How To Become A Self Taught Interior Designer/ Decorator? In This Video I Share How I Did It!

welcome to the beauty revival where we're inspired by home and the people in it all right in today's video i wanted to share a little bit of background about how i actually became a self-taught home decorator the funny thing about my journey to becoming a home decorator and sharing on instagram and the blog and pinterest and all of these places is that for a really long time into my middle 20s i didn't really care about decorating my house now i liked pretty things just as much as the next person but i just never thought about interior design or home decorating as a career i don't even remember actually really thinking about it at all and then i have a twin sister and her name is lindsay and she had been watching hgtv and she called me up she lived in edmonton and i'm in grand prairie alberta canada which is um about four hours away from edmonton and she called me up and said brit you've got to watch this show it's by a lady named sarah richardson and it's hilarious her and her um i don't know what he would be design assistant um tommy are so funny together and they create these beautiful homes and it's just a really fun show to watch so that's how i actually got introduced to interior design was my sister told me about sarah richardson on hgtv so i started watching some of her episodes from her various shows and i primarily watched them in the beginning for that partnership and um how funny her and sarah or how funny sarah and tommy were together and then i started to notice how beautiful all of her spaces were and how she seemed to kind of have a system to what she was doing and it was unlike anything i had ever seen before where i'm from uh design styles can be about three to five years behind what's actually trendy i'm in a town that's in northern canada so it just seems like trends take a little bit longer to kind of filter through our city for whatever reason and at that time i honestly had no idea people were decorating their houses in these light and bright you know white walls fresh colors at the time people were decorating more with browns and reds where i was from and those weren't really my favorite so i just remember thinking well i don't really love that but i don't know what to do like it really wasn't on my mind that you could do something different which is so funny to think about now but then when i watched sarah she had all these fresh and light and bright designs and i loved it and that's how i actually started to fall in love with interior design and began to think about maybe decorating my own home so at this time i think i had my first daughter i have two daughters i think my first daughter was probably like just a year old yeah she was probably just a year old and i started out really small and i decided that i was gonna but it was like really brave for me i we didn't have a lot of money like any money to be spending on decorating but i decided to take a bath towel you guys and i'm not a sewer i can't sew but i decided to sew a pillowcase cover for a pillow on my ikea couch that i had and it was orange oh my goodness i look back and think oh my word but that's my kind of what i want to talk about first you just have to start if you want to be a self-taught interior decorator or home decorator at some point you just have to start you're not going to be good at it you're going to feel like you have no idea what you're doing but you have to start and that's when you're going to start learning by um failures and then some successes but more failures until you gradually have more and more successes and less failures but yes to begin i sewed a pillowcase cover from a bath towel and it was orange and i put that on my couch and i think my first idea was that i was gonna have like a blue and orange theme going on in my living room i'm not really sure but then my next bold decision was to hang wallpaper in our dining room this was our first the first home we ever owned our tiny little home and again where i was from people were not hanging wallpaper in their houses but i decided i was going to be brave and hang this wallpaper and i loved it it was so fun it was definitely unique it was a more traditional scrolling kind of pattern something that i wouldn't choose now but i remember i just loved it and that was my first launch into starting to decorate our own home that probably doesn't sound very exciting because now we have pinterest and instagram and blogs and youtube and all of these things to be looking at and getting inspiration and ideas but back then i remember pinterest had just started when i got into all of this and instagram was still being mainly used just for people to share pictures of you know their kids or what they ate or things like that it wasn't to share like interior design inspiration or anything like that so yeah so that was really big for me to start there and then we ended up moving so we moved into our whispering ridge house in i believe 2013 2012 2013 and it was this big beautiful home that was built and designed by our friends and they did an incredible job and it had a white kitchen and a freestanding tub i mean it was just beautifully done all the light fixtures the backsplashes everything it was like this perfect amazing blank canvas and we moved in and for a couple months i felt frozen like what am i supposed to do in here i don't want to mess anything up it's so pretty but i want to make it our own i want to make it cozy and i wanted to start exercising that artistic drive that i was you know that i had started loving in our old house but hadn't