is caused by a lack of surfaces! So make sure you give yourself plenty of surfaces in the form of flat-topped furniture and tables.

5. Don’t mismatch your furnishings

You’ve probably already gone to some other site for tips on interior decorating before you found this one, and they’ve said ‘It’s OK to mismatch furnishings’, but actually it’s only OK to do that if your furnishings came to you courtesy of the Salvation Army.

Mismatched furniture, unless it’s unmistakably intended as a statement on non-conformity, becomes a statement that you don’t respect yourself, so you don’t care how your home looks. Just because you read something on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true, use your common sense and think how people will really feel when they see all your chairs are different colours, and you’re offering them drinks from old jam jars.

At best you’ll get some points for your enthusiasm for recycling, but this is not how you win friends and influence people.

6. Themes are cool

If you can afford it, designing your room around a theme is a great idea, because it rewards you every time you enter it. When you make a theme work, you get a sense of accomplishment that never loses its sheen.

7. Make the bedroom the best room of the house

Sure the other rooms should not be neglected, but anyone who is afforded the privilege of visiting the inner sanctum should feel like they’ve been handed a VIP card. The bedroom should be somewhere special, and when you arrive in it, there should be a sense of having arrived.

8. Get wood

No matter what time of the day it is, wood is great to have! Morning, noon, or night, you will always feel more warm and comfortable with wood compared to those sterile substitutes. Plastic, metal, and glass all have their moments, but they are sometimes cold and lifeless. Of course I mean real wood, not painted particleboard or plywood.

9. Design it for you

Most design and decorating advice is focused too much on impressing people. But really this is your space and you have to live in it, so actually you should design it for yourself. You still shouldn’t mismatch your furniture or drink from jam jars, though.

10. Read up on some life hacks

You can discover a lot of interesting ways to make your home life more convenient and simple just by searching for the top recommended life hacks. These will often tell you a lot of things you could be doing in your home that will make living in it more enjoyable.

*This is a written collaborative post