Getting Your Home Holiday-Ready (Without Starting Over)
There’s something about knowing people are coming over that makes you look at your house with completely different eyes. The dining room you walk through every day suddenly feels a little unfinished, you remember that the guest room still needs something above the bed, you start wondering if you should finally replace those chairs before Thanksgiving. And somehow the list of things you’ve been meaning to get around to starts feeling a lot more urgent. The holidays will do that to you (to be honest, it does it to me, too!).
But getting your home ready for the season doesn’t have to mean redecorating every room or starting a major design project. Most of the time, I’d rather help you figure out what will make the biggest difference with the home you already have. Maybe the biggest impacts are made just with a few pieces that help finish the space-not a full overhaul. There are multiple ways I can step in and help.
You Don’t Need a Big Project to Work With a Designer
I think people sometimes assume they need to have an entire room to redesign before calling me, and you really don’t. I love the big projects, but I also love stepping into a home and helping someone work through the things that have been bothering them for months, especially when a few thoughtful changes can completely change how the space feels.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve been expanding the ways we can work together at Home Sweet Hawkins. Depending on what you need, that might look like Virtual Design, where we can work together on your space without needing to be in the same place. It might be Designer for a Day, where we set aside dedicated time to work through your list and make decisions together. Or it might be Designer on Call, for those times when you don’t necessarily need a full design project- you just want access to a designer when those questions come up. “Is this rug big enough? Which paint color actually works with these floors? Do I need another chair here? Is this light fixture going to look tiny once it’s installed? Can I mix this with what I already own?”
Sometimes you don’t need someone to redesign your house. You just want someone you trust to help you make the right call.
Start With How You Want Your Home to Feel
Before you start filling your cart with new pillows and serving pieces because Thanksgiving is around the corner, take a minute and think about what’s actually bothering you. When people come over, where do you spend your time? Maybe everyone always ends up in the kitchen, and you want it to feel a little warmer and more inviting. Maybe this is the year you’re actually using the dining room. Maybe family is staying with you and you want the guest room to feel more pulled together. Start there. You don’t have to make the entire house “holiday ready,” and you definitely don’t need to fill every empty corner just because company is coming. A few intentional decisions will almost always do more for a home than a cart full of things you bought because you were in a hurry.
Your Home Is Never Really “Done”
A home changes right along with the people living in it, and I think that’s part of what makes designing one so much fun. The room we designed three years ago might need to work differently now. Your taste evolves. Your kids get older. You inherit something you want to incorporate. You start hosting more. You travel and find things you love. Or maybe you finally decide you’re ready to tackle the room we didn’t get to the first time. There’s always another layer.
So if we’ve worked together before, you never have to wonder if your next project is “big enough” to call me about. And if we haven’t worked together yet, you don’t necessarily have to wait until you’re ready to redo the whole house, either. Sometimes we just need to start with the room that’s been driving you crazy. And with the holidays around the corner, now might be a pretty good time to finally figure it out.