used in here so i remember that i started scrolling on pinterest and just checking out different things and then i just went to the store and grabbed some cans of paint and i picked mustard yellow and i think i got like black chalk paint you have to think this is 2012 and 2013. and i painted some walls in the house and i ordered some ikea furniture and i remember just thinking this is my house i can do with it whatever i want and nobody even has to see it i remember thinking that nobody has to see it i can just try some different things so i just went for it i went to town on this house and i decorated it all and i shared some photos on facebook of it and the response i got from my friends was just so encouraging people really liked it uh they could tell that i was definitely trying to curate a look instead of just throwing up a whole bunch of items i loved i was trying to actually do some kind of design in there and they were just really encouraging and i can't even remember you know i probably only got like five comments on it but it just encouraged me and i decided to share it on instagram so i had seen some girls who were starting to share like their outfits of the day and their jewelry and stuff and i wasn't following any interior design accounts i don't think i would have even known to do that on instagram but i decided that i would share just like these girls were sharing their outfits that i would share some of the pictures that i was taking of our house that i had uploaded to facebook so i shared some pictures on there and i remember i gained a couple followers and people liked them and then i started to search on instagram more and i ran across monica hibbs's account on instagram and at the time i had never seen anything like what monica had done her house was beautiful but it was entirely neutral and everything was bright and white and keep in mind i had just painted like a huge wall in our house mustard yellow another wall chalkboard black i had a real like rustic theme going on i had just done what i knew how to do or what i'd kind of seen other people do and when i looked at monica's account i remember being like this is so pretty it's so amazing so my next step into becoming a self-taught home decorator is i started to study what other people were doing and try to emulate their style in my home what this meant though was that i had to paint over and change the majority of what i have what i had done up to that that's a big part of growing and learning if you're going to be self-taught you're going to have to make mistakes and then change things and that is probably the area that i see people stop and not want to move forward because they feel like they weren't good at it and it's not for them if they realize they have to start over and that's not true you're never going to grow you're never going to learn if you're not willing to say oh shoot why did i paint that huge wall mustard yellow now i want it to be white or gray or whatever so that was my next step in my self-taught journey to becoming a home decorator is i had to take down sell a lot of furniture that had bought because it was very rusted and i was looking at monica's style and it was very like more traditional but very clean and simple no rustic elements in it at all so i had to start over from scratch and so i did and and i did this too by just buying like a slip cover for my ikea couch and you know grabbing some new pillowcase covers i didn't spend a lot of money we still didn't have a big budget for decorating but i just started little by little studying what she was doing i found some other interior decorators on pinterest and on instagram i just started studying what other people were doing so it wasn't long after i had kind of reworked our living room and painted over the walls slipcovered the sofa and stuff and i was still sharing this on instagram that people really started to take notice of what i was doing and i was gaining followers on instagram more quickly i had a blog although i wasn't putting a lot of attention into my blog my primary focus was on instagram and it was growing and and i started to share pictures of our living room so shot so that you could see like the whole living room instead of just a little vignette shot or like a picture of whatever a pillow or whatever i started to stand back and take pictures further back so people could see the entire room and those just went crazies people loved them i was gaining followers like at a crazy amount it was all just really wild i remember just being like what is happening this is insane but it was the motivation that i needed to keep trying new things and to start to spread my wings into now not studying so closely what other people were doing but trusting my instinct to bring in what i liked and what my personal touches and quirky decor items and stuff were and i just got more and more confident and more and more brave to try different things even if they were things i wasn't seeing other people doing very much or at all and that's kind of how i grew to the next phase where people started to reach out in my town who had seen or followed me on instagram or facebook and asked me if i would come and decorate their homes for them so that is my next thing that i want to encourage you is that if you feel like how are you ever going to become a self-taught home decorator if you don't have anybody who's willing to take a chance on you your home is your blank canvas your home is your portfolio and we live in such an incredible time where you can share your portfolio on instagram on facebook on pinterest if you have a website you can share it