Ok, I love this question. (You may regret asking if you see the length of this reply đ )
SO.
The simple answer is, I thrift a lot (on- and offline), I buy at estate sales and auctions, I rarely pass an interior design store without taking a look inside (even stores that are decidedly not my style at first sight), I read industry magazines, I save up for pieces by indie creators, and in some cases I make my own stuff (I can weld and upholster). So yeah, to an extent it’s “luck”.
The complicated answer is that it’s about understanding my own aesthetic and optimising my search experience.
I know a lot of people who sort of know what they like, but also don’t really know what they like. They’ll be able to look at pictures of interiors and say “I like that” and “I hate that” but not really know how to articulate why. They might even have a label for the aesthetic they prefer, like “minimalist” or “clean and modern” or “cozy Scandinavian” or something like that, but still not really be able to articulate what that materially entails. (Yes, I know, I’m singling out a certain type of people here -I’ll stop eyeing them once they stop doing this shit.)
Why is one room “good” to you and another not, even if they’re both technically the same style? What makes a space work? What is the “invisible background” in the spaces you love -tall ceilings, exposed beams, greenery outside, natural light, latticed windows, crown moulding? A lot of times people think they like the interior but they really just like the house it’s in, much like how you might think an outfit is stylish only because the person wearing it is hot.
Similarly⊠do you actually love the look of an interior or do you just love the lifestyle implied in it? Do you actually like empty surfaces or are you just tired of cleaning up your housemates’ clutter? Do you love big open kitchen/dining room combos or do you just wish you had a social circle that did dinner parties? Do you really want a giant white couch or do you just dream of living in California? Similarly to ads that may be advertising a car but are selling you on the dream of freedom to travel, interiors are tied up with non-material desires and aspirations. And while that’s not *bad* per se, it’s very difficult to actively work towards an aesthetic if you can’t tell apart that aesthetic from the underlying desires. After all, you want an interior that works for the space you actually have and the life you actually live.
The reason this is important is because the moment you understand what you are really after, you are no longer bound by names of designers, shops and styles. It stops mattering. You can find things you enjoy anywhere, from thrift shops to IKEA to antiques auctions to specialty warehouses to Etsy, without it needing to be tagged with the label of an aesthetic you’re trying to fit in. A lot of the “but how will I even find anything”/“everything I love is too expensive” stress disappears like this.
Understanding how your preferred style and aesthetic actually works under the hood also gives you insight into what sort of things you *need* to make it work, what stuff adds depth and volume but can’t carry the theme by itself, and what sort of things are “false friends” -stuff that seems like it “should” fit your aesthetic but actually hampers it in the space you’re in. (As in: a big white sectional is not gonna give you California Cool in a cramped terrace house in Birmingham, rather the opposite.)
The second-best advice in interior designing is “buy what you love” -the genuinely best advice is “understand what you love”. Because once you do, you’ll find things you like everywhere.
There’s also optimizing your search. This is one of the few things where website algorithms are actually your biggest friend. One of my favourite things is the “more like this” function on a lot of platforms. If you tidily keep and organize favourites on Etsy, the algorithm will typically present you with stuff that’s genuinely similar to items you already like. Just using Instagram to follow artists and creators you like will curate your feed and expose you to other stuff that fits the look. Pinterest allows you to both passively and actively find similar looking items, which can expose you to items and designers you never knew existed.
Favouriting items on my most-used second hand platform (2dehands, a local Belgian thrifting platform) will actively put items that visually resemble those favourites on my front page. It’s awesome, and you can “weaponize” it in your search.
For example, earlier this year I really wanted an Asian style lacquer cupboard. They can be quite expensive, and usually get picked up fast second hand. So for a week or two, I actively searched for and favourited *every* lacquer cupboard I found on 2dehands, including ones I didn’t like, that had the wrong dimensions, or that were far too expensive for me. Fairly quickly, my front page was essentially all lacquer cupboards, including ones that weren’t even advertised as such and that I would never have found through the textual search function. And lo and behold, I found the perfect one, and it was an absolute steal too.
Another way to optimise your search is to cast a wide net. I never pass a home dĂ©cor store or antiques warehouse without taking a peak. I have bought items when I was on work trips, when I was visiting family, when I was on holiday. “Thrift stores near me” is my favourite search on google maps. And yes, sometimes that meant carrying a mahogany prayer chair on my back while walking 30 minutes to the train station in high heels and office clothes xD
A final tip is to sometimes just trust your gut and go for it. A couple of my favourite buys are ridiculous shit, like a chair shaped like high heel and a bronze statue of a robot giving cunnilingus to a woman. And the biggest interior design regrets I have are all items I didn’t buy. (to this day I regularly think about the giant 5-panel hand-painted Chinese screen doors I passed up on and the Lucite dining chairs I couldnât arrange transport for.) There is such a thing as “too cohesive” in interiors. Your home is not a catalog photo; sometimes, particularly if the item is unusual or unique, you gotta trust your affection for it without necessarily knowing how it fits in the picture. (In a way, your brain is also an algorithm subject to customisation through exposure. Learn to trust it! ^^)
It’s important to note with all of this though⊠this is my hobby. I love spending time on it. I imagine if you’re trying to curate an interior this way when you’re new to it (especially if you’re trying to get to a certain look all at once without any mistakes or misbuys) it’s hella overwhelming and time-consuming. It’s not for everyone. But even if you have no interest in turning your home decor into a hobby, the base principles still apply. If you understand what you’re really after, it’s much easier to identify things that would work in your space, anywhere you go, no matter how often you actually go looking.
(My own house is very much NOT perfect -a perpetual âblessed mess and work in progressâ, in all honesty. But well. I AM out here giving advice, so feel free to check out some non-staged, very much non-magazine worthy pics of my home, below the cut.)