How Do You and Your Partner Make Home Decor Decisions?

Been living this situation lately! My husband and I eloped in the midst of quarantine and didn’t move in with each other until after we were wed, so unlike lots of modern couples, we’ve been learning how to live with each other’s styles post-the-vows. It’s been a ride learning how to mesh our household preferences! I feel it’s a bit of compromise, and I think as time goes on, it will inevitably morph into a new, joint style.

My partner doesn’t like to make decisions, so most of the decor is my idea, which I am 100% fine with. And when he does want to put something up, I offer to help in a way that achieves his end, but displays in a way I think matches everything else. For example: he wanted to display his collection of political buttons near his desk, which is also in our dining room. So, we worked together to create a really cool triptych across three canvasses that displays them in a rainbow/ombre pattern. Now he has a cool zoom background that looks way more intentional and sophisticated than the original idea. Win win!

I once asked my husband to pick out a wall clock because there was absolutely none in his house that I moved into after we got married and I was sick of squinting at the super tiny digital display on the TV box anytime I needed to know what time it was. He dutifully came home with 2 Toy Story Lego figures — 1 of Woody and 1 of Buzz — with digital clock displays in their chests. If you’re familiar with Lego figs, they’re really more table top decor. So, it was definitely a “close but no cigar” moment coz that Lego clock display wasn’t much bigger than the one on the TV box, lol!

My Opa used to say that to have a successful marriage, you need to learn to pick your battles. Small stuff, like the colour of paint on the walls or what type of carpet to buy, aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. So he’d just let my Oma choose, and saved his battles for things that truly mattered to him (like finances, decisions about their children, etc). I try to remember that when my husband suggests some things, like where to display his collection of African war clubs….:/

One of my dear friends married her high school boyfriend very young and was completely taken by surprise when he just assumed that they would of course live in a nautical themed house. He never once brought it up during their courtship. I recall her lamenting after a few years of living like a suburban sea captain, “how could I have known?!” That was the day I decided I needed to live with someone for a while before we married. No sailors knots in my house now but we do have a velvet horse painting that rotates between my husband’s siblings. It’s only ours for a year every four years so we make it work.

My boyfriend and I have separate rooms in our apartment that are more his design style or more mine based on who uses which room more. He’s a big movie watcher so the living room artwork is dramatically spooky, with film referenced art and bold colors everywhere. In my study, its a jungle of plants, my floral vintage couches and a corner for guitars and synthesizers. But we make sure to keep a mix of each person’s decor in each room. “His” living room features my emerald green velvet couch. And “my” study has a massive blue poster of Eric Clapton that we salvaged from his old apartment, abandoned by some long distant roommate of a roommate.

It helps that we share a baseline love of eccentric, campy maximalism. So when I hang a watercolor of peonies in a gilded frame next to his terrifying, found-on-the-sidewalk, clown painting, it all seems to balance out.

Four years ago, after a few months of dating my boyfriend asked me to help him pick a couch. Stubbornly it felt far too early for such a joint decision, and, secretly, I was curious to see what he would choose. A few months later he proudly showed me his new couch. I was not a fan. Four years later and the blue grey i thought I didn’t like pulls our whole living room together. So now when he suggests decorating ideas that my brain says nope! to, he gently reminds me about the couch.

Oh man, this is all resonates so much for me! My husband and I just bought our first apartment and are selling almost all of our furniture to start fresh with a different vibe. One thing that has helped us is to sit with catalogs, and my husband tells me what he likes or doesn’t like and why. I’m sometimes so surprised! And then if I have an idea for something I’d like to bring into our home, I can reference back to our catalog exercise and remind him why it could work and how it was similar to something he said he liked. I will say, one of the worst arguments we’ve had is over his art collection. My husband is not very sentimental but he is very attached to his collection of massive communist poster art from Russia and China. It is huge, it is red. There are guns. I hate them. But he loves them. I’m hoping they can live in a hallway in our new place.

