When you’re decorating, you might feel pressure to add variety to your space by layering in as many different ideas or influences as you can. But, just like a wardrobe template, having a home decor “uniform” actually makes creating a beautiful space even easier. That’s a big lesson that I took away from Kristina & Jason’s Gorgeous, Graphic Australian Home.

Coat hooks. I mean… there’s not really much you can do there, right? (Wrong.) With one or two or 20 standard coat hooks and a little bit of ingenuity, you can create some pretty stellar little hallway hacks worthy of bearing an artsy label like “entryway installment” (rather than dull old coat rack).

We’re all kids at heart. So why can’t we decorate like children? Not to say we should start pinning up posters of teen idols or buying superhero sheets, but we should be able to channel the kind of reckless abandon of a child with a crayon and a coloring book. There are no rules, only color. This bold Chicago apartment seems to have it down, with three rule-breaking color details that are just rebellious enough to work for anyone, in any space.

Clean lines keep it chic, and deep seats and comfy cushions make it a really livable sofa for real people’s real homes. Oh, and the affordable price tag is a pretty great feature, too. The IKEA SÖDERHAMN sofa line has been on the market for a couple years now, and that means designers and dwellers have had ample time to take the piece home and show us myriad ways to style it.

Bathrooms have this bizarre disposition to be judged. Besides the whole peeking-in-the-medicine-cabinet trope, I guess we’re likely to evaluate people’s bathrooms because it’s the one place where we, as guests, get a chance to linger alone and really contemplate the personal style of the person who’s invited us over. For that reason, if you’re out to impress, the bathroom is one of the first rooms you need to work on.

Many a beautiful kitchen have been built on a foundation of pretty normal, neutral cabinetry. But if you ever have the opportunity to renovate a kitchen from scratch and add in something really spectacular in the realm of cabinetry, it’s like a shortcut to great style. Above: I’m sorry, but how cool is this oversized-pegboard-style upper cabinet area in this tall Amsterdam schoolhouse-turned apartment, from Dwell? We can see this evolving over time to be used exactly as you need.

It’s a unique problem, but no less worthy of attention than how to dress a gallery wall or what to do when your kitchen’s too small. The presence of a piano in the room can be seriously demanding on decor. Here are more than a dozen rooms who’ve mastered it. Do you have a piano at home?

What we have here is a dozen unabashed, Warhol- and Lichtenstein-inspired rooms that would look right at home in a pop art museum as they do inside these homes. If you love bright colors and retro styling, get thee to Pinterest and save these shots for later. It’s part aspiration and part inspiration. As big and bold as these rooms are, there are some pretty do-able ideas in here. Do you have any pop art-inspired pieces at home?

In a bit of a rut in the bedroom? I mean, design-wise? (We can’t help with the other thing.) Good news: We’ve collected eight creative, unconventional ideas that will surely refresh your space and give you something to really get excited over when you pop into bed each night. Above: We see a lot of rug layering in living rooms, but it’s fresh for the boudoir.

Track shelving might be the most common in a pantry, office or garage, but if you know how to style it right, it can be beautiful enough to sit front and center right in the living room. Just check out these eight rooms, which each put their own spin on the track shelf thing. Above: Mounting art to the wall between the shelf standards gives this wall unit from Old Brand New a more upscale look.

...and one that's too big.

There’s no one-size fits all recipe for a room, of course. But if you’re stuck trying to get that luxe-y, lived-in look in your dining room on an affordable budget, can we suggest one of our favorite combinations? The dining room is the perfect place to play with furniture because there are no time constraints on getting it “finished.” Start with what you have (a table and 4-ish chairs, maybe?

Despite what any of your playground foes may have told you in grade school, being odd is actually a good thing. Odd numbers – and the number three, specifically – have long been heralded by designers and stylists as magical numbers that should be applied to interiors and vignettes to make them look even better. But better how? Even numbers create symmetry, but odd numbers create interest. An odd number of details is more effective at capturing your gaze.

You’re getting older, and your secondhand furniture is, too. While you may feel like you’re outgrowing your taste, don’t make a knee-jerk reaction and drop major bucks to redecorate your whole house with more grown-up gear (you know, the kind you don’t have to assemble yourself). There’s a secret to looking expensive on the cheap: Restraint. Don’t replace everything. Just replace one thing.

Hobbies come with their own lingo. And around here–while we’re huge into design and life at home–we still find that some terms escape us. Architecture pros will know what an “oriel” is, but the rest of us? Time to brush up. Along with definitions and photos from Wikipedia, here are 25 obscure design and architecture terms you might not know. The dado is the lower part of a wall, below the dado rail and above the skirting board.

The moving process is only as difficult as you make it out to be. If you’re hangry and disorganized the whole time, you’ll come away from the move having lost some really important things like your mind, your time and your grandmother’s china. Thankfully, it turns out being one of those hyper-organized people who have it all together is really, really simple. An organized move comes down to having organized moving boxes.

Do you ever look back at old photos and regret everything? Like the bad hair, and the terrible clothes? What about your decor? We want to hear about your past decorating mistakes. The interior moments you might like to burn if you knew they were caught on camera. Maybe it was during your high school years or in the college dorms, or maybe you were a card-carrying adult just going along with the times.

There are plenty of reasons to decorate your house key. Like if you need to tell it apart from other keys. Or maybe it’s just because you just love a little something extra. Either way, I wouldn’t say these DIY projects are for everyone, but if you’re so inclined, here are 10 easy ways you can jazz up a boring house key. Grab some nail polish and lets get started.

When you live life in only a few hundred square feet, a home must become a very fluid thing. Tiny apartments actually exist in four dimensions, and without capturing “time,” it’s impossible to truly reveal what it’s like to live small. Thankfully for all of us, the internet has adopted GIFs as a form of animated photo currency, and we can all see how real people make small homes work.