Styled or not styled every item in my home serves a purpose. If the purpose isn't functional then the purpose is generally that it makes me happy. Some things in my home are on trend, some are not, as long as looking at it brings me some sense of joy, it will remain in my home, regardless of how cliche it becomes.

This is more of an old-fashioned (90s, 00s) styling complaint, but I hate stuff set out as if something is about to happen. My MIL used to have a tray set for tea propped on a wicker chair in the kitchen. You couldn't have used it because it'd need to be dusted first and you couldn't sit in the chair. Drove me nuts. Propping shouldn't take away from the utility of the item. Where do you put your drink if the coffee table is covered in stuff? How can you put food out on the buffet or sideboard if it's all propped? Propping walks a very fine line with clutter.

Propping is also a terrible term. Is your house a movie set or do you live there?

This is what I tell clients & friends: Have nothing in your space (home or office) which you do not find to be useful, beautiful, or inspirational.

Each of these qualities leads each person to different objects, if you're really going by your own internal decision, not just looking at magazines and picking things that "look nice" to fill up your space. This concept is perfectly illustrated in this post. You have things that are meaningful, like the antlers, and useful, like the spool of yarn and typewriters.

Placing a garage sale find typewriter that you have no intention of using, in your space is just taking up a surface with a meaningless object. THAT is styling and not design. Functional items can certainly be beautiful. Things that serve no function or purpose are just clutter.

...Unless you find a garage sale typewriter inspiring or beautiful, SelfridgeDesign! I certainly do.

If your house/apt is styled and propped within an inch of its life and it makes you happy then it serves a valuable purpose....to make you happy. What serves absolutely no purpose is worrying about what others think of the space you live in. I only questions items in my home in regards to whether or not I love/like/hate them, not what someone else might think of them.

When does styling your home go from being a genuine expression of yourself to a carbon copy of home styling photos?

This happens when you care LESS about about what your home says about you how and MORE about how you think everyone else should see you. In my first apartment, I did all sorts of things that didn't convey ME; they conveyed what I thought people should think about me.

Deep down and on the surface, are you a geek? Cat lady? You like shabby chic? Whatever it is, if you don't embrace it, you'll always decorate to impress people when you should instead be decorating to show people who you are. If people don't accept you as you are, decor and all, they aren't worthy to be your friend.

A home should reflect it's owners. If an owner likes "propping" then that's a direct reflection of them. If they use design magazines as inspiration or enjoy styling on trend, that just says they are mainstream, which is in no way a bad thing. Fear of being stereotypical by designing from a magazine says that person has a fear of conformity, which is in no way wrong either.

Me, I design my spaces based on what I like, be it a crazy love affair with a crusty old lamp or my unending obsession with kitsch. Nothing matches, colors are all over the place, and there's no discernible theme other than everything in space reflects at least one member of my family.

I agree wholeheartedly with DonaldN. If the things you have in your living space are useful (even if that use is simply make you feel happy) and/or beautiful, then there is no need to consider the tastes and opinions of people who don't live with you and whom you'll never meet.

What I don't like is looking at spaces that seem to be self-conscious, as if to say "Look how twee I am -- my owner picked all the 'right' accessories!" Meecee's MIL's tea tray would have annoyed me to no end, by that token.

However, sometimes one genuinely doesn't know whether those "right" accessories actually do have a use to the people who live in those spaces.

It behooves us all to be open-minded and give people the benefit of the doubt when looking at pictures of the living quarters of people we don't know.

If you surround yourself with things that you truly love, you cannot "overstyle." Why are we so concerned with the judgment(s) made by those who do not live in our homes? Create that which makes you joyful.

I think there is a big difference between keeping items because you think they are trendy and keeping items that you feel are truly beautiful, even if you have no use for them outside of aesthetics. People of the first kind usually get bored of whatever it is that is taking up space, and eventually move on to a new trend anyway.

My house is definitely not a copy & paste. I believe in making your home kick your shoes off comfortable. I have long lived by the motto "My house is clean enough to be healthy but dirty enough to be happy." My house may be organized but it's also inviting.

I agree with all who have posted. Design with what makes you happy. I love MCM but there is nothing in my home that reflexs that. I have always decorated my home with anthromorphic art (mermaids, fairies, dyrads, etc) and celestical items-They make me happy to see them everyday.
I don't design on a trend unless I really like it and there is nothing in my home that I've ever seen in any of the hour tours or design books and that makes me smile. I do get many positive compliments on how I decorate and have been told I should do it for a living. Of course it's nice to recieve such positive comments but that's not why I decorate the way I do...as stated, they make me happy. I do have a 1940's-50's phone (you know, one of those black really heavey phones) that doesn't work but I love the look of it.

