How To Decorate As A Couple (Without Fighting)

Is it just me, or is decorating with your husband or partner a seemingly impossible task? If you’ve ever felt discouraged or experienced the familiar, all-consuming urge to throw breakable things during a conversation with your partner about decorating your place, this post is for you. 

I swear this is how we always look when we make decorating decisions together..

I’m writing this post from the very same boat, because my husband Brett and I have spent the past 13 years building quite an extensive resume of decor-related arguments. It’s not so much that we don’t like the same things - what’s crazy is that we actually do for the most part. There’s just something about trying to decorate as a couple and put your house together with someone else that can, at times, get tense.

Even though this is something that I admittedly have not cracked the code for, I do think I can offer some well-earned advice about how to navigate decorating with your partner without throwing shit and/or killing each other.

Here are my top four tips:

1. Make a moodboard together and figure out what you like.

Having something visual to refer back to when you find that perfect vintage rug at the flea market can help you remember that you did in fact both agree that peachy pink color was something you both liked. Basically, you want to create a visual homebase that captures a decor vibe that you both, well, vibe with. 

This part can be tricky, because if there’s something that one person loves and the other person absolutely hates, it’s probably not going to make the mood board (unless your partner is like my Dad, who let my mom deck the halls in Laura Ashley wallpaper all through the 80’s with no complaints. Bless him.) But for this step, try to put together a board that captures colors, patterns, textures and even specific pieces and shapes that you both feel great about. 

here’s an example of a moodboard we made of how we wanted our new place to feel

2. Figure out areas where you can meet in the middle

If there are certain things that you seem to really disagree on, see where you can meet each other halfway.

For us, some of the compromises we made at this step in the game were limiting florals, because Brett just isn’t a fan of super floral-y patterns. I was willing to give that up if we could find a couple examples of patterns with subtle floral vibes that he was okay with, which we did.

For example, this Hygge & West wallpaper is going in our bathroom and while it has some subtle flowers in the pattern, they’re definitely not the star of the show.

He also campaigned hard for function over form for certain pieces, like our couch, which is less important to me as a short person who is design-obsessed and is often unwisely willing to sacrifice my comfort for something beautiful.

But that was a compromise I was willing to make considering it’s pretty hard to argue against a super comfy couch, so I agreed to go for the extra deep leather sofa even though it takes up a bit more space than I’d like from a scale standpoint. 

3. Make a priority list of what you want to get done first, and what’s most important

This step is helpful because it focuses your efforts on what the right next step is for your space. About 3 years ago, we moved back to California from Paris and got all of our stuff out of storage.

As we were moving into our new apartment, it was hard not to want to redo everything at once and update some of the stuff we’d had since we first moved in together, but we both agreed that after sleeping in a small double bed in our Paris apartment for a year, our main focus would be saving up for a king-size bed.

That focus helped me rein in the never-ending list of stuff I wanted to try in the new place until we were able to get our new bed, and it was totally worth it once we did. 

This step is also a helpful one when it comes to budget and quality, because it’s super important to be on the same page about which pieces you’re willing to splurge on and which you’re okay finding budget solutions for. For us, we both agreed that the couch and the mattress were splurges we were wiling to save for, and that most of our other pieces could be vintage or sale finds along the way. 

4. Decide which things are okay to buy and try without running them by each other, and which are not

This is something we’re still working on, but outlining which things are a ‘group decision’ and which things are okay to try out without getting the other person to sign off right away has helped us a lot.

In our relationship, I am usually the one who is guilty of buying and trying out a piece without running it by Brett, because I think anyone who loves design and decorating has this hope that maybe we’ll bring this thing home and our partner just won’t notice? But spoiler alert, they notice. And for certain things, that’s okay. For others, it’s not cool. And it’s all about deciding together which is which.

We’ve kind of settled on the idea that if it’s a large or expensive piece of furniture, especially if it’s going to replace something we currently have in the house (like the coffee table we bought for our first place back in 2009), it has to be a group decision. We just replaced our bathroom vanity, and I would never have pulled the trigger on buying it without sending the link to Brett first (even though he later told me he thought I was only buying a new countertop…not an entire vanity…oops). 

For other things like pillows, curtains, art, or furniture that doesn’t take up a huge amount of space, we’ve decided it’s ok to buy and try them out without initially running it by the other person. Obviously, if one of us brings something home that the other person hates, it doesn’t stay. But setting these ‘rules of engagement’ helps me be able to try things out, which is something I get a lot of joy out of doing, without feeling like I’m going behind anyone’s back. 

Do you have any favorite tips for peacefully decorating with your partner? Drop them in the comments!