on there you can share it everywhere and then people are gonna see what you can do and you did it in your own home and if they like it they're gonna reach out to you and ask you to come and decorate their houses so that's what kind of launched me into starting to decorate for other people i no longer decorate for other people now i focus mainly on sharing my tips and tricks on home decorating and interior design on my blog and on instagram and now as i'm beginning here on youtube as well but that's how i kind of launched myself into a self-taught home decorating career for other people was just by sharing my portfolio of our house on instagram and people really liking it and just going out and helping them to achieve similar styles to my own in their houses probably the most exciting thing that happened during that time period was that style at home magazine which is a canadian magazine reached out and asked if we would like to be in one of their issues and i nearly dropped dead i remember this had been a dream of mine for a really long time it was a pinch me moment i couldn't believe it was happening and i couldn't believe it was happening because i had just started this instagram account and shared what i was doing in our home and honestly i looked back at some of like you know i'd been going now for about two years and i looked back and would like cringe at some of the things i had done and shared but it didn't matter people didn't care that my style was evolving and changing they were um excited to see what i would do next and yeah i remember it was a pinch me moment and they sent the photographer and we styled the house because of where i live they couldn't even send a stylist like they normally would so i had to do it all by myself and i remember just being like i don't know what to do i can't even believe this is happening right now and he came and then we ended up being featured on the cover of that magazine and having a spread in the magazine and that still to this day is one of those things that i can't believe just taking the risk of trying something new being brave to take a chance on a wall color or you know maybe putting pillows out or whatever whatever feels scary to you that maybe somebody else would think so what just put some wall paper up but to you it feels scary just taking that chance launched me into being able to work and help other people in their homes and then have this feature in this magazine and then now running our social media accounts and the blog and things like that it's pretty exciting and it's pretty incredible that we live during this time where that's all really accessible and anybody can do it i have no interior design background i have no background on on like media i'm terrible with technology like all of those things were really hard for me and so i like being able to share my story with others who think well maybe you have to have some kind of natural instinct in this or you have had to have gone to school for that no i was i was a stay-at-home mom a homemaker and i was just enjoying decorating our house and sharing those pictures on instagram and it launched um it launched a career for me and yeah so i hope you found this encouraging i hope that it inspires you if you are looking to become a self-taught interior designer or home decorator that you just have to be brave be willing to make mistakes and try again study what other people are doing we're all like there's nothing new under the sun we're all being inspired by each other but then we're being inspired by each other but the world needs who you were made to be the world needs who uh what you can add to it so it's just kind of this constant you know going up a set of staircases where you're taking what other people have done and you're making it your own and that's how you figure out your own design style your own aesthetic and uh yeah it's just that simple and then start sharing it share it on instagram and pinterest all these places and it will feel unnerving it will feel uncomfortable to share i've had lots of people tell me i don't want anybody to think that i'm thinking oh i'm so amazing and i was like well when you look at pinterest are you thinking oh why is that person sharing it no you're like oh thank goodness they shared that so i could see a furniture layout or a different color of walls when i'm sharing on instagram or pinterest i'm trying to inspire somebody just like i was inspired so don't let that hold you back but don't worry it's completely normal to feel um awkward about that and like it feels a little uncomfortable to start sharing but it is one of those things is like ripping off the band-aid you just start sharing and as you continue to put yourself out there and be vulnerable it will get easier i promise so i hope you enjoyed this video and a little bit about my background in decorating and interior design i would love it if you followed along by hitting that subscribe button and you can also find us at thebeautyrevival.com on instagram at the dot beauty revival and on pinterest at the beauty revival thanks guys have a great day

Channel: The Beauty Revival

Views: 42,100

Keywords: how to interior design, how to become a self taught interior decorator, how to become an interior designer, how to become an interior decorator, teach yourself interior design, learn interior design, interior design, interior designer, interior decorating, how to become a self taught interior designer, becoming an interior designer, interior design business, how to interior designer, interior design career

Id: q6L8VfNchXY

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021