If it has meaning to you, it isn't a prop. If you acquired it because it is hip, it's a prop.

I would say there is a difference between antlers given to you by your father and antlers purchased at Z Gallerie. I'm personally not a fan of generic objects that are purchased at a chain store and whose purpose is to sit on a shelf or coffee table in your home. Those are the kinds of objects that are just better when I acquire them in a more personal way, like when traveling or as a beloved heirloom.

Trends are sort of troubling when something you've loved and proudly displayed for years (like your typewriter) suddenly becomes trendy, especially when the trend becomes passé but you still love your piece. From my perspective, trends are pretty much a sadly transparent mass-brainwashing of 'taste' in order to generate sales. I do what I like and try not to worry about it too much.

To be honest, I passed on voting for many of the Room for Color entries this year because I was put off by how overstyled the rooms were. The same words kept coming to mind again and again: twee, precious, overwrought, staged, cluttered, "curated" (that word is becoming pretty irritating, right? It's not just me?)...

1 second akay's post. More and more rooms and home tours on AT feel staged and self conscious (or self important). They seem to say "my place is decorated this way so that it can showcased on AT".

Barf

Yeah, that word "curated" bugs the heck out of me. I DO NOT live in a museum!! LOL!
However, I like to design little vignettes around my house, but that's just for my own pleasure. Also for the fact that I am a photographer/collage artist. I am always mentally composing art/collage compositions in my head so I need to physically create them in my home/studio. After the scene is complete I photograph it. Then I either leave it there as a permanent fixture or disassemble it to make room for fresh ideas. But these are certainly not for the purpose of impressing others. However the final art photography IS, as it is one of the ways I make my living! Even though many times I comment that I just do not like/feel a certain House Tour or design idea/trend here on AT, I have to admit that, in the end, unless I am paying someone's mortgage or rent for them, I really have no say in how others want to live in their own homes. More often than not I have been really inspired by the millions of ideas posted on this site.

Nope, not just you akay......I also dislike the current trend to use "curated". I don't think its used in the proper context in these situations at all!!

My answer--NO: everyone else is understyled. Seriously, my yardstick is do I see a lot of other rooms I'd rather live in?

This had to be said.

http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/

I don't see why you couldn't have mentioned that you use the typewriter and yarn every day for work. People would naturally wonder why you had apparently replaced a computer with a typewriter. To some, "because she's trying too hard to be trendy" would have seemed like a more probable explanation than "because she has more use for the typewriter."

"Have nothing in your home which you do not know to be useful or consider beautiful." Straight from the mouth of William Morris!

How people react to these office photos and house tours says a lot about their personalities. Some people view them for inspiration, others for interesting small windows into strangers' lives and others view it as a way to judge and criticize.

If you look at the rooms on this site and your thoughts are "so trendy" or "very propped" or "too curated" . . . this sounds more like a you problem than a problem with the room.

If you have stuff you love, it's not props.

If you have stuff because you saw it somewhere and feel other people will credit you in some way because you have it, it's props.

Either way, if YOU are happy with it it's fine. (If you are NOT happy with it, you are a chump!!)

Any time there's a discussion of books, a gaggle of people pipe up to say "There's no such thing as having 'too many books'!" And now with optional accessories like decorative typewriters and antlers, some folks are saying "As long as you love the items, there's no such thing as 'overstyling'!" But you CAN have too many books and you CAN have too much styling.

You can dearly love vast numbers of books and intend to reread them all someday, but that doesn't mean your home is big enough to store them all without creating ungainly stacks. And you can find meaning or beauty in dozens of seashells and typewriters and photographs and teacups and paperweights and Hummel figurines and cameras and pine cones, but that doesn't mean you have to cling to all of them, or display them all at the same time.

It's a big world, full of wonderful things to love, so it's easy to acquire things to the point that they become clutter, drown each other out, and stop getting any attention at all. I recommend rotating your stuff seasonally so that only a portion of it is on display at any given time. Put the holiday stuff out in the next few weeks, but don't just pile it on top of the other things. If you have a few "seasons" of items, a lending library of accessories, you'll revisit them more often as you bring them out, care for them more consistently as you store them, display them with enough breathing room for them to have their turns in the spotlight, and become less likely to overlook them because you're visually immune to the same old thing.

If the rule is simply to reflect who you are, then what do you say to those people who get enjoyment out of being on trend. Maybe they don't intrinsically enjoy antlers, vintage knickknacks, or bar carts BUT if you do genuinely enjoy being on trend can you still have these items in your home?