Our venn diagram has a lot of overlap, so we mostly stick to that overlap in common spaces. Usually I will research and find 10-15 options or so, then my partner will narrow it down to 3-5 and we’ll decide on the final one together. If we can’t decide, we’ll put together a vision board of the whole room so we can see that, “Oh! Even though we like coffee table #1 best, we actually like the combination of coffee table #2 with rug A and couch B, so we should go with that.”

If it’s something where the feel matters, like the depth and firmness of a couch, we’ll shop in-store together. And we typically by art that speaks to both of us on an art walk or in a gallery.

I have a dead deer shoulder mount in our living room. His name is Spooky. I never imagined he would live in a room where GUESTS are entertained, but my husband travels a lot so he feels like a trusted guardian protecting me.

I hate to say it, it was my idea to put him in the living room. He just fits with our antiques and plush leather sofa. My husband was beyond surprised. The dog loves him too. He is always looking at him like, “make a move dude!”

I am in favor of Cholo SpongeBob! But not in a gallery wall. I like putting art like that in a quiet hallway or small nook. That way it says “surprise! You thought there were going to be more flowers here huh? WRONG.”

My husband and I have this fun routine where we talk about big decisions ad nauseam until we get ourselves so confused with all the details that we end up never making said decision and then we start the whole cycle over a few months later. I blame him mostly, his obsession over detail and inability to see the forest through the trees is a trait he inherited from his mother. Before we bought our couch we must have gone to sit in it at the store at least 10 times, each time analyzing some different aspect of it. After 14 years together I’ve learned to pick my battles. If something really needs doing, I’ll just go ahead and do it without asking him. If it’s not urgent I’ll let him spin his web of perfectionism until he either gives up or makes a decision.

The absolute worst fights my husband and I have are over decor decisions. The “we compromise so we have a co-created space we love” is straight out the window for me. Compromise just means nobody gets what they like, everybody settles, and the results are a bore.
I fail marriage for this, but I make better surroundings without his input. I said what I said.

My husband pretends like he doesn’t care what I do to the house but the second I ask him a question about anything ALL OF A SUDDEN, he has opinions. And I’m like, “really?? You don’t even notice that I compulsively buy things from Home Goods on a regular basis!!!” massive side eye.

My general philosophy on home decor is do what makes your heart happy then change your mind later. hahah!

We have maybe a controversial approach to almost everything in our marriage which is that the person with the better skills, the better vision and the better abilities gets to decide.

My husband is amazing – amazing! – at so many things from bathing wiggly babies to knowing exactly where anything is our house is, to making old birthday cake recipes “just like grandma used to make” and nailing them on the first try. And he is rubbish at decorating. He has no sense of what colors go together, how to layer textures, or even what furniture is required in the most basic sense. When I met him, at 26, he owned one washcloth, the world’s scratchiest sheets, stored his books in plastic milk crates and would toss up an old Buzz Lightyear towel when his room “felt too hot” (um, also known as “when the sun went down every day” FFS!)

Reader, I married him. And promptly set about helping this man un-tragic his environment posthaste.

And so when it comes to decorating our house, I always ask his opinion but we both know that said opinion will generally be overrode by me. And we’re both good with that. Especially since it means however it is decorated, he gets to organize it however he likes, our kids are clean and everyone’s eating good cake at the end of the day.

About 20 years ago, I told my husband that if he’d help me strip the bathroom wallpaper, which had stupid blue daffodils, I’d paint the walls however he wanted. The bathroom had deep blue tile and white 1980’s fixtures. He wanted bright orange sponge paint. Done, with reluctance. I found a pretty shower curtain with both colors but guests sometimes seemed jolted after leaving our bathroom until we could afford to renovate it (with hand-cut cherry bead-board walls and ceiling, and white marble).

