Ultra-beginner-level interior furnishing/decorating/design advice?

I love Emily Henderson for this: http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/tips-to-choosing-the-right-rug-size/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/pet-cat-friendly-design-tips/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/5-tips-to-designing-a-timeless-kids-bedroom/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/tips-to-bookshelf-styling/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/the-guide-to-a-hanging-a-good-gallery-wall/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-reupholstering-vintage-pieces/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/best-online-art-resources/ http://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/my-10-go-to-paint-colors/

I have been broke for most/all of my adult life and inherited loads of free furniture from my family. Not sure if this is similar to your current furniture situation. But something that helps big-time, in every room, through every time I've moved, is to try and match the colors of wood room-by-room. I.e. don't place a dark mahogany bookcase next to a light chipboard desk you got from Target. White things go with white things. Medium-brown things go with medium-brown things. Etc. After your neutrals/furniture are arranged, gradually add in color and other decor. Group by theme if you want--I decided I wanted my bathroom to be more pastel/opaque and really embrace the pink tile, so my pink vase and other pastel items go there. I wanted my living room to use more natural fibers and textures, so that's where the big wicker baskets containing my media stuff live, and it's where most of my houseplants and textile arts are. Another tip for seeing if things "go" or look good together is to do your room, arrange it in a way that makes sense to you, then step away and do something else in another room for a while. Return to the room you just decorated. What are your first impressions? In KonMari terms, does the sight of your things arranged like this spark joy? I've also made use of my camera phone and friends' decorating sense--IME people are always glad to weigh in with suggestions if you show them a photo of a room in progress. Other things that make a big big big difference and are super basic enough that you can do them immediately without moving furniture: clean floors and surfaces, and light. Do you rely on garish overhead lighting? Are there large swaths of space with no good lighting at all? It could be as easy as sweeping up and moving a lamp or two around.

Well, you're gonna hate me, because my first, second, and third tip are: clean up and de-clutter. Speaking as a fellow poor person, the reason those small-space spreads look so perfect is because they are carefully cluttered - not real people clutter where there's a pile of unshredded documents and cat toys and a bookcase with books piled in front of it where nobody put them away, but an artful fork and a book left open and that kind of silly thing. The best thing you can do is find baskets - dollar store or Ikea - and give everything a place. Place a priority on furniture that allows you to store stuff under or inside it. Regarding furniture, Ikea is another godsend for the folks without bucks, because their chipboard stuff - or whatever it is - is generally in the same colour range throughout their furniture lines, so you can get cheap bookshelves, TV stands, and other storage furniture to match, and having the colours of your furniture match and compliment makes a huge difference as well. The very bottom of their line is flimsy but not ugly; the difference between that and the more expensive stuff is that you will need to take better care of it (it breaks more easily), and it isn't finished as well. You can find nice stuff thrifting, but it's so oversaturated with the hipster set that finding nice, undamaged classic pieces will be hard, and then you'll have to spend your own time and money refinishing it. My advice? Get what fits in a small space, not what people think you should have. I couldn't fit a coffee table in my living room despite what my parent wants to buy, but I think it looks fine with a couch, wall-to-wall bookshelves, and a TV unit. And finally, adding framed pictures to your walls is like adding a belt to an outfit - it takes the room from "we're renting" to "we're renting but maybe you can't tell?" Gallery groupings can look really nice and you can make them as idiosyncratic as you want.