I totally agree with JazzyCat. I think of home trends and clothing trends (both of which I'm marginally aware of at any given time, but hopeless at adopting) as being types of social behaviour. Some of the "trendiest" (I hate that word) people I know are also some of the nicest, friendliest, and most social people you could ever hope to meet. They love trends because of the social aspect of sharing a love of a beautiful thing with lots of other people. What's wrong with that?

I, on the other hand, am a bit of a misanthrope and, perhaps uncoincidentally, hate trends. This certainly doesn't make me a better person than my trend-loving friends. We are who we are. So long as everyone's happy and no one is getting hurt, who cares?

In my parents home, every accessory and piece of artwork was a gift from somebody close to them, earmarked a special event or travel, or was inherited. My mom was very much against going to a store to buy accessories. (Though ironically she would buy furniture sets... :))
That has influenced me greatly, though I have not been as lucky to receive the gifts and live the experiences they've had. Instead I do buy items, but I'm very strict in that they must be useful or make me happy. Makes for a slow decorating process.
That is a learning process as well, and over time my tastes change. Sometimes I happen to like something that's on trend, and I refuse to feel bad about it, my space could hardly be called trendy by the time all the random pieces are put together! :)

I do think a lot of the images that I see on here are of homes or rooms with stuff just for the sake of having stuff.

I think propping in itself can be fun. It is a stress reliever to rearrange items on a shelf and make it look new or different. I can't afford to travel yet, I'm a recent grad so I go to thrift stores and buy a mexican mask or candle holder that catches my eye and bring it home and find a place for it. They may be props to some, but until I can afford to get something of more meaning-my home is still stylish and beautiful in the mean time. I never go overboard or "on trend" I just pick things I like that go with my color scheme that are the right scale. Remember the greeks got it right-sometimes you need the perfect oversized book to balance an are and get the proportion right.

Amen, Bee for Brian. Amen.

LOL how did you find this?? too funny! At the same time, I will say that I ENJOY decorating my home so it may seem a little styled but I do think about and plan how my space will look. That being said, I only use things that I really like/love and, as others have said, use things that have a purpose whether they are utilitarian or emotionally connected to me. In all honesty I'd be going against my impulse not to style my home, i lOVE doing it, i find it fun.

Placing objects and furniture in a pretty way doesn't bother me. If you put time into your arrangements, go for it! I know that in my apt, many areas are complete disasters / works in progress. But damn, I do feel happy when I look at my beautiful shelves of books and treasures.

... It can be a bit irking when it seems that everyone's artfully arranged homes are filled with the exact same stuff, though. Granted, people will say that they want their home to truly reflect their personality, but really most of us are all somewhere between being actually creative and just following trends. Otherwise, every house tour on here would look like it's from The Selby instead.)

**Footnote: As if any of us actually have enough money to truly fill our homes with the stuff of our most unique dreams like those privileged Selby brats, though. Ha.

I don't tend to follow individual blogs because I think a lot of them are guilty of filling their house with benign useless crap to "fill space". I know I am probably being pretentious, I cannot stand it when people buy or put up artwork to "decorate" their house. I find the canvased "art" and prints at Ikea / Pier 1 completely offensive. I don't like the trendy stylized font lettering people are hanging with irrelevant phrases. It's not clever at all and exists solely to fill space. It's on par with the tacky "inspirational" phrases "mom" types hang up around the home.
And speaking of over-styled, lets talk about the whole loud contrasting colors with loud obnoxious patterns like "morrocan tile" "chevron" look going on right now. Honestly, can we have a more processed, fake, catalog-looking aesthetic? I am not an ecowarrior, but I cringe knowing someone is throwing out this stuff in three years when it goes out of style. It's worse than 90s pastels. These looks are not versatile and are completely disposable. To be quite frank, it looks like the people who design tissue and tampon boxes decided to become interior decorators.

Long story short, I am not a fan of design choices that reflect trendy aesthetics. Designing your home should not be like designing product packaging.

EXACTLY what Lillian just said!!!

Annie.42, I followed your link... I laughed so hard I cried. Thank you.

I'm so tired of the antlers on the wall trend.

OMG!!! I just checked out that link from annie.42

http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/

I about wet myself laughing ! And SO many of the fotos are from right out of our own beloved AT!!! Awesome site! Great for a chuckle if one wants to see some truly staged living spaces!!! LOL! Thanks annie.42!!!!!!!!

very fight club, no? favorite book, btw.