I learned never to give my husband carte-blanche because he loves wild colors and doesn’t care about harmony. Instead I give him carefully selected options, avoiding anything overtly “feminine” (paisleys instead of florals) since I want our home to reflect both of us. But his bold tastes inspire me to take liberties with decorating rules in my own way. Our condo is filled with color, patterns, antiques, cats, paintings, and thousands of books, mostly his. I joke that if our great-grandparents were alive, they’d feel right at home except for all the Apple products. And the only gray items besides technology are the stainless pots and pans.

FWIW, I think that cholo spongebob is awesome and would hang it up in my legitimately adult, mid-century, somewhat put-together house in a minute! Love it, and I support finding a place for it in the actual home.

I have pretty particular taste, and love putting our home together, so the visuals definitely reflect me a bit more than my husband–but the space as a whole reflects our life together in so many ways. His growing record collection takes up a big part of our modestly sized living room, and our walls include lots of things we’ve picked up traveling, as well as his film photography. There’s way more color and pattern (and rattan, haha) than he would choose on his own, but it’s well-suited to the way we live together, and he’s very sweet and appreciative of the effort I put into it.

One hot tip I can share, though: it has taken me YEARS to figure out that if I send him a link to something I’m considering, there’s a pretty decent chance he’ll veto it with some wild description like, “That looks like something a 1970s mermaid would sleep on”. I used to just hold my breath every time I suggested something! But I’ve learned that sending more of a design board that includes other elements for the space increases the chances of it being accepted by about 150%. It makes total sense–he was always saying that he couldn’t picture it, I just wasn’t quite hearing him!

I’m a set decorator on movies… and home decor is my biggest passion… and i’m an only child who doesn’t like to compromise…and a headstrong capricorn…soooo 😥 but after reading this article i ask my partner if he like our home, and if he wanted to do some changes and he say that he loves the home and he wouldn’t change a thing… 🥰

We do not typically agree on decor, but when we do, the results are fantastic. I’ve learned to be patient and trust the process, even when it takes seven months to get a side table.

One of the biggest arguments in my marriage to date started the day I brought a velvet yellow armchair into our apartment without asking my husband. (In my defense – it was free.) My husband prefers everything, from our pillowcases to our couch to even our shower curtain, to be in various shades of gray only. When I point out that I need “some” color in my daily life, he concedes that navy “would also be fine.” And in case you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not; it took me weeks of negotiating and assurances to get him to agree to let me buy a white bookcase with brown shelves.

This drove me a little crazy, so when my parents offered me a free velvet yellow armchair that was PERFECT for an empty corner of our bedroom, I figured I wouldn’t ask for permission, I’d ask for forgiveness. (Fine folks of the COJ comment section, I do not recommend this.) Our argument lasted for days starting the moment I walked in the door with the chair and ended when I finally agreed to get rid of it, but only after we buy a suitable replacement in a color that ISN’T navy or gray.

Anyways, needless to say I look forward to learning about everyone else’s methods of co-decorating :)

Trust your gut. Cholo Spongbob is grounds for divorce!

lmao thank you for introducing me to cholo spongebob

My partner and I both have strong opinions about decor, but in the Venn diagram of our preferences the overlap is pretty small! We have always operated on consensus. If either one of us says no to something, then we don’t get it. It makes buying a new couch or hanging a new piece of art such a slow process. But we always eventually find something we both like or can at least live with, and have created a home that feels like it represents both of us well.

My husband has an amazing eye for design and architecture! It’s something we both love – and bonded over for years before we got together – and our taste overlaps about 90% which has made making a home together so much fun. But something that’s worked really well for us for that other 10% is that we’re genuinely curious about what the other person loves about the things we’re not crazy about, and we both put in the effort to understand it. Sometimes those conversations have led to one of us changing our mind about the thing we thought we didn’t love! But mostly it’s just so helpful because we’re able to better understand what the other person is seeing and feeling about a particular piece or colour or decision, and what they’re feeling drawn to at that particular stage of life.