http://ask.metafilter.com/280486/Ultra-beginner-level-interior-furnishing-decorating-design-advice#4066876: "As for more general advice: Accumulate slowly, but buy stuff that really moves you." Yeah, my suggestion was, start with one thing you really love -- whether it's an accent chair, a couch, a dining room table, a paint color, whatever. And then grow slowly into a "finished" room. I started with (of all things!) a rocking chair intended for nursing babies, and found a cool prairie-style rocker I really liked, with moss-green cushions on a medium-toned wood, which I bought as a discontinued floor model from a very spendy furniture store. So that suggested a prairie-look media console (which I got at Target). When it came time to replace the grubby old couch a few years later, I got an Ikea number with clean modern lines (to complement the prairie style lines of the chair, but not be totally matchy-matchy) in a color that complemented the chair. Which suggested burgundy-and-khaki throw pillows, which I whipped up, which suggested coordinating-color window treatments (which I also made myself). It's just grown organically over six or seven years. It took me forever to find the right lamps to suit the room, but I was glad I made do with some cheapies until I found just the right thing instead of buying something I only kind-of liked but then felt obligated to keep because it cost a lot. My stuff is a mix of more expensive pieces from "real" furniture stores that I will keep forever and ever and love them to pieces -- these tend to be smaller (so that I can afford them AND so they can move with me to new houses where they'll fit) -- and cheap stuff from Target and Ikea that suits the room and are necessary for comfort, but will wear out over time. I mean, my couch works great in this room, but I don't know if it'll work wherever I move next, so I don't worry a whole lot about my kids getting greasy handprints on the fabric that never QUITE come out, because I'm not going to own it FOREVER and I didn't spend a bazillion dollars on it. "Curtains baffle me." Curtains are, more than anything else, IMO, subject to trends. There's no one "right" set of curtains for a particular room. Right now people are doing floor-to-ceiling curtains to give the illusion of taller rooms, but that looks weirdly out of place if you have a farmhouse vibe in your room, where curtains that show the window size are clearly called for. Go find on pinterest one of those "http://honeyandfitz.com/2012/06/12/home-decor-tips-infographics-cheat-sheets/" pins and pick some style of curtaining you think would suit the room. Also if you can describe some of the things you like in pictures -- "These windows look so uncluttered!" -- you can go type "uncluttered window" or "uncluttered window treatment" into pinterest and find a billion examples to look at, which can help you close in on what you like and want for your own room. Maybe you look and it turns out it's not the unclutteredness of the window treatments don't attract you ... it's more the bright color and clean lines. So then you search that, and you're closer to what you want. And not all at once; I idly surf home decor websites every few weeks when watching TV in the evening or whatever, and let my ideas percolate slowly. If you decide, I WILL FIND THE CURTAINS I LIKE RIGHT NOW then it turns into a "the beatings will continue until morale improves!" exercise in frustration to me.

When you display items--pictures on a wall, knickknacks on a table or mantlepiece, etc, group them together instead of evenly spacing them out. Also, try to group in odd numbers, which for some reason are usually more visually interesting than even ones. (Very formal arrangements go for symmetry and even numbers but honestly, that tends to be graduate-level decorating.) Straight from my interior-designer sister-in-law: you do not have to have all your furniture matching. Don't worry about getting them from the same set. If you fall in love with a chair, buy it and look for a sofa that complements it (bring a photo with you when shopping).

Apartment Therapy has a http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553383124/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ that's more straightforward to use than just browsing their site. It walks through decorating an apartment step by step, helps you figure out your style, etc. Highly recommend.

As http://ask.metafilter.com/240904/I-want-the-Camry-of-sofas-not-a-Yugo-or-a-Porsche#3494419 here, I have never regretted the good sofas I've purchased (and the cheap sofas have reminded me of my mistake every day). I recommend ultrasuede fabric; it's stood up to heavy use and pets like a champ, vacuum it and it looks good as new (https://www.flickr.com/photos/donnatakespictures/2653346381/;https://www.flickr.com/photos/donnatakespictures/14393536518/ - also, https://www.flickr.com/photos/donnatakespictures/2653346433/in/photostream/). You might have luck finding better quality furnishings for sale on Craigslist, which could help with the sticker shock. As for more general advice: Accumulate slowly, but buy stuff that really moves you. It took me awhile to figure out that furniture doesn't wear out like clothes, so you should try and buy something you love the first time; don't buy something cheaply made as a placeholder. It's totally okay if your loves change over time, but don't settle when it comes to furniture you'll look at and use every day.

I asked a http://ask.metafilter.com/200491/Youre-artsy-Im-as-graceful-as-a-lump-of-coal related to developing taste, and someone recommended pinterest (this was ages ago). It really worked! Before buying stuff, use something like pinterest to curate all the things you like, and you will slowly develop your own voice. With time you will recognize the colors and atmospheres that move you, and the things that might be trendy but you don't really love. You can start buying good quality stuff now, but matching things and keeping an eye on how much sense the room makes overall will be quite overwhelming, plus you run the risk of things looking too magazine-y. Like perfect but without a soul. So at least for me, what worked was collecting pictures of the things I like on pinterest, regularly going through my boards (I have a board for each room of my dream mansion - even silly boards like "secret compartments", "tree houses" or "cob cottages"), and see the patterns in my pins. Then slowly I move towards that pattern. Like I can buy something once every couple of months, but I am SURE it's the right piece. Don't rush it, don't buy half of Ikea in one weekend. Building the interior of your home can be quite enjoyable! I also used this method for developing a clothes style.

Art was the single biggest difference in me feeling like a proper adult in my home. For a long time, I just bought a bunch of the nicer frames from IKEA and framed anything I liked in them. I like http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-hang-artwork-properly-57-inches-from-the-floor-6174 about what height to hang art on. When I was preparing for moving from one place to another, I pinned probably hundreds of rooms on Pinterest to get a feel for what I liked and what my style was. Then from there, we started looking at pieces to create that look.